Do we have to do this one?

This was a question from a student today.  She was referring to a "word problem."  Actually, it was more of an exercise posed with a few words.  With the student asking this question, it showed how deficient our textbook is with respect to any sort of contextual exercises or problems.  It also showed that I must not be assigning enough of the few quality problems so that she expected that would be something she would not have to do.