I reached some stage....probably by the sixth-grade, where word problems made no sense.
In each problem, you'd have five or six key 'pieces', and you really needed to separate the question from the facts....determining what was useless information and what had value.
Example: Micky had 12 girlfriends. Two of them owned dogs. Four of them had tattoos. Nine of them were left-handed. One was a Baptist-freak and drove a Honda Civic. Eleven of the girlfriends left. How many girlfriends did Micky have in the end? I would have wasted five minutes looking at four bits of information with no value. Eventually, I would have asked the question how Micky got 12 girlfriends to start with, and spend a good three minutes wondering about his style and nature.
From the sixth through the ninth grade, this word problem thing bothered me. Out of every test....at least one-third of the test was based on stupid questions. It was always 50-50 if I'd mark off the bogus info, and just concentrate my limited time on what needed to be done.
Eventually, I came to the reality that I needed a formula to reach a conclusion, and I automatically concentrated on this formula.....then going back to the phrased question itself.
The necessity to write stupid math word problems? It's more of a training tool to teach people to discount things.....rather than just figure they are part of the math problem itself.
Fixing or resolving this? I am of the belief that half of all teachers are pro-word problem and can't imagine math existing without this 'thrill'.
