Reinvented

My principal once directed every teacher at my high school to begin every class with a math problem because our schoolwide math test scores were weak. Since I taught English, I decided to write some story problems related to what we were reading. I offer them here for anyone who might want to use them.

• Feeling a need to “list to nature’s teachings,” William Cullen Bryant hikes 2.5 miles Monday afternoon, 3.25 miles Tuesday, 1.15 miles Wednesday, 4.2 miles Thursday, and 3.15 miles Friday. What percentage of his total hiking did he do on Monday?
• The webmaster of a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow site has a portrait of Longfellow that she wants to post. Its original dimensions are 825px x 1098px. She reduces it to 272px x 363px, maintaining the same ratio of height to width. By what percentage has she reduced the size of the portrait?
• At his local stationer’s shop, Edgar Allan Poe bought a box of paper for 21 cents, a bottle of ink for 9 cents, and 5 quill pens for 10 cents. Then he went home to write a final draft of “The Raven.” What percentage of the total cost of these supplies does one pen represent?
• The narrator of “The Raven” has neglected to return to the library his “many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore.” When its many overdue notices were ignored, the library turned the matter over to a collection agency. The agency sent a guy named Vinnie over to the chamber, and he returned with 7 books, some black feathers, and a story of some guy in a tufted chair babbling to himself about Lenore. The agency billed the library $22.05 for retrieving the books. How much is that per book?
• As part of a study of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Ms. Mudarris wants to show the episode of The Simpsons in which it is recited. The video clip lasts 25 minutes. A class period lasts 50 minutes. If it takes 5 minutes to record attendance and 10 minutes for an unexpected fire drill, how much time will Ms. Mudarris have to assign homework after watching the video?
• “During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year,” Roderick and Madeleine Usher were totaling their expenses so they could plan their budget for the coming year. They had spent $5.89 on firewood the previous January. How much did firewood cost them per day?
• On his way to visit the Ushers, the narrator has to stop at a farrier’s to have a shoe replaced on his horse. If the farrier charges $1.20 to replace 8 nails, how much is that per nail?
• At 12:24 a.m., high tide in Boston Harbor is 9.35 feet. At 6:10 a.m., low tide measures .51 feet. By what percentage has the water dropped?
• Emily Dickinson wrote 1,789 poems. The Springfield Republican published 7 of them. What percentage is that?
• Walt Whitman first published Leaves of Grass in 1855. By the time of his death in 1892, he had revised and republished it 9 times. If we assume he did this at regular intervals, about how often did Whitman revise and republish his most famous work?
• Frederick Douglass was probably born in 1818. He published his first autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, in 1845. It was an immediate bestseller. How old was he?
• A raindrop falling in Lake Itasca, the source of the Mississippi River, arrives at the Gulf of Mexico in about 90 days, according to the National Park Service. If the river is 2,350 miles long, how many miles per day does that raindrop travel?
• At its headwaters the Mississippi River is less than 3 feet deep. The river’s deepest section is between Governor Nicholls Wharf and Algiers Point in New Orleans, where it is 200 feet deep. What is the percent of increase in the depth of the river between its shallowest and deepest parts?
• The elevation of the Mississippi River at Lake Itasca is 1,475 feet above sea level. It drops to 0 feet above sea level at the Gulf of Mexico. Calculate the percentage of change in elevation. (Trick question.)
• Near Hannibal, Missouri, the average surface speed of the Mississippi River is 1.89 miles per hour. At that rate, how many days would it take a raft to reach New Orleans, 780 miles away? (Assume a constant rate of speed.)
• An innkeeper charges 2.5 cents for a cup of tea. If all 30 of the pilgrims in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales have one cup of tea for lunch, what will be the total bill for tea?
• (Inspired by an episode of Cheers) Diane likes to talk about books. Sam wants to impress her, so he decides to read the great novel War and Peace.
  • War and Peace has 1424 pages and weighs 2.16 pounds. How many ounces does one page weigh?
  • If he checks the book out of the library on Wednesday morning, and they are going out Friday night a week later, how many ounces per day does Sam have to read in order to finish in time for their date? Assume that he can read during his breaks on Friday.
  • How many pages is that per day?
• The city of Florence, Italy, had a population of 120,000 inhabitants. Then it was struck by the Black Death (bubonic plague). By 1351 its population had decreased to 50,000. What percentage of the population died or left the city?
• Stonehenge is surrounded by 56 holes known as Aubrey holes. They form a circle 271.6 meters in circumference. How far apart are the holes, assuming they are equally spaced?
• The epic poem Beowulf has 3,182 lines. The excerpts in your textbook total 843 lines. What percentage of the epic has been omitted?
• William Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets that we know of. Each sonnet consists of 14 lines of rhymed iambic pentameter (10 syllables per line with every other syllable stressed). How many syllables of poetry are contained in his 154 sonnets?
• William Shakespeare wrote 38 plays that we still have copies of. Ten are histories and 11 are tragedies. All the rest are comedies. What percentage of the total are comedies? (Apologies to Christopher Marlowe, Sir Francis Bacon, and Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, just in case.)
• Glamis Castle (Macbeth was Thane of Glamis) charges visitors £10 (student rate) to tour the castle and grounds. If the exchange rate is 1.95 dollars US to the pound, what is the admission fee in US dollars?
• During his lifetime, Langston Hughes published the following:
  • 15 poetry collections
  • 11 novels and short story collections
  • 9 nonfiction works, including 2 essays in magazines
  • 11 plays
  • 7 children’s books

  What percentage of his writing consisted of poetry?

• American poet E. E. Cummings volunteered to serve as an ambulance driver in Frances during WWI. He and a friend were arrested in France on suspicion of espionage charges (which were false) on September 21, 1917. They were sent to a French POW camp, and Cummings was released on December 19, 1917. His book The Enormous Room, published in 1922, describes his experience as a prisoner of war. Including the day he was arrested and the day he was released, how many days was Cummings a prisoner of war?
• Orson Wells and the Mercury Theatre of the Air broadcast War of the Worlds on Oct. 30, 1938. Historians later estimated that “6 million heard the broadcast; 1.7 million believed it to be true, and 1.2 million were ‘genuinely frightened’.” What percentage of the audience understood that they were listening to a work of fiction?
• F. Scott Fitzgerald published 4 novels and several short stories during his lifetime. (A fifth novel was published posthumously.) His first novel, This Side of Paradise, was published in 1920. His fourth novel, Tender is the Night, was published in 1934. At what rate did he publish novels (how many years/book)?
• Sinclair Lewis was the first American writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was born in 1885 and died in 1951. He published his first novel in 1912 and was working on his final one when he died. What percentage of his life did he spend as a writer?
• Ernest Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. During his lifetime he published 8 novels, 2 books of nonfiction, and 7 collections of short stories. After his death his estate went through his manuscripts and published 4 more novels, 7 books of nonfiction, and 4 more collections of short stories. What percentage of his works was published during his lifetime?
• John Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. He published 30 novels and plays; 17 were made into movies, including his masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath. What percentage of his works was embraced by Hollywood?
• Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. She has written 11 novels and 3 children’s books, among other works. What percentage of her books will you find in the children’s section of the library?
• Assume that American Literature begins in the year 1776, when the United States became a country.
  • If that is the case, how many years of American literature do we have to cover in this one-semester class?
  • If the semester is 90 days long, how many years of literature do we have to deal with per day?