Am always surprised at the number of marginal students who do not take
advantage of this, and the number of students who earned a 95% who do
take advantage of it, but for the most part have found this to be an
effective learning tool.
Has anyone tried asking for "ballpark answers"? Estimation is such an
important part of mathematics - but I have not come up with a way to ask
the question to get the kinds of answers that I am looking for. For
example: Tom can do a job in 4 hours, Mary can do the job in 6 hours,
how long will it take working together? If both worked at Toms rate, 2
hours, and if both worked at Mary's rate, 3 hours, so answer is
somewhere between. If I had to pick them up, I would probably allow 2.5
hours and not sit down with paper and pencil to get an exact answer!!
While getting exact answer is important for some things, being able to
get a reasonable answer to solve a situational problem, may in the long
run be a more important reason to study mathematics.
If anyone has some examples of questions they have asked that have dealt
with above types of questions, would appreciate seeing them posted.
Aloha Kate
On Fri, 1 Aug 1997, Geoff Hagopian wrote:
> Lillie Crowley wrote:
>
> > About the bridge problem. One should bear in mind that half the
> > doctors practicing out there were in the bottom 50% of their med.
> > school classes.
>
> I thought they were all above average!
>
> > CoolMath2@AOL.COM wrote:
> > Here's another one to kick around. Let me play devil's advocate for a
> > minute.....
> >
> > You're driving over a bridge. It collapses. You find the engineer
> > who designed it and ask him (from your wheelchair) how he could have
> > made such a mistake! His reply, "Well, I never did really get any
> > answers right on my exams.... But I got B's and C's on partial
> > credit! The bridge *did* last for 5 years!"
> >
> > Or....
> >
> > After being in that bridge/collapse accident, you wake up on an
> > operating table. The Dr. who is about to open you up survived college
> > on partial credit!! Do you want that Dr? "Let's see........ the
> > appendix is on the left - no, right side!! How many points do I get
> > for that?"
>
> One approach to this is to make the exam itself a life or death
> situation. Go ahead and give partial credit - but if they fail the
> exam, OFF WITH THEIR HEADS! That won't solve the test anxiety problem -
> but that's another nut to crack.
>
> In some sense this is not so far from the truth. I have been
> working on a little spiel in which I try to impress on students the
> importance of what they are endeavoring to accomplish in college. This
> IS their life. This IS their opportunity to have or have not. They
> are, at this crucial juncture in their lives, choosing to learn or not
> to learn, and that will make all the difference. They can choose the
> noble, learned path, or choose to slither down among the lower life
> forms who are not endowed with human intelligence and live lives without
> significant purpose, meaning or understanding.
>
> My colleague, Steve Simonsen, who recently died from a cancer of the
> esophagus at the tender age of 40, encouraged me to try such motivating
> tactics - and that was before his diagnosis about a year ago. It seems
> ever so much more poignant and true with his passing. I wish I were as
> eloquent and impassioned as he was in the delivery of the message: that
> the will to learn and master an intellectual craft/discipline is an
> urgent and necessary part of living a complete life.
>
> > Perhaps these have been exagerations. Perhaps they haven't.
> >
> > I have been fretting about the whole idea of partial credit. The
> > scariest part is that I worry that not many students would pass my
> > classes without it! The course that scares me the most is my Math for
> > Elementary School Teachers --- A student (who wants to teach *your*
> > children) cannot complete a long division problem correctly, but
> > asserts that she got it almost right, so I need to give her more
> > points!
>
> Yeah, this has become one of the ways I motivate myself to maintain
> standards. I ask myself, "Do I want this person, as a result of my
> passing them, to go out and become a teacher and role model to young
> children?" I give alot more D's now than I used to after asking this
> question. It's not easy. I have great affection for many of these
> students, and I desperately want them to succeed . . .
>
> geoffh
>
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