Math Word Problems For Dummies

Sterling's book fails miserably at its stated goal of teaching students how to solve math word problems. It's badly organized, it's overly "cute", and it's padded with unnecessary and unhelpful puzzles and sidelights that have nothing to do with math problems.According to G. Polya ("How to Solve It"), solving a word problem is a multi-step process:1.) Read and understand the problem2.) Figure out a strategy for solving the problem. (In particular, try and find a similar problem that you have solved in the past.) The more patterns you have to choose from, the more likely you'll be to find one that works for the current problem.3.) Use the strategy from step 2 to convert the statement of the problem into mathematical terms (equations, formulas, etc.).4.) Solve the mathematics. (This is the "plug and chug" part of the solution.)5.) Verify that the result of step 4. actually solves the problem as stated.Most students have trouble with steps 2 and 3. Initially, they don't have any past experience with standard types of word problems to help them select a pattern, and/or they're not practiced enough to be able to convert the current problem into one of the standard patterns. This is what a book on solving word problems should try and teach to the student.This is exactly NOT what the Sterling book does. Instead, Sterling wanders around from one topic to another, never really giving the reader a coherent strategy for solving problems in general, and distracting the reader continuously with irrelevant non-mathematical puzzles that do nothing to help students learn.Other complaints:- Like all the "Dummies" books, this one suffers from an excess of cuteness. The "Dummies" editorial staff seems to think that every chapter and section heading needs to be some kind of clever play on words. This makes it very hard to find things in the table of contents. (This "clever" style of writing is something that I wouldn't accept from a highschool sophomore; it certainly doesn't belong in a math tutorial.)- There's too much useless filler. There's a whole chapter consisting of nothing but well-known brain-teasers (e.g., the farmer, the chicken, the fox, and the corn). There's another chapter on "unlikely" mathematicians -- among whom Sterling includes Pythagoras, Rene Descartes, and Isaac Newton. Seriously?- The book is badly edited. The proofreader apparently didn't know the difference between "lead" (chemical element 82, symbol "Pb") and "led" (the past tense form of the verb "to lead"). So instead of using "led", Sterling used "lead" -- as in, "He was lead to the wrong conclusion." Microsoft Word can catch that kind of thing automatically, but apparently no one bothered to look. There are other similar problems with grammar and usage.If you want to learn to solve word problems, I'd recommend Allan G. Bluman's "Math Word Problems Demystified 2/E". It's based on Polya's multi-step approach, and it focuses heavily on the step 2 and step 3 parts of the sequence.Along with Bluman, I'd recommend Mildred Johnson's "How to Solve Word Problems in Algebra." It's not as good by itself, but it provides additional material to go along with Bluman.Finally, if you want to see where Bluman gets his ideas, there's G. Polya, "How to Solve It." This is NOT a subsitute for Bluman (it's a bit too abstract to be useful), but it would certainly help teachers, because it goes into the theory of problem solving and how to teach it to others.

Great Book!I've gone through this book a couple of times. its great with Word Problems, but serves as a review for a lot of Algebra Skills.If you think you know your stuff, then go through the book and really find out. The trick to reading her books is to do it with pen and paper, or better yet, a dry marker board, in front of you. and just do what she talks about. As much as you already know, she somehow puts it at a different perspective... in a different light... you come off knowing it better... with another slant for attacking the problems. As they say, "there is more than one way to skin a cat", and with math, it is always good to have a few ways to go -- you're way and the Right Way... well no, whatever gets the answer is fine, but Professor Sterling has had Solutions that were short and elegant, while my solutions had been convoluted and involved. Thank God for Mary Jane Sterling.Professor Sterling, the Author, well, she is Dept Chairman of a University in the MidWest somewhere.... yes, not Harvard, Yale or Sanford... but the girl seems to know her math and she has some neat tricks.If you are into mathematics, then she is really a good influence. Check out the rest of her books as you move along.

This book has already helped me learn so much. There were several job tests that had these type of questions and while I did not get the jobs I applied for, at least I scored higher in this area than ever before. I might also point out that these Math Problems are also good mental exercise for either beginner or experts. The explanations along with samples, are a great help. I have found with few exceptions, that the For Dummies series in any area are very helpful for understanding multiple subjects.

The book was trite and fluffy. I purchased it to navigate tricky word problems which are found in many standardized tests. But I found this one lacked steps in solving word problem clearly. The author did not heed her own advise. She did NOT "interpret words from the problems into math symbols," did NOT "assign variables for the problems," did NOT "estimate an answer before doing the work." The author did NOT "show all of her work" in doing theses example problems. Serious consideration should be taken on editing this book, to remove the long winded, worthless brainteasers and make room for the actual working inners of these problems. I spent more time figuring what the "author" had left out, than actually learning how to work math word problems. She did NOT lead by example. In my opinion the book tried to hard to be funny and clever, it is because of this, that it failed in its mission–to teach.

Helped simplifying and teaching well

This book is really helping me with my math problems

I may have ordered the a different edition than I had intended, because this one is not the same book that I had been using from the library and had purchased a previoius copy which I lost. It will still be useful, but as it is organized differently (i.e. different order of topics, it may even be shorter). I am going to check on line and compare other editions. I will have to begin again to work the problems and read explanations in order to be sure that I have covered all topics.)

This book is pretty decent and covers most word problems found in exams. It is a good book for both beginners as well as advance readers.

Better than expected, very fast, hope to do business with you again in the future highly recommended AAA++

Excellent

Excellent review of basic math problems. It's been many years since having to do any serious algebra and this was an excellent WY to review.