Slashdot Mirror
Calculator Flaw Forces Recall in Virginia
Jivecat writes "CNN is reporting that TI is recalling 11,000 calculators issued to students in Virginia because of a flaw that would give them an unfair advantage on standardized tests. A 12-year-old discovered that by pressing two keys at once, the calculators will convert decimals to fractions. The tests require the students to know how to do this with pencil-and-paper." So the calculator is being recalled because it's not crippled enough. Maybe it's a good time to question the wisdom of issuing expensive electronics to students in the first place, though I'm sure the calculator companies would rather you didn't.
Seriously, isn't this a bit of an overreation?
So what if the calculators make it easier to convert from decimal to fraction? Train *all* of the students to use the feature and its value as an advantage.
As for the issue of using a pencil and paper, then that is how you verify that they *know* how to make the conversion and didn't rely on the two-key method.
Bureaucracy masked as education.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Am I blind or does it say Texas Instruments, not HP?
I remember (back in the day - mid 80s) asking a teacher why we weren't allowed to use calcluators at all. He replied that this was to train our minds so we could do these things ourselves without aid.
Someone else asked "So WTF is with these log books?". He got detention.
Teachers... you've got to love them. Well, someone does.
I am a leaf on the wind
All I got when I first clicked on this was 'Nothing to see here. Move along'. Something about that just doesn't [B]add[/B] up.
Seriously though, I've been against giving calculators to grade school kids for a long time. It's all part of the dumbing down of our society. Let them learn how to do math properly, [I]then[/I] teach them how to use a calculator when they start studying higher maths that actually need one.
A 12-year-old discovered that by pressing two keys at once, the calculators will convert decimals to fractions.
:/
You sure it is a flaw? Sounds more like a hidden function by a bored programmer to me. Also, what's wrong with the fraction function? My Casio FX-260 S Calculator that I used in ~grade also has a fraction function. No one ever complain about that
...if they have to do know how to do it by hand, why do they even have a calculator available during the test. back in the olden days (90's) we had to take an exam w/o calculators to prove compentency before we could use them in class.
always mosh clockwise
Why do they even allow the use of electronics on those tests? Dump the electronics and focus on testing the real skills.
If you have the skills, then using a calculator makes you faster.
If all you have is the knowledge of where the key to press is, then you won't be able to check your work.
that fat fingered 12 yr old should have kept his mouth shut. ruined for anyone else who knew but was smart enough to keep it to themself. seriously though, who is buying calculators for kids learning basic math? pretty soon, the answer to all math problems will be "press the #s on the phone that dail your favorite geek". at least that's what my fiance does.
/. News says: Maybe it's a good time to question the wisdom of issuing expensive electronics to students in the first place, though I'm sure the calculator companies would rather you didn't.
Well, maybe it's time to reconsider if students need pencil-and-paper in a techno age that even a mobil phone has a calculator.
Why not show them what they can achieve with the calculator rather than how to achieve what the calculator does?
1) Have a portion of the test allow calculator use, and a portion of the test not allow calculator use.
2) Make sure the fraction stage was in correct part of the test.
3) Ummm... Privatize?
(By the way, TFA says TI, not HP.)
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
They were $8.00 each.
Seriously, what motivation is there to return a device in exchange for one with less functionality? How do they expect this "recall" to work? Would any of you send your calculator back?
just asking
A goal is a dream with a deadline
It sounds like an undisclosed feature, not a flaw.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
Why in the fuck would someone return anything because it worked too well?
It reminds me of that 200 mpg car urban legend.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The education system in some places is pure crap.
In my junior high/high school years(7-12) We rarely got to use calculators. Even in our pre-calculus course, if we got caught using a calculator during a test, exam or inclass assignment we were as good as failed.
This wasn't decades ago, I graduated 2002.
People shouldnt rely on calculators to do simple math like fractions.
I could see enforceing this through Algebra, but pushing it into Calculus might be a bit much. Unless I'm the only one who had Calc in High School.
The truth is an illusion.
On a similar note, Microsoft will be recalling 3 billion instances of RedHat from the market. Apparently all you have to install it, and the secret "doesn't crash or get hacked" function starts working, giving administrators an unfair advantage over other administrators.
