gray_ghost (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
gray_ghost) wrote2005-09-12 09:23 pm
gray_ghost) wrote2005-09-12 09:23 pm
Man I hate word problems....
This is one I am currently grading:
" A company produces alarm clocks. During the regular workweek, the labor cost for producing one clock is $2.00. However, if a clock is produced on overtime, the labor cost is $3.00. Management has decided to spend no more than a total of $25,000 per week for labor. The company must produce 11,000 clocks this week. What is the minimum number of clocks that must be produced during the regular workweek?"
What's wrong with this problem, you might ask? When is the last time you picked up an alarm clock that said Made in the USA? This book is filled with problems like this. It's a modern book on precalculus for business majors in it's 11th edition, and I get the feeling a lot of these word problems carried over from the first edition which probably came out before most of my students were born and from a time when - I don't know - we actually made stuff like alarm clocks in factories, and when students in college probably felt it was realistic to maybe one day be a manager of something like that. When it wasn't unreasonable to expect that you might have a great future ahead of you based on what you could do with your mind rather than being lucky enough to be born into the right family and have the right connections.
We do still make a FEW things in the United States (other than weapons to kill lots of people). I have three fans ('called Wind Machines') which were made in a factory in Texas that I bought at Rite-Aid.
But, it's so depressing teaching people just out of hs these word problems. They are just so blatantly, artificially, stupid examples of what you might encounter in the "REAL" world. Look - you might one day be a manager in an alarm clock factory and need to know something like this!!!!!
Or...in George Bush's America, you might be lucky to be manager at the late shift of McDonald's and probably won't be able to afford health insurance or braces for your kids (kids...you're actually thinking about building a future with CHILDREN in them? ).
*sigh*
*whimper*
Anyway....back to grading....
" A company produces alarm clocks. During the regular workweek, the labor cost for producing one clock is $2.00. However, if a clock is produced on overtime, the labor cost is $3.00. Management has decided to spend no more than a total of $25,000 per week for labor. The company must produce 11,000 clocks this week. What is the minimum number of clocks that must be produced during the regular workweek?"
What's wrong with this problem, you might ask? When is the last time you picked up an alarm clock that said Made in the USA? This book is filled with problems like this. It's a modern book on precalculus for business majors in it's 11th edition, and I get the feeling a lot of these word problems carried over from the first edition which probably came out before most of my students were born and from a time when - I don't know - we actually made stuff like alarm clocks in factories, and when students in college probably felt it was realistic to maybe one day be a manager of something like that. When it wasn't unreasonable to expect that you might have a great future ahead of you based on what you could do with your mind rather than being lucky enough to be born into the right family and have the right connections.
We do still make a FEW things in the United States (other than weapons to kill lots of people). I have three fans ('called Wind Machines') which were made in a factory in Texas that I bought at Rite-Aid.
But, it's so depressing teaching people just out of hs these word problems. They are just so blatantly, artificially, stupid examples of what you might encounter in the "REAL" world. Look - you might one day be a manager in an alarm clock factory and need to know something like this!!!!!
Or...in George Bush's America, you might be lucky to be manager at the late shift of McDonald's and probably won't be able to afford health insurance or braces for your kids (kids...you're actually thinking about building a future with CHILDREN in them? ).
*sigh*
*whimper*
Anyway....back to grading....
no subject
Sorry, digressed there.....