Wolfram Alpha Rekindles Campus Math Tool Debate

An anonymous reader sends in a story about how Wolfram Alpha is becoming the latest tool students are using to help with their schoolwork, and why some professors are worried it will interfere with the learning process. Quoting: "The goal of WolframAlpha is to bring high-level mathematics to the masses, by letting users type in problems in plain English and delivering instant results. As a result, some professors say the service poses tough questions for their classroom policies. 'I think this is going to reignite a math war,' said Maria H. Andersen, a mathematics instructor at Muskegon Community College, referring to past debates over the role of graphing calculators in math education. 'Given that there are still pockets of instructors and departments in the US where graphing calculators are still not allowed, some instructors will likely react with resistance (i.e. we still don't change anything) or possibly even with the charge that using WA is cheating.'"

Comments

I don't see how this matters

[InstinctVsLogic]

Just do what my school does and make assignments worth 10 - 15% and expect some noise. For a lot of professors, assignments are really only meant to keep the student up to date on the material. The students that rely on WolframAlpha will only end up screwing themselves over.

Re:I don't see how this matters

[The Snowman]

Just do what my school does and make assignments worth 10 - 15% and expect some noise. For a lot of professors, assignments are really only meant to keep the student up to date on the material. The students that rely on WolframAlpha will only end up screwing themselves over.

I had math and computer science classes where homework was not graded. All course credit came from exams. If you "cheated" on your homework, you came up short on the exam where showing all work was required to receive any credit for a problem. Those are the best types of classes, because it truly tests your ability to solve problems.

Re:I don't see how this matters

[Chris Burke]

Those are the best types of classes, because it truly tests your ability to solve problems.

Ability to solve problems in the limited-time test format.

And I say this as someone who excels at 50 min or 80 min exams, yet would at times feel that one of my peers clearly understood the material as well or better than I did, but did not excel at the exam format and thus received worse course grades.

Since graduating, never in my career have I encountered a situation where I had to solve 25 simple yet unrelated problems in under an hour without the use of references or collaboration. I'm sure it's possible someone has, or could construct a scenario in which they would, but in general I just don't think the ability to do this is necessary to demonstrate competence in your field.

I do agree that exams are important for making sure a student really knows the material themselves, and there's only so much you can do with the format. I don't have a better way of doing things to suggest. I'm just pointing out that exams throw another arbitrary dimension on top of the course material that some people may or may not excel at regardless of how well they know the material and how well they can solve the problems.

Re:I don't see how this matters

[Chris Burke]

So you shouldn't have to know how to solve a given problem yourself, in a vacuum, because in the "real world" we have reference books and other people to collaborate with.

By yourself, in a vacuum, with no reference books or people to collaborate with, and an arbitrary one-hour time limit, and arbitrarily simplified problems that don't actually represent what you have to solve "in the real world"? Yeah, you shouldn't (hypothetically, like I said I have no better alternative to exams) have to do that because most people -- certainly myself -- don't have to do that in "the real world"! Ever! I've been out of college twice as long as I was in it, and I've never had any challenge at work that was anything like test format.

Now, apply that logic to the whole population of potential collaborators / reference book writers.

Who is it that you think is writing reference books solely from their own memory, without referencing any other books or sources? That's not how it works. And even more outrageously, who is tasked by their publisher to write 10 paragraph-long essays on 10 unrelated subjects with a 1 hour deadline for a technical reference?

Since anyone you might collaborate with also believes the above, they won't know how to solve the problem either.

See, the problem with "apply that logic" type arguments is when you completely fail to properly represent the logic, in this case by excluding most of it. I never said "won't know how to solve the problem", in fact I said the opposite. It is a simple fact that you can know to solve problems, yet not do well on exams.

And since real life isn't your ludicrous strawman of "nobody knows how to solve anything, so who can you collaborate with", collaboration has a wonderful knowledge-multiplying effect. Because if there's something I don't know in order to solve something, but a coworker does, then I can use their knowledge to enhance my own and solve the problem instead of failing.

At some point the buck stops at the individual. You need to know how to solve the given problems, by yourself.

