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Are You Better At Math Than a 4th (or 10th) Grader?
New submitter newslash.formatb points to this Washington Post blog post, which "discusses the National Assessment of Educational Progress test (specifically, the math part). One of the school board members took it and was unable to answer any of the 60 math questions, though he guessed correctly on 10 of them. He then goes on to claim that the math isn't relevant to many people. P.S. — if you want to feel like Einstein, check out some sample questions." Maybe this is mostly about the kind of life skills that are sufficient to succeed in management.
Havent taken a math test in a little while, was worried I was missing something after every question.
I wasnt.
That a reasonably intelligent person cannot answer the following question: 1. (47 x 75) ÷ 25 = ... You can use a calculator.
well... that's sad.
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#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
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But I found those questions trivial without a calculator, how you'd manage to fail with a calculator is beyond me.
After reading this article, having someone as influential as a school board member take this test and fail it is putting education on a very dangerous course. It normally wouldn't be too bad but this guy's ego is so big that instead of admitting that he just isn't knowledgeable on the subject, he goes on a rant about how irrelevant this stuff is to life and how unnecessary this subject matter is to evaluating a student's college career. I mean sure, it might not be relevant to him for his job duties, but any science/engineering discipline should be well versed in simple math like this. I really hope he doesn't make a push to dumb down these tests to make the math easier.
This is an apparently intelligent, certainly successful person - who cannot do basic math. He asks a number of questions - thinking that the answers are rhetorical, but they aren't. BTW, for those who don't RFTA, the guy was lousy on the reading-comprehension as well.
For example: if people can be successful (he has three degrees) and yet unable to answer these math questions, it must obviously be the case that the math is unnecessary or unrealistic. But there are other possible explanations:
- He would be even more successful if he actually had these basic academic skills.
- His success is due to other factors. Maybe he has people skills (i.e., a salesman type). Maybe he knows the right people. Maybe he's just lucky.
- Maybe his academic degrees are actually worthless (he doesn't say what fields they are in).
The thing that is most striking about the sample math questions is that you are allowed to use a calculator, even though they are nothing especially complex. At worst, you have to multiply by numbers like 29. These are the kinds of skills someone needs to balance their checkbook, to plan their annual finances, to do their taxes.
So RTFA, and then: what conclusions do you draw?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
One of the school board members took it and was unable to answer any of the 60 math questions, though he guessed correctly on 10 of them.
Wait.
Even a gorilla could have got 15/60. It's probability 101. (And a rather sensible assumption that all questions had 4 options)
Some apps are WYSIWYG. Some others are WYSIWTF.
The guy's quite right. He shouldn't have a bachelor, let alone two masters and 15 credit hours towards a doctorate.
Unfortunately, too many students are in a similar position. Universities have been turned into for pay degree mills, and the qualifications the higher education industry produces are generally not worth the paper they are printed on.
The test that the school board person took was for tenth graders. The sample questions linked are from two entirely different tests. The first three are for fourth graders and the second three are for eighth graders.
Don't act surprised. We're talking about the country where some dumb fucks managed to make creationism part of the school curriculum.
The article mentions the board member took (and failed) a 10th grade assessment test. But the linked sample questions are from a sub-article talking about a study of 8th grade tests? Surely the test discussed in the main article is different than the linked sample.
Can it be that anyone with a high school diploma (let alone the degrees the article claims) can not only fail a test with questions like these, but then come to the opinion that the test is at fault and not their radically inadequate math and problem solving abilities? After reading all this I have decided that the article must simply be wrong- the author has had a giant practical joke played on them, or the sample test questions were from the 4th grade version?
Quite frankly, if someone with 2 post-graduate degrees (even if his masters degrees were in basket-weaving and finger painting) could only hazard guesses at questions with this level of difficulty, they should simply resign from any job related to educating others. I'd also ask for a tuition refund from their university.
I'm surprised that students are allowed calculators to work out these problems, particularly the eighth grade students. I think mental arithmetic is a useful skill even in the age of calculators/computers/mobile phones with built in calculators.... the ability to estimate an approximate answer is sometimes more useful than the ability to provide a specific answer.
Nonsense, it doesn't matter what his degrees are in, or what he claims his specialty is in. A bachelors degree is a guarantee of (at least) basic numeracy, which means if he fails a high-school numeracy test, then he's not fit to be given a bachelors. Nothing else needs to be said.
A manager does not need to be good at math. He or she just needs someone who works for him to be good at math.
. . . and smart enough to let that person handle the math questions . . .
... and good enough at people skills to know whether that person is ripping him off or not...
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
A link at the bottom is named
"Quiz: How smart are you? Test yourself with some National Assessment of Education Progress questions."
That has little to do with how smart you are, rather how educated you are.
What do you expect from the combination of crappy pay and horrible working conditions? People who are actually smart and could land any job wouldn't touch the teaching profession with a ten foot pole.
Pay teachers well and make sure their job description doesn't include "must have experience with taming wild animals" and you'll get better teachers and hence better education. For reference, see Finland.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
My partner got crap grades at GCSE maths and wanted to re-take it (originally taken at 16 in the UK, this was ~15 years later).
Now I got an A the first time around for GCSE, and then at 18 I pretty much completely screwed up my 'pure' maths part and was only partially rescued by the statistical part. Trying to explain stuff to her made me suddenly realize that the parts I was good at, were the parts that I could visualize.
