4.06 Story problems
Ideas
Are you ready?
How do we know if we need to multiply or divide in our problem? The words and the context they're used in tells us whether we are multiplying or dividing.
What words can you think of for division?
Here are some words that we may come across in multiplication and division problems:
| Multiplication words | Division words |
|---|---|
| \text{groups of} | \text{shared among} |
| \text{product} | \text{distributed between} |
| \text{altogether} \\\text{quotient} | \text{multiplied by} \\\text{shared equally} |
| \text{product} | \text{per} |
Story problems with multiplication and division
Examples
Example 1
This year there are 2627 registered self-driving cars in the world. By the same time next year there are expected to be 9 times as many self-driving cars.
Which number sentence correctly describes to total number of self-driving cars registered by next year?
Find the total number of self-driving cars registered by next year.
If a story problem uses the word "times" then we need to multiply.
Story problems with larger numbers
Examples
Example 2
A real estate agency has portfolio of 6 properties that it manages. The total value of the properties is \$3\,518\,400.
If each property is valued equally, what is the cost of one of the properties in the portfolio?
Sometimes there may be pieces of information that are not relevant to our problem. How do we know which things we need? The best thing to do is to highlight the keywords, and then think about what they are suggesting, these are like the clues to the puzzle.
Identifying the clues helps us work out how to write out our number problem. We can also look for pieces of information that may not be useful, and ignore those.