Question: A snail is climbing up a wall 20m high. Everyday it climbs up 5m & slips down 2m at night. How many days will it take the snail to reach the top of the wall?
A typical old-days approach would be: each day up 5m and down 2m giving net up of 5-2=3m. To cover 20m, it would take 20/3 = 6 2/3 days. However, this is not exactly correct. This knowledge led me to draw a diagram that gives the above wrong answer. This is a common mistake by many students.
The model is a process to help us get the answer, and after that, it also acts as a tool to help us explain or present the solution. However, many a times, we somehow "calculated" an answer and figure out how to draw the model to show that answer.
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