Random Fail: First World Problems

[Boyiee]

But guyz if you didn't do those short answers in highschool you couldn't even have this discussion!

Ksan I would have went ham on the open ended about food. Literally. Sup.

[kuronosan]

Right but you're not writing it out for credit. You're writing it to justify your answer, which is a valuable skill to have. What Sath is saying is that being right is great but worthless if you can't explain why to others.

[synistar]

Also lol at being mad at points off for not showing your work in math. A+. Would lol again.

Partial credit for the win. Can't say how many times I fucked up with either a wrong sign or a decimal point back doing undergrad calculus. Hell even all my math in high school because my pen decided to be faster than my brain and I make so many stupid -1 point mistakes.

[Zetanio]

It's almost like learning process-driven explanations is useful beyond the classroom.

[NynJa]

and this has devolved to

[Tokitoki]

That's what school is... practice. You're learning how to do things the correct way (hopefully) so that later in life you are able to succeed. You do this by practicing these skills.

[BerenTebogo]

Right but you're not writing it out for credit. You're writing it to justify your answer, which is a valuable skill to have. What Sath is saying is that being right is great but worthless if you can't explain why to others.

This.

Being able to justify your reasoning and your assumptions is incredibly important. More important than being right, honestly.

Spewing an answer doesn't reinforce the concepts in any way, at ANY level. What my girlfriend (teaches college calculus) and other teachers I know have started doing for pre-calc through diff eq is giving tests where many or all of the problems have the correct answer given and you have to show how to get to it.

The lack of fundamentals this exposes in people in engineering and pre-med programs is genuinely horrifying. Like basic algebra fundamentals. Multiple choicing your way through life doesn't help anyone.

[dasva]

I always hated that shit. If you knew the answer, you knew the answer. I always assumed they wanted to make sure you understood the process by showing work but if you get the answer what are the odds that you guessed if it's short answer format?

What I hated even more when you showed work but got down for not showing the work they wanted. Or in one case didn't care what work you showed just marked you do for each step less than they wanted to see in the work. Shit you not had a chem teacher give me half credit for "only" showing 4 steps to convert from F to C when she wanted 7. What was worse was it was a value we were supposed to have memorized anyways. This is the same teacher that consistently gave me 70% on tests where I showed more than enough work and got everything right... but one time I was all fucked up from a week of no sleep and literally just made shit up during the test and even wrote little mini essays after a few problems I knew I fucked up and got a 90% lol.

But Justice came during finals when teachers didn't have time to read over a ton of work. All of a sudden those A students started failing cause the only thing they learned during the course was how to B.S. and write a bunch of work not how to actually solve the problem. Meanwhile I'd jump up to near 100% totally wrecking the curve the teacher put in place to account for the fact the students didn't really learn the course. Well except that on teacher that tried to make the scores fit a bell curve and ended up giving me 150% on the final

[Churchill]

This.

Being able to justify your reasoning and your assumptions is incredibly important. More important than being right, honestly.

Spewing an answer doesn't reinforce the concepts in any way, at ANY level. What my girlfriend (teaches college calculus) and other teachers I know have started doing for pre-calc through diff eq is giving tests where many or all of the problems have the correct answer given and you have to show how to get to it.

The lack of fundamentals this exposes in people in engineering and pre-med programs is genuinely horrifying. Like basic algebra fundamentals. Multiple choicing your way through life doesn't help anyone.

I'd personally like to see 3x5 note cards in all my classes as well. People still fail/do poorly with them, it's not an instant win, but it helps me a lot because it lets me focus on the problem and not the minutia.

[BerenTebogo]

I'd personally like to see 3x5 note cards in all my classes as well. People still fail/do poorly with them, it's not an instant win, but it helps me a lot because it lets me focus on the problem and not the minutia.

Yeah I do like that a lot too, big supporter of those and take-home exams (but not feasible for classes larger than like 20 students). If you put effort into making the cards you actually reinforce the learned material by rewriting it anyway, and people who don't put any effort in still fail just as badly.

[zoobernut]

Yeah I do like that a lot too, big supporter of those and take-home exams (but not feasible for classes larger than like 20 students). If you put effort into making the cards you actually reinforce the learned material by rewriting it anyway, and people who don't put any effort in still fail just as badly.

There is so much truth to this. The majority of the most effective studying I did fell into two categories for me in and college. 1) writing a cheat sheet (allowed) or 2) answering questions for other students who were asking me questions about material while cramming.

Also what the hell at all the people speaking out against essay or short answer tests. Those are the best in any subject they really help retain the material and partial credit in math is oh so important even at low levels because it is better to get the wrong answer the right way than the right answer by sheer luck or the wrong way.

Multiple choice tests are easier to grade but they are not the best for helping show understanding of material or helping with retention.

Though I do think that a test that is a mix of different question types can be really good too.

[kuronosan]

There is so much truth to this. The majority of the most effective studying I did fell into two categories for me in and college. 1) writing a cheat sheet (allowed) or 2) answering questions for other students who were asking me questions about material while cramming.

Also what the hell at all the people speaking out against essay or short answer tests. Those are the best in any subject they really help retain the material and partial credit in math is oh so important even at low levels because it is better to get the wrong answer the right way than the right answer by sheer luck or the wrong way.

Multiple choice tests are easier to grade but they are not the best for helping show understanding of material or helping with retention.

Though I do think that a test that is a mix of different question types can be really good too.

This.

[dasva]

I have nothing against people getting partial credit for showing they knew what they are doing but fucked up some sign or whatever.