It is suspected that Microsoft may make other recalls in light of this recent events, including the Playstation 2, Google's search engine, and the United States government.
In other news, any of you that have hot girlfriends (yeah...you're probably not real, but I can pretend) will have to hand them over. I'm recalling them.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
If we're lucky, perhaps this sort of problem will inspire someone to take a look at exactly how tech is used in the classroom. Giving kids calculators and computers and etc. seems like a good idea. However, while it is important that kids learn how to use technology, it's much more important that they can do these things without it.
When I was in school, I remember thinking how cool it was that I could use a calculator in 9th grade math. Then after trying to use one, not only did I find that I could do it faster without it, but that I learned the math better. I carried that attitude through calculus, and I'm very glad that I did.
Now we have a generation of kids that can't do basic math, can't spell, and don't know grammer. What a great help that tech has been for them in school! All the teaching aids in the world don't turn a bad teacher into someone that can educate your children. Don't let elementary school kids write papers on the computer, they don't get handwriting, spelling, or grammer practice. They just learn the computer will fix it for them. Don't let them use calculators for their math, because they just learn that calculators will do math for them, so they don't need to know it.
There is a proper way to use these things in the classroom. A word processor in English class is wrong, just as a calculator is in basic math class. Once you get to a Lit class or advanced math, the tools are useful in teaching more effectively.
Also, Someone mentioned log books in another post as being a shortcut tool. So are sliderules, but try doing logs sanely without one or the other. What you learned to use logs for was a shortcut to doing long-hand division and multiplications... after you learned how to do that math anyway.
Unless it's applied, most higher math doesn't require a calculator (at least the Calculus/Diff Eq. I've taken). Calculators belong in science class, not in math class (unless you want to teach kids how to program on them, which is what I spent most of math class doing).
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
In my undergraduate electromagnetics class, the professor was adamant that he would never allow calculators on his exams, but he'd generiously allow anyone to use a slide rule (assuming we could find them and learn how to operate them).
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
True to a point, but the TI-89 and TI-92 do symbolic algebra, so that you can ask for the integral of x^3 and it spits out x^4/4. These calculators are sold along with all the other graphing calculators. They do not help students, however. Math is like any other skill, you have to do it over and over again, and these calculators keep you from doing that. Moreover, the answers they spit out are often either in a different, but equivalent form than what the question asked. Plus, they certainly do not show work.
However, once you're done with integral and differential calculus, they're very handy, just like a graphing or symbolic calculator is very handy after algebra. They're just tools, designed to let skilled users work more quickly. The problem is we're putting the tools into the hands of those who won't benefit from them yet. Here's your lightsaber, young padawan; now go slice people with it, don't worry about that force-factoring thing.
I have to agree with the parent. Calculators are useful, but they can quite easily also turn into a crutch.
.3010, .4771, .6020, .6989... and no, I didn't look those up in a calculator :).
I studied in the Indian CBSE and AISSE system of education. We weren't allowed any calculators at all, for any subject. We had to use Log (logarithm) tables. Essentially we would convert any problem into base 10 log and then solve it from there. It was supposed to be "easier" because multiplication and division change into addition and subtraction. Exponentiation just becomes division.
Sure, I hated it at the time. It was a total bitch to do anything, but as a result, I got really good at my arithmetic. Even today I can remember the log base 10 values for 2, 3, 4, and 5...
Even in university, I had friends who had the TI-92 which could do symbolic integration. I had a lowly Casio model. I didn't mind, because I understood calculus and did everything by hand.
Basically, learning to do things by hand is a good skill to have. So you don't rely on a calculator where things happen "magically". Of course, when there's a time crunch, a powerful calculator helps, but it's still nice to know how things work under the hood.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
I TA college mathematics courses and it is quite clear that by the time students are in college they are convinced mathematics is just about blindly memorizing algorithmic routines. Nothing could be further from the case and I don't think it is a coincedence that many math grad students are horribly doing arithmetic. I for one almost failed 2nd grade because I couldn't do my multiplication tables fast and accurately enough (I thought it was a waste of time to memorize this stuff and I was right)
Learning to do things *efficently* by hand (as you would in a standardized test) does not really give understanding. Instead the students should be asked to reason about the process of changing decimals into fractions or heck just teach them basic logic instead. Spending time drilling algorithms into their heads that they can always just turn to calculators to do anyway is a real waste of time and turns kids off math and science.
