synonym for the word problem solving

• Daily Crossword
• Word Puzzle
• Word Finder
• Word of the Day
• Synonym of the Day
• Word of the Year
• Language stories
• All featured
• Gender and sexuality
• All pop culture
• Grammar Coach ™
• Writing hub
• Grammar essentials
• Commonly confused
• All writing tips
• Pop culture
• Writing tips

Advertisement

verb as in answer, resolve

Strongest matches

clarify , clear up , deal with , decide , determine , do , explain , figure out , fix , have , iron out , settle , work out

Strong matches

break , construe , crack , decipher , decode , disentangle , divine , elucidate , enlighten , expound , fathom , get , hit , illuminate , interpret , lick , puzzle , reason , unfold , unlock , unravel , untangle , work

Weak matches

find out , get right , get to the bottom , hit upon , make a dent , make out , pan out , put two and two together , think out , unriddle

Discover More

Example sentences.

We know more than ever about how students reason, process information and solve problems.

I always think about what my favorite creators are building in their homes and what problems they are trying to solve.

Whoever’s fault it is, we either all chip in to solve it or we all suffer.

I was only looking for a generic term that helps me to solve my most immediate problem, which is to create a logo.

She wants them to think about different ways to solve a problem.

But one extra trick would instantly solve the problem of crashes that occur over water.

This is the first study of its kind in Turkey and raises the possibility that a private solution could solve a public problem.

To solve the problem, we need to study a lot more comets and meteorites.

Is there anyone who thinks the urgent problem we need to solve in Washington, D.C. is how to allow more spending on campaigns?

“I doubt you can solve range and the need for a large magazine with the same missile,” he said.

To solve this one I stopped on the tavern steps, leaned against a pillar, and gazed through the dozing village.

But, though a capital sabreur, he was evidently not made to solve questions in diplomacy.

In the preceding chapter we have endeavoured to solve the question what are the qualities that constitute good tone.

The meetings were held secretly behind closed doors because of the grave problems which the convention had to solve.

To solve this problem, is to know the remedy; and to know it, is but necessary, in order successfully to apply it.

Related Words

Words related to solve are not direct synonyms, but are associated with the word solve . Browse related words to learn more about word associations.

verb as in bring to successful conclusion; reach a goal

• bring about
• bring to pass
• carry through
• follow through
• see-through

verb as in reply, react

• acknowledge
• answer back
• back at you
• be in touch
• counterclaim
• field the question
• get back at
• get back to
• give a snappy comeback

verb as in figure out code

Viewing 5 / 30 related words

On this page you'll find 98 synonyms, antonyms, and words related to solve, such as: clarify, clear up, deal/deal with, decide, determine, and do.

From Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition Copyright © 2013 by the Philip Lief Group.

bottom_desktop desktop:[300x250]

• ABBREVIATIONS
• BIOGRAPHIES
• CALCULATORS
• CONVERSIONS
• DEFINITIONS

  Vocabulary      

What is another word for problem solving ?

Synonyms for problem solving prob·lem solv·ing, this thesaurus page includes all potential synonyms, words with the same meaning and similar terms for the word problem solving ., princeton's wordnet.

• problem solving noun

the area of cognitive psychology that studies the processes involved in solving problems

the thought processes involved in solving a problem

Matched Categories

• Cognitive Psychology

How to pronounce problem solving?

How to say problem solving in sign language, how to use problem solving in a sentence.

Steve Hilton :

It would be an incredible coup for London if Mike Bloomberg could be persuaded to run for mayor here, his kind of pragmatic, problem-solving leadership is exactly what London needs.

Chris Jung :

Some games don't even have a 'right answer', as they are aimed to spot the problem-solving attitude of the applicant.

Lindsey Wander :

Ask them to tell Amy Morin what they want or need, which encourages and demonstrates the power of language as a problem-solving tool.

Michael J. Gelb :

Life is a continuous exercise in creative problem solving.

Matias Cortes :

These high-paying jobs require a lot of creativity and problem-solving, thats going to be difficult for new technologies to replace.

Visual Synonyms of problem solving

Translations for problem solving, from our multilingual translation dictionary.

• حل مشكلة Arabic
• řešení problému Czech
• resolución de problemas Spanish
• حل مشکل Persian
• résolution de problème French
• समस्या को सुलझाना Hindi
• risoluzione dei problemi Italian
• פתרון בעיות Hebrew
• problematis solvendis Latin
• مسئلہ حل کرنا Urdu
• 解决问题 Chinese

Use the citation below to add these synonyms to your bibliography:

Style: MLA Chicago APA

"problem solving." Synonyms.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. < https://www.synonyms.com/synonym/problem+solving >.

Discuss these problem solving synonyms with the community:

Report Comment

We're doing our best to make sure our content is useful, accurate and safe. If by any chance you spot an inappropriate comment while navigating through our website please use this form to let us know, and we'll take care of it shortly.

You need to be logged in to favorite .

Create a new account.