I clearly said "they understood the material as well or better than I did". Like, by themselves. Just they did worse on the test format. I was very specific about what I was talking about. "Knowing how to solve problems by yourself" is not equivalent to "doing well on exams".

Re:I don't see how this matters

[node 3]

Furthermore if, in reality, I find a faster and more efficient way of completing my work I don't get fired for "cheating". I get a raise and possibly a promotion if I keep improving things.

Actually, in the real world, you just get more work.

Re:I don't see how this matters

[Brian Gordon]

Since graduating, never in my career have I encountered a situation where I had to solve 25 simple yet unrelated problems in under an hour without the use of references or collaboration.

I said this same thing in Algebra 1, and Geometry, and Algebra 2. Around precalc I started to get the picture. I can't imagine going to a reference book to see that the b in y=mx+b is the y-intercept.

Protestant Work Ethic

[unlametheweak]

It's the Protestant Work Ethic that if it is easy (or easier to do) then it is somehow bad. Like all learning tools, this may be used for cheating, just like a butcher knife can be used to murder somebody. If I could have had feedback that was quick and easy when I was in school then I probably would have excelled at Mathematics instead of dropping it as soon as possible. Tools like this are great for people who can't afford tutors and who don't have family members who are educated enough to help them with their homework.

Math, I have heard it said, is the great (social/economic) equalizer, but experience has demonstrated that only people who are lucky enough to have exceptional teachers or middle class families will have the environment to excel. A well written software program cannot ignore you, no matter how poorly you are dressed or who your friends and enemies are.

Teachers who worry about cheating obviously don't have the skills to assess their students abilities.

Re:Protestant Work Ethic

[Chris Burke]

It's the Protestant Work Ethic that if it is easy (or easier to do) then it is somehow bad. Like all learning tools, this may be used for cheating, just like a butcher knife can be used to murder somebody.

In college I took "Calc II with Maple". Maple, fyi, is a program for doing symbolic mathematics (as opposed to say matlab which is analytic), and it knows more calculus than I ever would or could. We not only got to use Maple on our homeworks, we took our exams in a computer lab.

Easy, right? Ha! That class was pure evil. Since they knew that we were freed from the tedium of the raw mechanics of integrating/deriving, that meant they were free to make the problems as complex as they wanted. Yeah Maple could tell you the answer, but only after you'd figured out how to frame the question, and if you knew how to use the result to reach the next step of the problem. You had to know how to apply the calculus. Very educational, very rigorous, very hard. Compared notes with students in the non-Maple version... yeah, ours was way harder. But also we covered how to use the calculus in ways they'd never heard of, simply because they had to spend so much course time covering the mechanics.

My point here would be that I think the existence of WolframAlpha could open up opportunities for an even better, and yes for you Professor Protestants harder, curriculum.

On the other hand, this was Calc II. At some point, you would have to take Calc I and should learn the boring stuff like the integral of 1/x, and for that class Maple (or WA)would be detrimental.

I'm a math professor, and I don't care about Alpha

[onionman]

I'm a math prof. at a reasonably large school.

I teach plenty of calculus.

When I grade, I don't care about the answer. I look at the way the student solves the problem. If the setup is correct, the computations are reasonable, and the flow of the solution demonstrates that the student knows what she's doing, then I give it full credit even if the answer is wrong. I couldn't care less about careless errors (poor pun intended). I'm measuring the student's problem solving abilities, not her ability to do lots of tedious computations in a short amount of time (that's what computers are for). Likewise, if a student magically produces the correct answer without showing any work (or if the work is clearly B.S.) then I give them no credit. The answer is irrelevant, it's the process that matters.

I am completely unconcerned about Wolfram Alpha.

I also have a CS background, and I recognize that most CS related jobs don't require calculus. However, the whole point of taking calculus is to practice logical reasoning. A good calculus course will force you to solve lots of long complex problems, clearly express your reasoning, and maybe even do a bunch of delta-epsilon proofs. Unfortunately, many calculus courses end up being reduced to mundane computations of derivatives and integrals... those courses ARE a waste of time.

p.s. If you're a student who actually wants to learn a subject, then go to that "rate my professor" site and look for professors who are "clear" and "hard". Take those professors. You won't learn much from an easy professor, and three years after you graduate that easy "A" will be meaningless.