Maths In The Modern World

Mathematics is the knowledge that deals with the logic of shape, quantity and arrangement. It is what we do in our everyday live which includes mobile devices, art, money, engineering, and even sports. In other words, we can say that we cannot deal with the world without mathematics because what we do in real lives involves the using of calculations and even using of numbers. Maths helps us to count; it also helps us to measure things, and so on. Since the beginning of recorded history, mathematic discovery has been at the forefront of every civilized society, and in use in even the most primitive of cultures. The needs of math arose based on the wants of society. The more complex a society, the more complex the mathematical needs. Primitive

It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word. Without these, one is wandering about in the wilderness. Albert Einstein (1879–1955) stated that "as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality." These mathematicians discover about algebras, geometries, calculus, number patterns, and many others including word problems. For the past few years researchers have found out that most primary school students prefer doing mathematical notation rather than word problems. Word problem is any mathematical exercise where significant background information on the problem is presented as text rather than in mathematical notation. In math, a problem is presented as text, usually in scenario (narrative or story) with varying number of sentences. For example, “A salesman sold twice as much pear in the afternoon than in the

In most primary schools in Fiji, children tend to read story books, playing with their friends and even drawing but have difficulties in solving maths word problems. According to Ballew and Cunningham (1982), difficulties in this category involve children not being able to decode the words used in a word problem, not comprehending a sentence, not understanding specific vocabulary and not having confidence or the ability to concentrate when reading. Children may pay much of their attention when they read fantasy stories, stories which have happy ending and they are interested in them. When it comes to maths, we can say that they are bored and they started to loss interest in doing the problems, especially when it comes to word problems. Students tend to get confused when they see words in math exercises. For instance, students think that they are doing English lessons due to some of the long sentences which is used in mathematics, especially when they are doing word problem exercise. They treated “word problems” as some foreign and poisonous