Your name: * Required

Your email address: * Required

Pick a user name: * Required

Username: * Required

Password: * Required

Forgot your password?    Retrieve it

Are we missing a good synonym for problem solving ?

Image credit, the web's largest resource for, synonyms & antonyms, a member of the stands4 network, image or illustration of, problem solving, free, no signup required :, add to chrome, add to firefox, browse synonyms.com, are you a human thesaurus, what is a synonym for bounty, nearby & related entries:.

• probiotic noun
• probity noun
• problem noun
• problem solver noun
• problem-free
• problem-oriented language noun
• problem-solving

Alternative searches for problem solving :

• Search for problem solving on Amazon

Synonyms of problem

• as in troublesome
• as in challenge
• as in question
• More from M-W
• To save this word, you'll need to log in. Log In

Thesaurus Definition of problem

 (Entry 1 of 2)

Synonyms & Similar Words

• troublesome
• complicated

problematic

• inconvenient
• problematical
• importunate
• discommoding

Antonyms & Near Antonyms

• straightforward
• uncomplicated
• unproblematic
• undemanding

Thesaurus Definition of problem  (Entry 2 of 2)

• predicament
• Gordian knot
• sticky wicket
• brainteaser
• silver bullet
• magic bullet
• interrogative

Synonym Chooser

How does the noun problem differ from other similar words?

Some common synonyms of problem are enigma , mystery , puzzle , and riddle . While all these words mean "something which baffles or perplexes," problem applies to a question or difficulty calling for a solution or causing concern.

In what contexts can enigma take the place of problem ?

While the synonyms enigma and problem are close in meaning, enigma applies to utterance or behavior that is very difficult to interpret.

When could mystery be used to replace problem ?

Although the words mystery and problem have much in common, mystery applies to what cannot be fully understood by reason or less strictly to whatever resists or defies explanation.

Where would puzzle be a reasonable alternative to problem ?

The words puzzle and problem are synonyms, but do differ in nuance. Specifically, puzzle applies to an enigma or problem that challenges ingenuity for its solution.

When might riddle be a better fit than problem ?

In some situations, the words riddle and problem are roughly equivalent. However, riddle suggests an enigma or problem involving paradox or apparent contradiction.

Articles Related to problem

11 "Problems" Inspired by Animal Names

Cans of worms, wild-goose chases, and more

Thesaurus Entries Near problem

Cite this entry.

“Problem.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/problem. Accessed 29 Apr. 2024.

More from Merriam-Webster on problem

Nglish: Translation of problem for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of problem for Arabic Speakers

Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about problem

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Can you solve 4 words at once?

Word of the day.

See Definitions and Examples »

Get Word of the Day daily email!

Popular in Grammar & Usage

More commonly misspelled words, commonly misspelled words, how to use em dashes (—), en dashes (–) , and hyphens (-), absent letters that are heard anyway, how to use accents and diacritical marks, popular in wordplay, the words of the week - apr. 26, 9 superb owl words, 'gaslighting,' 'woke,' 'democracy,' and other top lookups, 10 words for lesser-known games and sports, your favorite band is in the dictionary, games & quizzes.

• Cambridge Dictionary +Plus

Synonyms and antonyms of problem in English

Synonyms and examples, problem | american thesaurus.

Word of the Day

under lock and key

locked away safely

Dead ringers and peas in pods (Talking about similarities, Part 2)

Learn more with +Plus

• Recent and Recommended {{#preferredDictionaries}} {{name}} {{/preferredDictionaries}}
• Definitions Clear explanations of natural written and spoken English English Learner’s Dictionary Essential British English Essential American English
• Grammar and thesaurus Usage explanations of natural written and spoken English Grammar Thesaurus
• Pronunciation British and American pronunciations with audio English Pronunciation
• English–Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Simplified)–English
• English–Chinese (Traditional) Chinese (Traditional)–English
• English–Dutch Dutch–English
• English–French French–English
• English–German German–English
• English–Indonesian Indonesian–English
• English–Italian Italian–English
• English–Japanese Japanese–English
• English–Norwegian Norwegian–English
• English–Polish Polish–English
• English–Portuguese Portuguese–English
• English–Spanish Spanish–English
• English–Swedish Swedish–English
• Dictionary +Plus Word Lists

Add ${headword} to one of your lists below, or create a new one.

{{message}}

Something went wrong.

There was a problem sending your report.

• Enroll & Pay
• Media Interview Tips
• KU Communicator Resources
• Find a KU Faculty Expert
• When Experts Attack! podcast
• Hometown News

Intervention based on science of reading, math boosts comprehension, word problem-solving

Mon, 04/29/2024

Mike Krings

LAWRENCE — New research from the University of Kansas has found an intervention based on the science of reading and math effectively helped English learners boost their comprehension, visualize and synthesize information, and make connections that significantly improved their math performance.

The intervention, performed for 30 minutes twice a week for 10 weeks with 66 third-grade English language learners who displayed math learning difficulties, improved students’ performance when compared to students who received general instruction. That indicates emphasizing cognitive concepts involved in the science of reading and math are key to helping students improve, according to researchers.

