word problem

A word problem is a slice of the real world wearing a disguise of sentences. The math is hidden inside a story about ages, money, distances, or mixtures, and your first task is not to compute but to translate — to turn the words into an equation.

A reliable recipe: name the unknown with a variable and say in words what it stands for; reread the sentences and rewrite each relationship as algebra; assemble those pieces into one equation; then solve it with the usual tools. Phrases map to operations — “is” becomes equals, “more than” becomes addition, “twice” becomes times two.

The step beginners skip is the last one: interpret the answer back in the story and sanity-check it. A negative number of chairs or a speed faster than light means a setup error, not a valid solution. The number you computed only matters once it answers the question that was actually asked.