Word problems try and tell students a story about the math problem in front of them. They are a useful way to connect abstract numbers to concrete situations, so students can learn early on to apply ...

Alan Veliz-Cuba has received funding from the Simons Foundation and the American Mathematical Society for some of his research. You can probably think of a time when you’ve used math to solve an ...

Students often struggle to connect math with the real world. Word problems—a combination of words, numbers, and mathematical operations—can be a perfect vehicle to take abstract numbers off the page.