“Word problem-solving is influenced by both the science of reading and the science of math. Key components include number sense, decoding, language comprehension and working memory. Utilizing direct and explicit teaching methods enhances understanding and enables students to effectively connect these skills to solve math problems. This integrated approach ensures that students are equipped with necessary tools to navigate both the linguistic and numerical demands of word problems,” said Michael Orosco, professor of educational psychology at KU and lead author of the study. 

The intervention incorporates comprehension strategy instruction in both reading and math, focusing and decoding, phonological awareness, vocabulary development, inferential thinking, contextualized learning and numeracy.

“It is proving to be one of the most effective evidence-based practices available for this growing population,” Orosco said.

The study, co-written with Deborah Reed of the University of Tennessee, was published in the journal Learning Disabilities Research and Practice.

For the research, trained tutors developed the intervention, developed by Orosco and colleagues based on cognitive and culturally responsive research conducted over a span of 20 years. One example of an intervention session tested in the study included a script in which a tutor examined a word problem that explained a person made a quesadilla for his friend Mario, giving him one-fourth of it, then needed to students to determine how much remained.

The tutor first asked students if they remembered a class session in which they made quesadillas, what shape they were and demonstrated concepts by drawing a circle on the board, dividing it into four equal pieces, having students repeat terms like numerator and denominator, and explaining that when a question asks how much is left, subtraction is required. The students also collaborated with peers to practice using important vocabulary in sentences. The approach both helps students learn and understand mathematical concepts while being culturally responsive.

"Word problems are complex because they require translating words into mathematical equations, and this involves integrating the science of reading and math through language concepts and differentiated instruction," Orosco said. "We have not extensively tested these approaches with this group of children. However, we are establishing an evidence-based framework that aids them in developing background knowledge and connecting it to their cultural contexts."

Orosco , director of KU’s Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Neuroscience, emphasized the critical role of language in word problems, highlighting the importance of using culturally familiar terms. For instance, substituting "pastry" for "quesadilla" could significantly affect comprehension for students from diverse backgrounds. Failure to grasp the initial scenario can impede subsequent problem-solving efforts.

The study proved effective in improving students’ problem-solving abilities, despite covariates including an individual’s basic calculation skills, fluid intelligence and reading comprehension scores. That finding is key as, while ideally all students would begin on equal footing and there were little variations in a classroom, in reality, covariates exist and are commonplace.

The study had trained tutors deliver the intervention, and its effectiveness should be further tested with working teachers, the authors wrote. Orosco said professional development to help teachers gain the skills is necessary, and it is vital for teacher preparation programs to train future teachers with such skills as well. And helping students at the elementary level is necessary to help ensure success in future higher-level math classes such as algebra.

The research builds on Orosco and colleagues’ work in understanding and improving math instruction for English learners . Future work will continue to examine the role of cognitive functions such as working memory and brain science , as well as potential integration of artificial intelligence in teaching math.

“Comprehension strategy instruction helps students make connections, ask questions, visualize, synthesize and monitor their thinking about word problems,” Orosco and Reed wrote. “Finally, applying comprehension strategy instruction supports ELs in integrating their reading, language and math cognition… Focusing on relevant language in word problems and providing collaborative support significantly improved students’ solution accuracy.”

Media Contacts

KU News Service

785-864-8860

[email protected]

• Our Mission

Adapting Math Word Problems for ELLs

To make word problems less confusing, especially for English language learners, change the language, not the math. Here are some ideas.

All students have a right to rigorous and challenging math classes, and word problems are a ubiquitous part of elementary and middle school math. Complex language structures or overly challenging vocabulary, however, can sometimes create barriers for students that impede access to a rigorous and challenging math curriculum. This is particularly true for English language learners (ELLs).

As teachers, we strive to cultivate mathematical reasoning and help students apply math to real-world contexts. When designing instruction for our English language learners, we have to ensure that they are afforded access to rich math tasks but also attend to the unique challenges of students working to acquire an understanding of the language. Fortunately, by attending to our vocabulary choices and sentence structure, we can adapt word problems and ensure that all students have access to rich mathematical content.

Certain linguistic features commonly found in middle school math classes are especially  problematic. Passive voice, complex sentences, and long noun phrases or clauses can be very difficult for all learners, but especially multilingual students developing English proficiency. Unfamiliar vocabulary, novel context, and poorly worded or vague questions can also create barriers to understanding. Small changes that simplify language, however, can significantly improve accessibility and ensure that more students can tackle rich math tasks.

Adapting the Math Language

Use the active voice: The passive voice can obscure what is actually happening in a word problem. Use the active voice to show people engaging with the world. For instance, rather than “The ball was thrown by the girl,” revise the sentence structure to “The girl threw the ball.”

