Ah yes I know that exact problem. AoPS intro to algebra. That question was great for getting an intuitive sense of proportion, though I do remember one of the sub problems gave me some trouble.
That's the one! It was a very nice example. I suspect for some students they could ignore the physics, but daughter needed to walk through the physical interpretation of the components before getting into the math.
From my perspective as a tutor, it was a good use of time (gotta learn it some day anyway, and it provides useful physical intuition throughout life), but I could see it causing frustration if someone just wanted to learn algebra or didn't have a resource to turn to.
(Love those books. I went and asked all of my colleagues who had won teaching awards, what books they recommended, and all of them said aops)
dgacmu|1 year ago
From my perspective as a tutor, it was a good use of time (gotta learn it some day anyway, and it provides useful physical intuition throughout life), but I could see it causing frustration if someone just wanted to learn algebra or didn't have a resource to turn to.
(Love those books. I went and asked all of my colleagues who had won teaching awards, what books they recommended, and all of them said aops)
arjvik|1 year ago