Besides, knowledge of the algorithm is easy once you have understanding. However, not only does this empahsis on rote learning waste time it actually seems to give kids a mental block to real understanding. By the time these kids reach college they expect that courses (or at least math courses) will be just rote learning. Not only do they expect it but they will flounder if this safe pattern is broken making it nearly impossible to teach anything but rote facts. Indeed the students will usually prefer a huge amount of memorization to something requiring real understanding.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Here is a PDF paper: http://tinyurl.com/cfgl4
Oh well, what the hell...
I'm a Chesterfield native, and am familiar with these calculators, since I know kids who use them. Those particular calcs are only issued for SOLs (the local flavor of standardized test) and when a student forgets to bring his/her own. The point is to be dumbed down to four function & square roots so that you don't get to use higher functions on the Big Test, but other than that, you can use whatever you want. Since one of the goals is to make you do things like conversion on paper/in your head, that is purposefully excluded. (The point is not to see if a Middle Schooler can add, hopefully they wouldn't have gotten this far without that particular ability.) So, yes, even though this seems very silly (as do the tests) there is a reason why this is a problem.
.. Especially the ones without large LCD graphing displays. My trusty beast could handle at least first year chem and physics formulae.. And you didn't have the TAs refusing or confiscating them like they might some of the more advanced (and waay more expensive) HPs.. And no RPN ;)
Plus, you could get them at Service Merchandise (and possibly Consumers Distributing), which were the only places my folks bought consumer electronics back in the day...
(and for all you hatas out there, Casio _did_ have a more powerful programmable, but IIRC it was also way more expensive at the time..)
these aren't regular models, they are specifically made to give the students access to only what is allowed on the test. TI goofed.
and c'mon... $10 is "expensive electronics?" It's not like they have the 3D graphic calculators with the gameboy emulator.
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
Calculators are just one more needless expense. When I started college over a decade ago, no math classes REQUIRED calculators. The next year, all the math classes required them, and the bookstore was filled with TI-89's (I think they were 89's, I know they were texas instruments).
A friend I knew form highschool has a HP-48gx that he loved. He used it in chem and all his classes. So he signs up for a calculus class that requires a calculator, and the first day the teacher checks that everyone had a calculator. Because he did not have the TI-89, he was told that he could not come to the next class until he purchased the TI.
This reminds me of something else my college did. My first year there, different vending machines had different soda's, some had coca-cola, others had pepsi. My second year back, all the machines had just pepsi, it was impossible to buy any coca-cola product on campus.
Then it dawned on me, what really happened. The faculty, my first year there, went on strike for a short time over tenure and salaries. The high end of the spectrum paid teachers with a PhD and over 10 years teaching over $95,000 a year. I believe the starting salary was $38,000 per year with a masters degree (it is a community college). They wanted $120,000 for the high end, and gaurenteed tenure after 4 years teaching. The teachers got what they wanted.
Oh, tuition went from $18 a quarter hour to $21 an hour that summer, along with a $1 per quarter hour "capital assesment fee" and a $1 per quarter hour "instruction fee". That made tuition $23 an hour, up from $18. Neither of those two extra charges were explained, except they were temporary. It has been over 10 years, and the school added a few more of them since then. And I hear the teachers are talking strike again.
And here is what gets me. Schools are public institutions, created to serve the public. How the hell did the teachers railroad the community into paying outrageous salaries, how did corporations get a monopoly for selling their products (like only pepsi and no coca-cola), and at prices twice as high as off campus?? Granted, this was a community college, and everyone drove there, but if someone wanted to protest the $1.30 can of pepsi and drive down the road to buy a $0.75 can of coca-cola, they would lose their parking place.
What is next, will universities sell their naming rights? Will Ohio State University be renamed to Sprint PCS presents Ohio State University??
It is too bad. Students have ZERO power to do anything. Students rarely stay long enough, and even if a student does not enroll out of protest, the student is only hurting their earning power. Furthermore, there will be other students the university can accept.
