Indeed. The entire purpose of word problems is to see if you can apply math to real life, to see if you can come up with formulas to fit the situation at hand.

Indeed. The entire purpose of word problems is to see if you can apply math to real life, to see if you can come up with formulas to fit the situation at hand. You aren't given formulas in real life. If I save a certain percent, P, of my monthly income, N, and I want to save an amount, X, to buy something, and I want to know how long in months, M, I'm going to have to save. The formula M = X / (P * N) [or P / 100 depending on how we're expressing the percent] isn't going to magically appear in front of me. Whether I can solve it or not won't matter if I can't come up with it. That's a trivial example, but I hope the point is clear. Word problems are supposed to test your ability to convert life to math, not just your ability to do simple algebra. Which is why it's especially concerning that in many of the word problems they actually give the formula. It defeats the whole purpose of making it a word problem.