Word Problems___Don't You Love 'Em?

This is Michael Moore, producer of "Sicko" and other in-your-face "documentaries". I nominate "Sicko Math" for his consideration.

I'm sure you remember those endearing word problems we all enjoyed in school .... Little Jimmy goes to the store to buy apples. His mommy gave him 46 cents and each apple cost 5 cents. It was 1,320 feet from his home to the store. A train was passing him at 37 miles per hour. Was it sunny or raining when Little Jimmy got home? I don't know about you but they very nearly spelled the end to my academic experience. I began wondering just how enjoyable a ditch digging career might be at that point.

So it was recently that Sally and I had the opportunity to revisit those warm, fuzzy moments when we began studying for our brokers' licenses. The test for this license is 200 questions and five hours long and made up entirely of word problems with multiple choice answers. And as Billy May says on TV, "BUT WAIT, IT GETS EVEN BETTER !"

Real estate seems to be made up of large doses of law and math. If that doesn't scare you out of the business right there add in word problems with a clock ticking on the wall, proctors marching up and down the aisles, passes needed to go to the bathroom, etc. You get the picture. How else do you spell STRESS?

So this is where one's test-taking and reading skills come into play big time, because the sickos who write these mind-benders WANT you to fail. That's right. They've made it but you can't, HA, HA. They try every conceivable twist and turn to catch you off guard.

Remember double-negatives? "Which of the following are not non-recurring costs?".
I think the trick is to cancel the negatives out so it reads 'which of these ARE recurring costs' but don't hold me to that.

Questions may have what we used to call "trigger words" like "always" or "never". Or they will turn on a key word like "approximately" or "nearest to" or "most likely". Sometimes it matters if a word is plural or singular, meaning that just one letter may spell the difference.

These question writers also include not only useless information that you don't need for the solution but misleading info as well. One clever example began with "John borrowed $2600 to buy a car..." followed by (and I'm not exaggerating) six full sentences full of the term of the note, where he got the loan, when it was due, the interest rate, ad nauseum. And the last sentence, the question itself read "What was the principal amount that John was obligated to pay back?" Duh. $2600 was the correct answer but you had to squirm your way to it through all the smoke and mirrors to see it (another test skill . . . read clean through not only the question but every answer before you jump).

Of course answer choices are also disasters waiting to happen, too. There's always that choice, d) "NONE of the above (!)". You sweat to pick that one, it's like they're daring you. And how about "all the above", "none of the above", "a and b only", "c and d only"?

But the really fiendish answers to nasty math questions are all correct; three of them if you do the problem in any one of the three likely wrong ways and one if you lucked out and picked the right way. This is especially fun because many of the tougher questions require multiple calculations in a chaining order, that is, you do one set of figuring and then go back and calculate another set from the answers to the first set to finally drill down to the right answer.

I will close with a small example which will probably send me to Folsom for revealing state secrets, but it's for entertainment purposes only. If you think you have the right answer call me and I'll share how I figured it:

"Sue agreed to buy a home for $310,000 and she deposited $15,000 into escrow. A bank has agreed to loan her 80% of the appraised value which is $295,000. The settlement costs are to be charged to the buyer and amount to 5% of the purchase price. How much additional money must the buyer deposit? a) $74,000 b) $89,500 c) $ 74,500 d) there is infufficient information to arrive at an answer."

PS: Most of you are smart and will get this one but I did not have enough time to scour all seven cram exams (200 questions each) to find the really evil ones.
PS#2; did you catch that first trap . . was her loan $295,000 or was that the appraised value?