It is a damn shame that education has boiled down to money. I would love to see "free" universities, where people who love a subject give classes. How many 60ish year old retired engineers are there that would love to teach math part time, just because they love it? Why has academia attracted people who want to make lots of money?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Was that most of my teachers who insisted on no or minimal calculator use were unable to differentiate between the two. In elementary school I did an awful lot of converting decimals to fractions. However it wasn't trying to learn the common ones, it was arbitrary numbers the teacher picked. Some happened to be prime so you'd get something silly that would probably never be expressed as a fraction. I mean who is going to convert .443 to 443/1000?, it's not any clearer.
Got a similar thing in trig, we were required to do operations using sines and cosines without a calculator. Now this would be fine if it was the 90 degree incriments, or maybe 30 or something but it wasn't. It was doing arbitrary ones with a lookup graph. Errr, ok, what's the value of that? You can memorize common ones, espically the 90 degree incriments and it can help make sense of a lot of things. However I'm not going to remeber even an gross approximation for 14 degrees because I just don't need to.
That is the real problem I think is that many math teachers aren't very good at math. I don't mean that they can't do basic math, I mean they don't really understand math. A teacher should ideally have a full understanding of what they teaching, only then can they really understand what is and isn't important to try and impart on those that are studying it only in passing.
My best math teacher was like this, he was a mathemitician before he was a teacher and taught precalc at the community college. I ended up having to take that rather than the normal highschool precalc course because of a conflict in schedule. Now the funny thing was his tests were open book, open note, calculators allowed. However despite that, I learned more in that math class than in any other. He really understood math, adn could explain something to you in different ways, and demonstrate it in different ways until you truly understood it.
I think too much blame is heaped on calculators. People like to foggily remember a past where there were no calculators, and everyone was good at math. Turns out that wasn't so much the case. There were still plenty of students that did poorly and, funny thing, the levels of math being taught weren't as advanced.
So the solution isn't to ban calculators and just do lots of tedious calculations on paper, the solution is to keep the calculators and use them as tools to teach math. Not teach how to crank away on numbers, teach a real understanding of math. Don't teach kids how to factor polynomials, teach them WHY you factor polynomials, what you are actually doing, what the equations mean. Get them to the level of real understanding where they can be presented with a novel problem and apply their knowledge to solve it.
We don't need good little calculators. As good a calculator as you can teach a person to be, I can get a better calculator out of a machine. What we need are people who understand what math is about who can take it and apply it to problems, using the calculators to do the grunt work. If you can take an equation and integrate it by hand, I'm not impressed. My TI-89 can do that and faster than you. However if you can look at an irregular container and use calculus to figure out how to make a container of that irregular shape hold a certian volume with the aid of a calculator, then I'm impressed.
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Hopefully it will actually spit out x^4/4 + C or there needs to be another recall. =P
SYS 49152
Am I the only one here who saw this as another twisted hacking story?
The kid discovered that by pressing two keys at once he was able to trigger a function which had been intentionally removed from the key matrix. How is this any different than any other sort of frowned-upon reverse engineering? Sure he was "only 12" so maybe it's "cute" and "using his head", but what happens when he turns 18 and discovers that he can use a Sharpie on a CD, or a hex-editor on an application? Suddenly he is no longer a hero, but a villan... I mean for *$%^-sake, TI actually sent him a graphing calculator for free... When was they last time TI sent the Linux/BSD wireless chipset hackers a free Prism dev kit Hell, even just the fscking manual would be nice.
It's this double standard $%^& that really irks me.
Well, even if they fix the flaw, moat standardized tests give you series of multiple choice answers so you can color in a dot and a machine can grade it. so, rather than actually do the math, all you have to do is check all the choices and pick the right one - in fat, they may be faster than actually doing the math; that's why some GMAT prep books recommend it (at least they did with the old paper tests). The answers were even in numerical order, so yo did the middle choice, then went up or down depending on the result (like a half interval search). The problem is not in the calculator, it's in the test format.
