Physics is not mathematics. Math problems are clearly stated, such as “What is Physics is about the world around us, and to describe that world we must use language. Now, language is wonderful—we couldn’t communicate without it—but language can sometimes be imprecise or ambiguous.
The challenge when reading a physics problem is to translate the words into symbols that can be manipulated, calculated, and graphed. The translation from words to symbols is the heart of problem solving in physics. This is the point where ambiguous words and phrases must be clarified, where the imprecise must be made precise, and where you arrive at an understanding of exactly what the question is asking.