This came up frequently in my time as a mathematical educator. Far too many “word problems”(*) are written in ways that require some words and phrases in the problem to be interpreted in their everyday sense, and others to be strictly interpreted mathematically even when this directly contradicts their usual meanings. Learning which are in each category often turns out to be equivalent to “guessing the password”, often without even the benefit of instructional material or consistency between problems.
In my experience, problems in probability or statistics are by far the worst of this type.
(*) in the pedagogical sense, not the one that means testing identity of semigroup elements.
This is an incredibly insightful comment. You’ve perfectly described why so many people find word problems, especially in probability, so frustrating. The “guessing the password” analogy is spot on.
It’s fascinating to see how that same challenge—interpreting ambiguous information to figure out probabilities—applies in completely different fields, like strategic gaming.
For instance, ‘Big Brother: The Game’ is essentially one massive, real-time probability problem. Players are constantly trying to calculate the odds of eviction, the chances of an alliance holding true, and interpret intentionally misleading “data” from other players. It’s a surprisingly complex system.
I was so absorbed by this aspect that I actually built a solver tool to help track these variables and calculate the odds for different scenarios. It’s called BB Last Solver: https://bblastsolver.com/
It’s just funny how a tool for a game ends up tackling the same core issues of interpretation and probability you mentioned in math education.
This came up frequently in my time as a mathematical educator. Far too many “word problems”(*) are written in ways that require some words and phrases in the problem to be interpreted in their everyday sense, and others to be strictly interpreted mathematically even when this directly contradicts their usual meanings. Learning which are in each category often turns out to be equivalent to “guessing the password”, often without even the benefit of instructional material or consistency between problems.
In my experience, problems in probability or statistics are by far the worst of this type.
(*) in the pedagogical sense, not the one that means testing identity of semigroup elements.
This is an incredibly insightful comment. You’ve perfectly described why so many people find word problems, especially in probability, so frustrating. The “guessing the password” analogy is spot on.
It’s fascinating to see how that same challenge—interpreting ambiguous information to figure out probabilities—applies in completely different fields, like strategic gaming.
For instance, ‘Big Brother: The Game’ is essentially one massive, real-time probability problem. Players are constantly trying to calculate the odds of eviction, the chances of an alliance holding true, and interpret intentionally misleading “data” from other players. It’s a surprisingly complex system.
I was so absorbed by this aspect that I actually built a solver tool to help track these variables and calculate the odds for different scenarios. It’s called BB Last Solver: https://bblastsolver.com/
It’s just funny how a tool for a game ends up tackling the same core issues of interpretation and probability you mentioned in math education.