Separate complex sentences: Break up long, convoluted, and meandering sentences to express key ideas. Consider the difference between “A hot dog costs $3.75 and a side salad costs $1.65. If a group of 5 students ordered 6 hot dogs and 4 side salads, and they left an 18% tip, how much did they pay in total, including the tip?” and the revised problem, “A group of friends ordered 6 cheeseburgers at $6.50 each and 4 side salads at $1.65 each. They left an 18% tip on the total bill. How much did they pay in total, including the tip?”

Both versions require the same mathematical understanding, but the language of the second is clearer and more accessible.

Simplify verb tense: Lean toward simple present tense. “The maintenance crew repairs the AC unit” rather than “has been repairing.”

Center people in the problem: Humanize problems with people rather than impersonal subjects. “85% of parents supported the schedule,” not “85% of the votes supported....”

Use familiar vocabulary: Swap challenging terminology for more recognizable vocabulary. “The school is hosting a fundraiser by selling concessions during the basketball tournament. If they sold 322 hamburgers at $3 each and 211 hot dogs at $2 each, what was the total revenue from the concession stand sales?”

Here’s a suggested alternative: “The school wants to raise money by selling food at a basketball game. They sold 322 hamburgers for $3 each and 211 hot dogs for $2 each. How much did the school make from selling the food?” Of course, some students will require additional supports, such as pictures and labels for key vocabulary found in word problems.

Shorten clauses: Trim unnecessary clauses. Instead of “The math tutor, who has taught for 10 years, helps students,” use “The math tutor helps students. She taught for 10 years.”

Replace obscure questions: Be sure to look for vague questions that distract from the math and substitute clear, direct questions. Change “What was the resulting amount after the chef used 16½ cups of milk?” to “The chef used 16½ cups of milk to make ice cream. Calculate how much ice cream the chef made yesterday.” Is something missing here?

Consider the big idea: Notice that in the previous example, students do not have enough information to solve the problem. When adapting math word problems for English language learners, revise the construction of your questions to clarify the task at hand, but also be mindful to simultaneously help students to think like mathematicians. To paraphrase what math education innovator Dan Meyer notes in his TED Talk on math instruction , real-world problems do not contain a simple list of all the required information.

As you adapt math instruction for English language learners, be sure to design rich experiences and help them to develop a mathematical mindset. What additional information do I need to solve this problem? What can I do to find the missing information? English language learners need accessible English, but they also need experiences that help them develop habits of inquiry, problem-solving, and self-efficacy.

The key is to adapt language without watering down rich mathematical thinking and problem-solving. Be sure to maintain high expectations while providing appropriate linguistic support. With slight modifications to ensure comprehensible and accessible language, your English language learners can tackle the same meaningful math as their peers.

Equity in math education means meeting each student where they are and helping them reach meaningful goals. Adjusting language is one path toward creating a math community that works for everyone.

Remember, context matters: Real-world contexts allow students to see math as a meaningful tool, rather than an abstract set of rules. However, take care not to introduce obscure, unfamiliar contexts that overwhelm ELLs with new vocabulary. Similarly, jumping between many different contexts in short succession can impede understanding.

When selecting contexts for word problems and examples, opt for familiar situations from students’ everyday lives that clearly illuminate the mathematical concepts. Additionally, aim to consistently revisit and reinforce the same contexts when teaching specific concepts, math models, or problem types. Repeated exposure across similar situations allows ELLs to digest both the linguistic and mathematical nuances. As comfort builds, you can broaden into new contexts, always taking care to explain unfamiliar vocabulary or scenarios that are essential to the problem.

The goal is to have students see math as meaningful while preventing contexts from distracting from the essential mathematical reasoning. Familiar, consistent contextualization keeps the focus on math concepts and problem-solving strategies.

The Power of Mathematical Models and Manipulatives

In addition to thoughtful verbal and written language adaptations, mathematical models and manipulatives provide critical visual and tactile scaffolds that support deeper understanding and reasoning for English language learners. Charts, ratio tables, coordinate planes, fraction models, graphs, algebra tiles , base-ten blocks, and more make concepts concrete while mitigating vocabulary barriers.

Leveraging models and manipulatives moves learning toward mathematical action. Students demonstrate conceptual connections nonverbally, allowing alternative pathways to develop understandings. All students access deeper thinking as teachers elevate mathematical visualization alongside precision in academic language.

When planning for math instruction and adapting for our multilingual learners, I’ve found these resources to be particularly helpful:

• Teaching Math to Multilingual Students, Grades K–8: Positioning English Learners for Success ,
• “ Mathematical mindsets: Unleashing students’ potential through creative math, inspiring messages and innovative teaching ,” and
• Math Workshop: Five Steps to Implementing Guided Math, Learning Stations, Reflection, and More .

Ultimately, we want students to develop a deep conceptual understanding of mathematics and to grow their English language proficiency. Slight adaptations to language, the use of familiar real-world contexts, and deliberately incorporating mathematical models and manipulatives can help students to access the math curriculum and to acquire English.

We’d like to know—what strategies have you successfully used to help improve math accessibility for ELL students? Please comment and share.

share this!

