US Students Struggle With Understanding of the 'Equal' Sign

bickerd--- writes with news of research out of Texas A&M which found that roughly 70% of middle grades students in the US don't fully understand what the 'equal' sign means. Quoting: "'The equal sign is pervasive and fundamentally linked to mathematics from kindergarten through upper-level calculus,' Robert M. Capraro says. 'The idea of symbols that convey relative meaning, such as the equal sign and "less than" and "greater than" signs, is complex and they serve as a precursor to ideas of variables, which also require the same level of abstract thinking.' The problem is students memorize procedures without fully understanding the mathematics, he notes. 'Students who have learned to memorize symbols and who have a limited understanding of the equal sign will tend to solve problems such as 4+3+2=( )+2 by adding the numbers on the left, and placing it in the parentheses, then add those terms and create another equal sign with the new answer,' he explains. 'So the work would look like 4+3+2=(9)+2=11.'"

Comments

Wrong

[dyingtolive]

That's not what = means. = is ASSIGNMENT. They're looking for ==.

Also, on a serious note, from what I recall of the US school system, frankly, the most surprising thing about this is that the problem isn't worse than reported.

Re:Wrong

[Raumkraut]

In most of the world we study Mathematics. I didn't realise that there was only one Mathematic studied in the US.

Re:Wrong

[Kenshin]

For those who don't know, the guide to school in America and England:

America - England

Math - Maths
Science - Sciences
Art - Arts
Gym - Gyms
Lunch - Lunches
Recess - Recesses
Detention - Detentions

Re:Wrong

[bhagwad]

English is logical now? When did this happen?

Re:Wrong

[DinDaddy]

Reading your post, I got to "ematic" and thought it was some language term for a word fragment that I didn't know, until I realized it WAS the word fragment.

Slashdot reading in the early morning is hard.

Re:Wrong

[Custard Horse]

Does it matter that England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are different countries and are referred to as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the inhabitants being commonly referred to as British)?

I believe it is well established that people from the USA are American and those from the UK are British - can we leave it at that?

Whilst we are at it, when Americans hear what they perceive to be an Australian accent, assume that the person speaking is in fact from the UK. Most Australians are drunk and wear hats with corks hanging from strings.

In return the British will listen out for an American accent with a strange twang and automatically assume the person speaking is from Canada. We will also look out for the hockey stick and racoon skin hat but will be wary of the hat without the stick as that person is likely to be Russian.

Re:Wrong

[nomadic]

Most people just call them all British.

Or pasty white crumpet monkeys.

I guess I'm stupid, too.

[maillemaker]

Because I can't figure out how you are supposed to solve such a problem, and I have a BS in Computer Science.

Let's look at the problem:

4+3+2=( )+2

4+3+2 = 9

( ) + 2 = 2

So we have a false equality 9 = 2

Since this is not true, I can easily see how lots of kids would go through contortions to try and make it true.

But unless this is a trick question, why are the setting up false equalities like this for grade school kids?

4+3+2=( )+2

[batquux]

Let's see here.. I'm going to go with:
4+3+2=(21/3*981727612785316256514034236^0)+2

Re:Well, that explains things.

[fahrbot-bot]

So I'm not being a curmudgeonly old jackass when I think this generation is stupid.

Now, now. Just because these youngsters need pictures of the food on their cash-register buttons in order to do their job doesn't mean they're stupid. :-)

Is it really plural, though?

[Millennium]

Do your Barbie dolls say "Maths are hard"?

Re:It should be: 4+3+2=x+2 (Solve for x)

[indeterminator]

My thoughts exactly.

For me, 4 + 3 + 2 = ( ) + 2
=> 4 + 3 + 2 = (empty value) + 2
=> 4 + 3 + 2 = 0 + 2
=> 9 = 2
=> wtf?

Re:It should be: 4+3+2=x+2 (Solve for x)

[Grizzley9]

1. Let a and b be equal non-zero quantities
a = b
2. Multiply through by a
a^2 = ab
3. Subtract b^2
a^2 - b^2 = ab - b^2
4. Factor both sides
(a - b)(a + b) = b(a - b)
5. Remove canceling values (a - b)
a + b = b
6. Observing that a = b
b + b = b
7. Combine like terms on the left
2b = b
8. Divide by the non-zero b
2 = 1

???

Re:Well, that explains things.

[KarrdeSW]

Yeah, from what I've seen here in DC, playing farmville all day is worth only $40K max. That's with at least 2 years of FarmVille experience.

Null Pointer Exception

[medv4380]

So they don't understand NULL. That's acceptable. 70% of people saw the equation had a memory leak and carried data over into the null that just happened to be the last equation they saw. That happens all the time to a computer program that's not properly debugged. I'm more worried about the 30% of people who saw null and created X. Who are they to just randomly initialize variables to catch an exception that they didn't know was going to come there way any time soon.