I Won't Ever Use This Will I?
63My younger sister struggled with High School Algebra. She complained loudly and with bitterness as often as she thought she could get away with it. She even tried that old line. You've all heard it. "This is stupid because I'll never actually use it later in life anyway." She made the mistake of saying that line within my hearing.
I gave her an example. If she was planning a party she would need to figure out how much pizza to provide. Each person would eat three slices of pizza. Each pizza had eight slices in it. If she invited ten people how many pizzas would she need to order. She did some mental calculations and told me she would need four pizzas because that would leave a couple of slices left over just in case. I asked her how many pizzas she would need if she invited fifteen people. Again she gave me the correct answer.
when I told she could even make this more complex by figuring in other snacks and drinks or if there was a different number of slices in the pizza she started giving me examples. When I told her she was applying algebra she didn't believe me. I asked her why it wasn't algebra. She said, "Because this stuff makes sense."
But it was algebra. It was simply applied to a situation she could relate to. I gave her a formula and she plugged in the numbers. And it was an algebraic formula she had already used, she just hadn't thought of it that way.
3(Xguests)/Yslices=Zpizzas
My sister never used that complaint around me again.
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Comments
cake slices were what my maths teacher did (-:
I always like algebra, it was easy and made perfect sense.
Geometry on the other hand was terrible. All those damn triangles!
When tutoring, I often use a smiley face or an empty box instead of the x or y variables used in algebra. In fact, they used the empty boxes a lot when they first learned to add/substract:
3 + [] = 5
5 - 3 = []
But what are harmless little equations become evil monsters to them when we use letters instead:
3 + x = 5
5 - 3 = x
....even though it's actually the same thing!
Rochelle Frank says:
10 months ago
I have always found pizzas to be particularly useful when teaching math. Good answer.