April 29, 2024

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

fact-checked

trusted source

Intervention based on science of reading and math boosts comprehension and word problem-solving skills

by University of Kansas

New research from the University of Kansas has found that an intervention based on the science of reading and math effectively helped English learners boost their comprehension, visualize and synthesize information, and make connections that significantly improved their math performance.

The intervention , performed for 30 minutes twice a week for 10 weeks with 66 third-grade English language learners who displayed math learning difficulties, improved students' performance when compared to students who received general instruction. This indicates that emphasizing cognitive concepts involved in the science of reading and math are key to helping students improve, according to researchers.

"Word problem-solving is influenced by both the science of reading and the science of math. Key components include number sense, decoding, language comprehension and working memory. Utilizing direct and explicit teaching methods enhances understanding and enables students to effectively connect these skills to solve math problems . This integrated approach ensures that students are equipped with necessary tools to navigate both the linguistic and numerical demands of word problems," said Michael Orosco, professor of educational psychology at KU and lead author of the study.

The intervention incorporates comprehension strategy instruction in both reading and math, focusing and decoding, phonological awareness, vocabulary development, inferential thinking, contextualized learning and numeracy.

"It is proving to be one of the most effective evidence-based practices available for this growing population," Orosco said.

The study, co-written with Deborah Reed of the University of Tennessee, was published in the journal Learning Disabilities Research and Practice .

For the research, trained tutors implemented the intervention, developed by Orosco and colleagues based on cognitive and culturally responsive research conducted over a span of 20 years. One example of an intervention session tested in the study included a script in which a tutor examined a word problem explaining that a person made a quesadilla for his friend Mario and gave him one-fourth of it, then asked students to determine how much remained.

The tutor first asked students if they remembered a class session in which they made quesadillas and what shape they were, and demonstrated concepts by drawing a circle on the board, dividing it into four equal pieces, having students repeat terms like numerator and denominator. The tutor explains that when a question asks how much is left, subtraction is required. The students also collaborated with peers to practice using important vocabulary in sentences. The approach both helps students learn and understand mathematical concepts while being culturally responsive.

"Word problems are complex because they require translating words into mathematical equations, and this involves integrating the science of reading and math through language concepts and differentiated instruction," Orosco said. "We have not extensively tested these approaches with this group of children. However, we are establishing an evidence-based framework that aids them in developing background knowledge and connecting it to their cultural contexts."

Orosco, director of KU's Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Neuroscience, emphasized the critical role of language in word problems, highlighting the importance of using culturally familiar terms. For instance, substituting "pastry" for "quesadilla" could significantly affect comprehension for students from diverse backgrounds. Failure to grasp the initial scenario could impede subsequent problem-solving efforts.

The study proved effective in improving students' problem-solving abilities, despite covariates including an individual's basic calculation skills, fluid intelligence and reading comprehension scores. That finding is key, as while ideally all students would begin on equal footing and there would be few variations in a classroom, in reality, covariates exist and are commonplace.

The study had trained tutors deliver the intervention, and its effectiveness should be further tested with working teachers, the authors wrote. Orosco said professional development to help teachers gain the skills is necessary, and it is vital for teacher preparation programs to train future teachers with such skills as well. And helping students at the elementary level is necessary to help ensure success in future higher-level math classes such as algebra.

The research builds on Orosco and colleagues' work in understanding and improving math instruction for English learners. Future work will continue to examine the role of cognitive functions such as working memory and brain science, as well as potential integration of artificial intelligence in teaching math.

"Comprehension strategy instruction helps students make connections, ask questions, visualize, synthesize and monitor their thinking about word problems," Orosco and Reed wrote. "Finally, applying comprehension strategy instruction supports ELs in integrating their reading, language and math cognition…. Focusing on relevant language in word problems and providing collaborative support significantly improved students' solution accuracy."

Provided by University of Kansas

Explore further

Feedback to editors

Study says California's 2023 snowy rescue from megadrought was a freak event. Don't get used to it

9 minutes ago

'Sour Patch' adults: 1 in 8 grown-ups love extreme tartness, study shows

14 minutes ago

Long snouts protect foxes when they dive headfirst into snow, study finds

42 minutes ago

Laser imaging could offer early detection for at-risk artwork

Tibetan plateau had broader social dimensions than previously thought, suggests study

Machine learning classifies 191 of the world's most damaging viruses

Theoretical biologists test two modes of social reasoning and find surprising truths in simplicity

It's all in the smile: New research finds politicians can influence voters with facial expressions

2 hours ago

New system boosts efficiency of quantum error correction

Laser excitation of Th-229 nucleus: New findings suggest classical quantum physics and nuclear physics can be combined

3 hours ago

Relevant PhysicsForums posts

Why are physicists so informal with mathematics.

4 hours ago

Plagiarism & ChatGPT: Is Cheating with AI the New Normal?

Apr 28, 2024

Physics Instructor Minimum Education - Community College

Studying "useful" vs. "useless" stuff in school.

