I taught high school level algebra for two years, so I have a moderate familiarity with this subject.<p>I, too, dislike these types of problems, and I refer to them as "math book" problems, because that's the only place you'll ever see them.  I mean, if Luigi can paint 1/2 of a room in 3 hours and Mario can paint 1/4 of a room in 2 hours, the way you find out in the real world how fast they can paint the room together is to throw them in the freaking room with two sets of painting equipment and let them go to it.  If it's not going fast enough for you, then you go find  Mario's friend Bowser and hire him to help them.<p>But, I don't think lack of realism is the worst thing about these types of problems.  I think lack of fun is.  I have a graduate degree in mathematics, and I frequently work on problems that have little connection to anything (so far as I know) in the real world, just because it's fun for me to do so.  To me, the real problem with high school algebra textbooks is they're so goddamn boring -- and I'm saying this as someone who really, really <i>likes</i> math.<p>If I had my way, there wouldn't be such a thing as "algebra 1", "algebra 2," "trigonometry," etc. as high school math courses.  I'd teach "Year 1 math," "year 2 math," and so on, and put the focus on problem solving rather than any one particular corner of math.  If the problems are interesting, the students will do the work and love it. I've seen it happen.  I can't imagine that such a problem-solving based course would prepare students for either college or the real world any worse than what we're currently doing.