One problem with calculators is that students believe the results and never bother to see if they make sense. I graded papers for an engineering class, I was amazed how many students thought because you get 8 digits in the calculator that the result is that precise; or would get impossible answers (because of a math error) and write them down. They never developed a sense about the calculation, couldn't estimate to check results and relied on the calculator for the answer. You see this in the inability to give change if you add a coin to the payment amount after they've rung it up; or when they try to give you your twenty back along with 17 dollars because they entered 50 instead of twenty for cash tendered.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I might agree with you on some points. I feel, however, that knowing the "hard way" of doing things has its place. I see so many people that can't do simple calculus without the use of a calculator. I see even more where the concept of mental math on anything more than single-digit operands is lost. I believe that the "hard way" should be taught first and *then* (and only then) introduce these advanced calculators. Without fully understanding the ins and outs of basic mathematical concepts, how can we expect people to build on them?
People should see the calculator as a tool for getting calculations done quickly, not as something they rely on simply to get them done at all.
While it would be nice if everyone understood the methods of computers, most people simply will have no use for binary arithmetic in their adult lives. Get them adept at everyday math, first.
Also, assembly has its niche. For most things, however, the time and skill it takes is just not practical. When it comes to embedded systems, it is still nice to have the total control over the much more limited memory that assembly languages provide.
Breakfast served all day!
That depends upon what you're testing.
If it was basic multiplication, that would be fine. Once you can multiple 2x3 on paper, you can multiply everything from 1x1 to 9x9. The technique does not change at all.
The same goes for 12x11 and 36x156. Once the initial concept is understood all further applications can be reduced to that basic concept.
The same with fractions and decimals.
But when you allow a calculator, you are NOT testing their knowledge of the basic techniques. Multiplying 99x2314 means learning a more advanced technique with paper and pencil.
With a calculator, it is the same as 2x3.
No, "regurgitation" is the memorization of items. If someone can memorize the multiplication tables up to quadruple digits, there isn't much you can do to "teach" that person.
What "critical thinking" is there in accepting what a machine tells you?
But the calculator only gives them answers. Most students would rather use a calculator to "just write answers down to a hundred questions".
Which is my point. Using a calculator at that grade is NOT testing their knowledge of the material.
Yep, and the pencil and paper will NOT provided ANY information that is not already in the kid's head.
Not if the kid does NOT know the technique for adding 2+2.
Yet with a calculator, it is possible to get the answer and still NOT know the technique.
No, that is called "lowering the bar".
Two kids...
one how understands the concepts and techniques
and
one who does not.
Both sit down, with calculators and complete 100 multiplication problems.
Both score the same.
Both get 100% correct.
THAT is the problem.
It might. But more likely, it will be used to mask a core problem.
Which, in more sensible terms means "masks the kid's failure to grasp the concepts".
...
Which was the point I made above.
Sure, the calculator will allow a kid who does not know how to do basic math to score a perfect grade on a test covering basic math
Okay, now you're completely off it.
Education is, at this point, seriously fucked up. Not due to the teachers, but due to 'standards' and testing.
We're not teaching people how to 'convert fractions to decimals'. In fact, there is no such skill...that's just division.
And 'converting decimals to fractions' is just reducing fractions, except the denominator is always a multiple of 10.
Why do we care about that? Why are we pretending that's a skill? Because it's on the standarized tests.
So schools are completely unable to link concepts together, because that's not on the tests, so students have, for the last few decades, been memorizing steps in math, as if that teaching you something.
And then calculators came along to do the steps isntantly, thus explosing how inane the entire system was. Solution? Ban calculators, or cripple them or have vehement debates about them.
I'm for giving children calculators at all ages under every circumstances. Why? Because maybe they'll be able to figure out rules on their own, because the school sure as hell won't teach them.
The only time I can see an exception is the first grade 'memorize your addition tables' tests and so forth, but I think that's a fairly idiotic thing anyway. If they have to keep using something, they will memorize it eventually.
And just on general principles, I don't think we should pretend the world works differently than it does. Not only because we are trying to prepare students for the actual world, where they have calculators, but because this really pisses students off who are old enough to understand what's going on, and a large part of the failure of schools is them doing things that students see are completely bogus.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
First you have to know HOW these things are done before you just grab an off-the-shelf solution, at least if you want to pretend to expertise, which at the college level is your goal. For instance, being a CS guy, I use off-the-shelf operating systems and compilers, but by golly, I could code one myself if I wanted to.