Apr 27, 2024

Digital oscilloscope for high school use

Apr 25, 2024

Motivating high school Physics students with Popcorn Physics

Apr 3, 2024

More from STEM Educators and Teaching

Related Stories

Study shows program improves teaching skills, students' word problem–solving

Jun 14, 2022

Study shows approach can help English learners improve at math word problems

Jun 19, 2018

Study examines role of working memory, cognitive functions in English learners learning to write

Oct 17, 2023

Cognitive study shows lack of bilingual education adversely affects English language learners' writing skills

Oct 14, 2021

How vocabulary breadth and depth influence bilingual reading comprehension

Aug 21, 2023

Study validates the simple view of reading for enhancing second and foreign language learners' experience

Aug 17, 2023

Recommended for you

Training of brain processes makes reading more efficient

Apr 18, 2024

Researchers find lower grades given to students with surnames that come later in alphabetical order

Apr 17, 2024

Earth, the sun and a bike wheel: Why your high-school textbook was wrong about the shape of Earth's orbit

Apr 8, 2024

Touchibo, a robot that fosters inclusion in education through touch

Apr 5, 2024

More than money, family and community bonds prep teens for college success: Study

Research reveals significant effects of onscreen instructors during video classes in aiding student learning

Mar 25, 2024

Let us know if there is a problem with our content

Use this form if you have come across a typo, inaccuracy or would like to send an edit request for the content on this page. For general inquiries, please use our contact form . For general feedback, use the public comments section below (please adhere to guidelines ).

Please select the most appropriate category to facilitate processing of your request

Thank you for taking time to provide your feedback to the editors.

Your feedback is important to us. However, we do not guarantee individual replies due to the high volume of messages.

E-mail the story

Your email address is used only to let the recipient know who sent the email. Neither your address nor the recipient's address will be used for any other purpose. The information you enter will appear in your e-mail message and is not retained by Phys.org in any form.

Newsletter sign up

Get weekly and/or daily updates delivered to your inbox. You can unsubscribe at any time and we'll never share your details to third parties.

More information Privacy policy

Donate and enjoy an ad-free experience

We keep our content available to everyone. Consider supporting Science X's mission by getting a premium account.

E-mail newsletter

Data Augmentation with In-Context Learning and Comparative Evaluation in Math Word Problem Solving

• Original Research
• Published: 29 April 2024
• Volume 5 , article number  506 , ( 2024 )

Cite this article

• Gulsum Yigit   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7010-169X 1 , 2   na1 &
• Mehmet Fatih Amasyali 1   na1  

Math Word Problem (MWP) solving presents a challenging task in Natural Language Processing (NLP). This study aims to provide MWP solvers with a more diverse training set, ultimately improving their ability to solve various math problems. We propose several methods for data augmentation by modifying the problem texts and equations, such as synonym replacement, rule-based: question replacement, and rule based: reversing question methodologies over two English MWP datasets. This study extends by introducing a new in-context learning augmentation method, employing the Llama-7b language model. This approach involves instruction-based prompting for rephrasing the math problem texts. Performance evaluations are conducted on 9 baseline models, revealing that augmentation methods outperform baseline models. Moreover, concatenating examples generated by various augmentation methods further improves performance.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price includes VAT (Russian Federation)

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Rent this article via DeepDyve

Institutional subscriptions

Data Availability

Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.

Yigit, G., Amasyali, M.F.: Enhancing multiple-choice question answering through sequential fine-tuning and curriculum learning strategies. Knowledge and Information Systems, 1–18 (2023)

Wu, L., Wu, P., Zhang, X.: A seq2seq-based approach to question answering over knowledge bases. In: Semantic Technology: 9th Joint International Conference, JIST 2019, Hangzhou, China, November 25–27, 2019, Revised Selected Papers 9, pp. 170–181 (2020). Springer

Fan, A., Jernite, Y., Perez, E., Grangier, D., Weston, J., Auli, M.: Eli5: Long form question answering. arXiv preprint arXiv:1907.09190 (2019)

Jin, S., Lian, X., Jung, H., Park, J., Suh, J.: Building a deep learning-based qa system from a cqa dataset. Decision Support Systems, 114038 (2023)

Abdel-Nabi H, Awajan A, Ali MZ. Deep learning-based question answering: a survey. Knowl Inf Syst. 2023;65(4):1399–485.

Article   Google Scholar  

Rogers A, Gardner M, Augenstein I. Qa dataset explosion: A taxonomy of nlp resources for question answering and reading comprehension. ACM Comput Surv. 2023;55(10):1–45.