What I have a problem is when merely showing work not necessarily correct gets you credit. Or you show the correct work but almost never get the answer right demonstrating that you really just memorized some steps still getting high marks. And also have a problem with penalizing people who don't jump thru some specific hoops but clearly know what they are doing demonstrated by high consistent accuracy. Can't tell you how many times teachers marked me down because they literally didn't understand my work when half the time all I did was algebraically simplify some ridiculously over complicated equation/method they gave us

[BerenTebogo]

I have nothing against people getting partial credit for showing they knew what they are doing but fucked up some sign or whatever.

What I have a problem is when merely showing work not necessarily correct gets you credit. Or you show the correct work but almost never get the answer right demonstrating that you really just memorized some steps still getting high marks. And also have a problem with penalizing people who don't jump thru some specific hoops but clearly know what they are doing demonstrated by high consistent accuracy. Can't tell you how many times teachers marked me down because they literally didn't understand my work when half the time all I did was algebraically simplify some ridiculously over complicated equation/method they gave us

The chances that you "simplified an over complicated method or equation" in a way that wasn't intended as a step in the problem is incredibly low, barring being taught by a Burger King employee.

Reduction and simplification are often important steps in actually approaching and solving a problem. Yes, most people who aren't brain dead can do all of algebra 2 in their head, but the point in being strict about showing work is that eventually you will hit a point in life where there is a problem you cant solve in your head. This is where knowing how to methodically write down a problem and break it up into pieces of stuff you know how to do, stuff you dont know how to do, and stuff you can figure out using other considerations.

Do some teachers grade lazily and mark down for not being able to follow work? Yeah. Does it, very rarely, negatively impact someone who actually understands what is going on? Sure. But if they can't follow your reasoning or your methodology, that means your work is ONLY useful to you. Personally, I used to write all over the page and my work followed no logical order. If I didn't have that hammered out of me it would definitely be hurting me now. As is sometimes I go back to reference previous work and notes and cannot even understand my own shit.

It's analogous to turning in work to your boss that only you can understand. Do you expect him to take more time out of his life to figure out what the hell you're on about or do you expect to get told to go back and do it the way they told you to or get the fuck out?

Tl;dr nobody has time for special snowflakes and almost always people are not as snowflakey as they think.

[NynJa]

Those are the best in any subject they really help retain the material and partial credit in math is oh so important even at low levels because it is better to get the wrong answer the right way than the right answer by sheer luck or the wrong way.

No student gets 95% of the answers right by "sheer luck".

And I had this post a year and a half ago. This is what I mean by teachers objectivity. There are some things that shouldnt be in the teachers hands. Docking points for a wrong answer is ridiculous. Dock more points for having the wrong answer and not showing work, sure, no problem, but dont penalize someone for being right.

[BerenTebogo]

No student gets 95% of the answers right by "sheer luck".

And I had this post a year and a half ago. This is what I mean by teachers objectivity. There are some things that shouldnt be in the teachers hands. Docking points for a wrong answer is ridiculous. Dock more points for having the wrong answer and not showing work, sure, no problem, but dont penalize someone for being right.

"I'm angry that I can solve binomials in my head and nobody thinks I'm special."

[Xantavia]

Never had a teacher not give full credit if you had the right answer but no work shown. But if you did that, it was all or nothing for the question. Where as wrong answer with correct work might net you 4 out of 5 points. And heaven help you if you got the wrong with no work early on, since my calc teacher loved to do stuff where you used the answer from problem #3 to figure out #7. So not showing your work with a wrong answer had a cascading effect of dropping your grade.

He loved doing other stuff too, like not giving us any kind of actual grade on the test. You got a number, then had to solve the calc equation he posted in the hallway to find out how you actually did.

[Blubbartron]

Nynja's right in this instance. The most ethical perspective, as someone who was a semester student teaching from having my secondary mathematics teacher's license, is to give full credit for correct answers, but only give partial credit in proportion to amount of correct work shown. It's up to the student if they want to gamble. If you aren't confident, or you keep fucking up, then start showing your work. But I won't be the one to make that decision for you. No high school (or lower) math test/quiz is going to have a problem that's more than several steps. That's true even for a lot of non-proof-based math courses in college. If your calc 2 problems are more than several steps, it's because your professor is a douche who is testing your algebra ability instead of your ability to do calculus.

[BerenTebogo]

Nynja's right in this instance. The most ethical perspective, as someone who was a semester student teaching from having my secondary mathematics teacher's license, is to give full credit for correct answers, but only give partial credit in proportion to amount of correct work shown. It's up to the student if they want to gamble. If you aren't confident, or you keep fucking up, then start showing your work. But I won't be the one to make that decision for you. No high school (or lower) math test/quiz is going to have a problem that's more than several steps. That's true even for a lot of non-proof-based math courses in college. If your calc 2 problems are more than several steps, it's because your professor is a douche who is testing your algebra ability instead of your ability to do calculus.

If the test says "show your work" or if the syllabus says "show your work" or if the teacher says "show your work" then it is entirely okay to not give credit just for a right answer. All we have is Nynja saying he was repeatedly marked off for not showing work. Personally, I've never met a math teacher who says "you don't need to show your work".

Your math education continues to boggle my mind. You literally cannot do the vast majority of calculus problems without incorporating algebra. You can't even TEST some concepts without a page of algebra. Like, I know you think you're a genius but come the fuck on, you must realize how stupid that statement is.

[Greatguardian]

I'm amazed no one has mentioned the obvious anti-cheating mechanism inherent in all problems that require showing work.

Google and Wolfram can answer anything about any math problem you could possibly ask at the high school level. Knowing a final answer doesn't tell me fuck-all about the student's understanding of the material or how well they'll be able to apply it in higher level courses, in the workforce, or on monitored exams. Fuck right off with that shit.

Tangential problem: Students can and will often get the right answer for all the wrong reasons, and no one will know how to correct the gap in their understanding (or even that said gap exists) without requiring the student to demonstrate and defend their process.