The parent's example is particulary egregious since virtually all challenges in college are artificial. Using the above "wisdom", I might as well just sneak out of any test, grab my textbook, and fill in the answers therefrom, expecting an A. After all, why bother remembering all that knowledge when it's written down somewhere for easy reference anyway? Answer: You are there to learn the material, not just learn where the library is. Blah...this stuff is obvious.
This line of thinking is exactly why cashiers can't give correct change when the power goes out, the network is down, or you give them odd change so you get rid of change and get whole dollars back.
Setting the bar as low as you suggest begs the question: Why teach anything that you can use a calculator for?
IMO, the point isn't even the math. It's about teaching someone the basics of thinking through a problem without pulling the answer from somewhere.
<soapbox>We're already teaching our kids that there are no losers. Giving them the lesson that you don't have to understand and solve simple problems is just another step towards a society of people who, in Real Life®, find themselves facing problems without the help of a cheat sheet and simply wait for someone else to solve them (which eventually will stop happening).</soapbox>
http://www.engineering.ualberta.ca/nav03.cfm?nav03 =19343&nav02=18510&nav01=18439
I took Engineering school about 300 km south, and we were still allowed the HP 48 GX then. Experimentation showed that the reliable communication range was about six inches. If you were that close to your fellow student during an exam, you would already be under suspicion.
I previously had a TI-85 when I went through high school, ending back in 1995. It had the infamous decimal-> fraction conversion.
In my old school, there was a rule where we had to clear the memories of our calculators before each exam. Presumeably, it's in case we invented some fractal compression algorithm that allowed us to store all our lecture notes as a 10-digit signed number.
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You are of course right about maths being a valuable life skill, but if I'm allowed to nitpick, I'd say the same applies to all blackboxes: before one can use them right, one needs at least _some_ understanding of how it works inside. The same applies IMHO to programming.
The line of thinking "oh, we'll give programmers a bunch blackboxes and they don't have to know the algorithms behind them" is what got us saddled with co-workers who can't code worth crap. Yes, it's not needed to know the exact MPEG4 algorithm, but without knowledge of at least the basics, well, that's how we got at the point where 3 out of 4 "programmers" can't program.
I see _consultants_ advocating using two arrays for large data sets instead of a hash table. Presumably because they never learned that one is O(1) and one is O(n).
I've seen _two_ co-workers end up debugging into a HashMap (because they were utterly lost when finding their own bugs) and go "Java is broken! It replaced my item in the array with another! My data is lost!" Turns out that they had no fucking clue what a linked list is, and that merely a new node was added to the front of one.
And then there's the one I fondly call Wally, who was attempting basically this:
public void nuller(int x) {
x = 0;
}
public void testNuller() {
int x = 1;
nuller(x);
assertTrue("x should be 0", x == 0);
}
Then did it again later. The concept of "call by value" was utterly lost on him.
Or pointers? Java's syntax hides pointers, making them basically a blackbox. Something that just happens behind the scenes for you. Unfortunately I see people bitten in the ass everyday by utter lack of knowledge of what a pointer is and how it works.
Or then there's security. I've seen consultants from a big corporation implementing a system so full of security holes it wasn't even funny. They honestly thought that just slapping together some blackboxes with lots of buzzwords made them safe. It didn't.
They failed to grasp even basic concepts as "what if the user edits the '?user_id=1234' to '?user_id=0' in the URL and makes themselves super-user?" Yes, that sad. They failed to understand basic concepts like non-repudiation: when someone deleted their own user from that system, the program would helpfully cascade through all tables and erase all tracks that the user ever existed or ever done anything. They failed to even notice they need to quote the user input, both when displaying it in HTML _and_ when using it in an SQL querry. Etc.
Basically anything that wasn't already built in their blackboxes, they were utterly obvlivious to.
So basically, no, I wouldn't expect a random person off the street to implement MPEG4 either, but I'd expect anyone paid as a programmer to know at least the basics (the equivalent of arithmetic in maths) before they're even given a MPEG4 library and told to add that to a program.
Which brings me back to maths: the same is true for maths and a lot of jobs. Even if one decided that 10x10 isn't needed for Burger King jobs, we're not preparing _all_ kids for that kind of jobs. Expecting someone to understand the more advanced maths used in most engineering or science fields when their knowledge of the basics is just "oh, I push these two buttons on a calculator", is IMHO like building a house without the ground floor.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.