Yigit, G., Amasyali, M.F.: Ask me: A question answering system via dynamic memory networks. In: 2019 Innovations in Intelligent Systems and Applications Conference (ASYU), pp. 1–5 (2019). IEEE

Xie, Z., Sun, S.: A goal-driven tree-structured neural model for math word problems. In: IJCAI, pp. 5299–5305 (2019)

Zhang, J., Lee, R.K.-W., Lim, E.-P., Qin, W., Wang, L., Shao, J., Sun, Q.: Teacher-student networks with multiple decoders for solving math word problem. (2020). IJCAI

Liang, Z., Zhang, J., Wang, L., Qin, W., Lan, Y., Shao, J., Zhang, X.: Mwp-bert: Numeracy-augmented pre-training for math word problem solving. In: Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: NAACL 2022, pp. 997–1009 (2022)

Wang, L., Zhang, D., Zhang, J., Xu, X., Gao, L., Dai, B.T., Shen, H.T.: Template-based math word problem solvers with recursive neural networks. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, vol. 33, pp. 7144–7151 (2019)

Zhang, J., Wang, L., Lee, R.K.-W., Bin, Y., Wang, Y., Shao, J., Lim, E.-P.: Graph-to-tree learning for solving math word problems. (2020). Association for Computational Linguistics

Shen, Y., Jin, C.: Solving math word problems with multi-encoders and multi-decoders. In: Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, pp. 2924–2934 (2020)

Upadhyay, S., Chang, M.-W.: Annotating derivations: A new evaluation strategy and dataset for algebra word problems. arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.07197 (2016)

Qin, J., Lin, L., Liang, X., Zhang, R., Lin, L.: Semantically-aligned universal tree-structured solver for math word problems. arXiv preprint arXiv:2010.06823 (2020)

Kushman, N., Artzi, Y., Zettlemoyer, L., Barzilay, R.: Learning to automatically solve algebra word problems. In: Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pp. 271–281 (2014)

Koncel-Kedziorski, R., Roy, S., Amini, A., Kushman, N., Hajishirzi, H.: Mawps: A math word problem repository. In: Proceedings of the 2016 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies, pp. 1152–1157 (2016)

Patel, A., Bhattamishra, S., Goyal, N.: Are nlp models really able to solve simple math word problems? arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.07191 (2021)

Miao, S.-Y., Liang, C.-C., Su, K.-Y.: A diverse corpus for evaluating and developing english math word problem solvers. arXiv preprint arXiv:2106.15772 (2021)

Wang, Y., Liu, X., Shi, S.: Deep neural solver for math word problems. In: Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, pp. 845–854 (2017)

Roy S, Roth D. Mapping to declarative knowledge for word problem solving. Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics. 2018;6:159–72.

Mitra, A., Baral, C.: Learning to use formulas to solve simple arithmetic problems. In: Proceedings of the 54th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pp. 2144–2153 (2016)

Fletcher CR. Understanding and solving arithmetic word problems: A computer simulation. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers. 1985;17(5):565–71.

Bakman, Y.: Robust understanding of word problems with extraneous information. arXiv preprint math/0701393 (2007)

Yuhui, M., Ying, Z., Guangzuo, C., Yun, R., Ronghuai, H.: Frame-based calculus of solving arithmetic multi-step addition and subtraction word problems. In: 2010 Second International Workshop on Education Technology and Computer Science, vol. 2, pp. 476–479 (2010). IEEE

Wang, L., Wang, Y., Cai, D., Zhang, D., Liu, X.: Translating a math word problem to an expression tree. arXiv preprint arXiv:1811.05632 (2018)

Yigit, G., Amasyali, M.F.: Exploring the benefits of data augmentation in math word problem solving. In: 2023 International Conference on Innovations in Intelligent Systems and Applications (INISTA), pp. 1–6 (2023). IEEE

Touvron, H., Lavril, T., Izacard, G., Martinet, X., Lachaux, M.-A., Lacroix, T., Rozière, B., Goyal, N., Hambro, E., Azhar, F., et al.: Llama: Open and efficient foundation language models. arXiv preprint arXiv:2302.13971 (2023)

Lan, Y., Wang, L., Zhang, Q., Lan, Y., Dai, B.T., Wang, Y., Zhang, D., Lim, E.-P.: Mwptoolkit: an open-source framework for deep learning-based math word problem solvers. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence, vol. 36, pp. 13188–13190 (2022)

Hosseini, M.J., Hajishirzi, H., Etzioni, O., Kushman, N.: Learning to solve arithmetic word problems with verb categorization. In: EMNLP, pp. 523–533 (2014)

Zhou, L., Dai, S., Chen, L.: Learn to solve algebra word problems using quadratic programming. In: Proceedings of the 2015 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, pp. 817–822 (2015)

Koncel-Kedziorski R, Hajishirzi H, Sabharwal A, Etzioni O, Ang SD. Parsing algebraic word problems into equations. Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics. 2015;3:585–97.

Huang, D., Shi, S., Lin, C.-Y., Yin, J.: Learning fine-grained expressions to solve math word problems. In: Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing, pp. 805–814 (2017)

Zhang, B., Xiong, D., Su, J., Duan, H., Zhang, M.: Variational neural machine translation. arXiv preprint arXiv:1605.07869 (2016)

Huang, D., Liu, J., Lin, C.-Y., Yin, J.: Neural math word problem solver with reinforcement learning. In: Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Computational Linguistics, pp. 213–223 (2018)

Chiang, T.-R., Chen, Y.-N.: Semantically-aligned equation generation for solving and reasoning math word problems. arXiv preprint arXiv:1811.00720 (2018)

Li, J., Wang, L., Zhang, J., Wang, Y., Dai, B.T., Zhang, D.: Modeling intra-relation in math word problems with different functional multi-head attentions. In: Proceedings of the 57th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 6162–6167 (2019)

Meng, Y., Rumshisky, A.: Solving math word problems with double-decoder transformer. arXiv preprint arXiv:1908.10924 (2019)

Li, S., Wu, L., Feng, S., Xu, F., Xu, F., Zhong, S.: Graph-to-tree neural networks for learning structured input-output translation with applications to semantic parsing and math word problem. arXiv preprint arXiv:2004.13781 (2020)

Devlin, J., Chang, M.-W., Lee, K., Toutanova, K.: Bert: Pre-training of deep bidirectional transformers for language understanding. arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.04805 (2018)

Liu, Y., Ott, M., Goyal, N., Du, J., Joshi, M., Chen, D., Levy, O., Lewis, M., Zettlemoyer, L., Stoyanov, V.: Roberta: A robustly optimized bert pretraining approach (2019)

Radford A, Wu J, Child R, Luan D, Amodei D, Sutskever I. Language models are unsupervised multitask learners. OpenAI blog. 2019;1(8):9.

Google Scholar  

Shao, Z., Huang, F., Huang, M.: Chaining simultaneous thoughts for numerical reasoning. arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.16482 (2022)

Li, Y., Lin, Z., Zhang, S., Fu, Q., Chen, B., Lou, J.-G., Chen, W.: On the advance of making language models better reasoners. arXiv preprint arXiv:2206.02336 (2022)

Wang, X., Wei, J., Schuurmans, D., Le, Q., Chi, E., Narang, S., Chowdhery, A., Zhou, D.: Self-consistency improves chain of thought reasoning in language models. arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.11171 (2022)

Pi, X., Liu, Q., Chen, B., Ziyadi, M., Lin, Z., Fu, Q., Gao, Y., Lou, J.-G., Chen, W.: Reasoning like program executors. arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.11473 (2022)

Chen, W., Ma, X., Wang, X., Cohen, W.W.: Program of thoughts prompting: Disentangling computation from reasoning for numerical reasoning tasks. arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.12588 (2022)

Liang, Z., Yu, W., Rajpurohit, T., Clark, P., Zhang, X., Kaylan, A.: Let gpt be a math tutor: Teaching math word problem solvers with customized exercise generation. arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.14386 (2023)

Lazaridou, A., Gribovskaya, E., Stokowiec, W., Grigorev, N.: Internet-augmented language models through few-shot prompting for open-domain question answering. arXiv preprint arXiv:2203.05115 (2022)

Wei J, Wang X, Schuurmans D, Bosma M, Xia F, Chi E, Le QV, Zhou D, et al. Chain-of-thought prompting elicits reasoning in large language models. Adv Neural Inf Process Syst. 2022;35:24824–37.

Brown, T.B., Mann, B., Ryder, N., Subbiah, M., Kaplan, J., Dhariwal, P., Neelakantan, A., Shyam, P., Sastry, G., Askell, A., et al.: Language models are few-shot learners. arXiv preprint arXiv:2005.14165 (2020)

Liu Q, Guan W, Li S, Cheng F, Kawahara D, Kurohashi S. Roda: reverse operation based data augmentation for solving math word problems. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing. 2021;30:1–11.

Raiyan, S.R., Faiyaz, M.N., Kabir, S.M.J., Kabir, M., Mahmud, H., Hasan, M.K.: Math word problem solving by generating linguistic variants of problem statements. arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.13899 (2023)

Liang, Z., Zhang, J., Wang, L., Qin, W., Lan, Y., Shao, J., Zhang, X.: Mwp-bert: Numeracy-augmented pre-training for math word problem solving. arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.13435 (2021)

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research is supported by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) in part of the project with 120E100 grant number. G. Yigit is supported by TUBİTAK - BÍDEB 2211/A national fellowship program for Ph.D. studies.

Author information

Gulsum Yigit and Mehmet Fatih Amasyali have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

Department of Computer Engineering, Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

Gulsum Yigit & Mehmet Fatih Amasyali

Department of Computer Engineering, Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey

Gulsum Yigit

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gulsum Yigit .

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest.

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This article is part of the topical collection “Digital Ecosystems” guest edited by Richard Chbeir and Yannis Manolopoulos.

See Tables 8 , 9 .

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Yigit, G., Amasyali, M.F. Data Augmentation with In-Context Learning and Comparative Evaluation in Math Word Problem Solving. SN COMPUT. SCI. 5 , 506 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42979-024-02853-x

Download citation

Received : 24 November 2023

Accepted : 01 April 2024

Published : 29 April 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s42979-024-02853-x

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Question answering
• Math word problem solving
• Data augmentation
• In-context learning

Advertisement

• Find a journal
• Publish with us
• Track your research