More than that, it wasn't that I had some mental block on some topics - it was just that I'd never learnt them (or been taught them) properly in the first place. If I spent a bit of time looking at the type of question, rather than the specific question, stuff 'clicks'. I came away with 2 thoughts:
1) If my knowledge is supposed to grow 'like a tree', a whole load of branches got lopped off a long time ago - just felt a little bit sad that I'd spent so long no even noticing that I'd given up. This led to a pub conversation around differentiation/integration - I knew what to do, I knew what the inputs and outputs meant (i.e. I could do the questions) but I'd never understood WHY. I'd always been very sniffy about those who could say only multiply if they'd learnt their times table by rote, but I was doing exactly the same thing, just on a topic a little bit more advanced.
2) Other thing I realized was that I was already doing some operations mentally in exactly the same way as some new technique in her book, that I'd never been taught. I'm unsure that everybody thinks in the same way and other techniques vary, but surely I'd have saved time if I'd been taught it - but then maybe it's the fact that my brain decided to solve them this way, that's made it stick for me.
Take for example the first test (47 x 75) ÷ 25
You can either know that you do the thing in the brackets first, then the thing outside - as you've learnt your rules. But stepping back and looking at it as a whole, it becomes trivial.
47 is a bit of a odd number, I'll leave that for now
I'm multiplying something by 75 and then dividing it by 25. So I'll throw those away and multiply by 3. Leaving me with 47 * 3
ah, 47 again. Well it's close enough to 50. So I'll do 50*3 giving me 150.
Finally time for the correction to my not knowing my 47 times table. I knocked off 3*3 to give me the easy 150, so just need to take the 9 off to give the 141.
I genuinely wonder if everybody else worked that out the same way, but it's now just the way my head works. Bit that annoyed me is that whenever I was taught anything, we were told "how to do it" - maybe education would be better if every teacher has to be able to explain 3 ways of approaching any problem. Better yet, rather than testing the student with the question and just getting a boolean pass/fail - the teacher should ask the pupil around their thought processes when they look at the problem - "talk me through it".
The chances of every coming across that particular question in the real world are practically nil. So the purpose of the question is to test whether the process is present in the pupil - yet maths papers NEVER seem to ask for this. From memory there was the 'show working' marks, but they just tended to dry up after the first mistake was made - and aren't particularly conducive to how I personally think (mental white-board and processing explained verbally).
I am a recent import from Canada to the US, working near 'Intelligently Designed' Dover, PA.
The amount of willful ignorance here in the US is shocking, even this far North.
This whole article is a symptom of the 'dumbing down' of the the US, embracing style over substance, abandoning reason for the sake of conformity.
The math questions are relatively easy (even for a sleepy dyslexic), I only had to grab a pen and paper for the hourly wages one.
Yes, there are smart people in the US, but the majority are afraid to think for themselves.
They gravitate towards the loud pompous idiots, and will ignore facts and the reality around them.
Current and past GOP candidates are a very sad commentary of American leadership (Palin for education czar, Gingrich for morals minister?).
The US is a quickly fading empire, willing to blame anyone and everyone (immigrants) but itself for becoming non-competitive in the world market.
It was a different test. The one he took was the 10th grade version. The one in the summary is 3 sample questions from each of the 4th and 8th grade tests
I can understand he might get some wrong and have forgotten others - but none?
My best guess is that he's pissed off with how the school board is being run, he's tried to get things changed and nobody is listening.
So he wants to go public. How does he get attention?
"Board member doesn't like tests"
"Board member didn't do as well on tests as he thought he would"
"Board member cannot do anything on test"
In his position I'd be selecting the headline, and then just filling in the test to ensure I got the one I wanted.
Maybe he just doesn't believe in math You know, everyone is entitled to their opinion!
thank god, i thought i was the only one that did math that way. (it feels sort of wrong, after learning to do it the 'traditional' way) disassembling the problem, rounding, cranking the generator, then fixing for the round. It works, its just makes your math teacher pull her hair out.
I've decided to Diversify my Holdings. I've divided my cash between my left and right pockets, instead of all in one.
For what it's worth, my first step was also to simplify * 75/25 to *3 .
The second step was also 50 * 3.
However, my third step was to look at the answers. Only one answer (141) was in the right ballpark. All the others were off by so much that they couldn't be right.
The 'guestimation' strategy fails at question 5 that has two answers that are very close to each other ($203.00 and $208.80). However, my mathematical instincts tell me that 203.00 is an unlikely outcome when multiplying with 29. I used a calculator to confirm my guess (as allowed by the test).
Orange County Florida board of education member Rick Roach took the 10th grade FCAT test. His less than stunning results were narrated by Marion Brady in the Washington Post.
The informal quiz on the Washington Post's web page has example questions from 4th and 8th grade questions by the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Visit the practice FCAT test page to download a practice FCAT math test and answer key. It's an entirely different kind of test than the one at the Washington Post's web site. Consider the very first question:
Believe it or not it is something I and many others do every. Sure we crank everything though spreadsheets and all sorts of other tools, but its always easy to place an extra zero, drop a zero or transpose number. At least if you have a ballpark figure you know if something is an order of magnitude off it can't possibly be right.
If it makes you feel any better, I work for a software company, and what you describe is exactly how I conduct interviews. I ask candidates to code, but I don't actually care that much if their program is bug-free. I care about how they go about doing it, and how they figure out solutions as I point out problems. I care more about the work they show than whether they happen to get this instance exactly right.
When I was growing up, my dad told me that none of the facts I learned all the way through high school mattered that much in the end, but what mattered is that going through it taught me HOW to learn.
I'm multiplying something by 75 and then dividing it by 25. So I'll throw those away and multiply by 3. Leaving me with 47 * 3 ah, 47 again. Well it's close enough to 50. So I'll do 50*3 giving me 150. Finally time for the correction to my not knowing my 47 times table. I knocked off 3*3 to give me the easy 150, so just need to take the 9 off to give the 141. I genuinely wonder if everybody else worked that out the same way, but it's now just the way my head works.
I personally did the first part the same way (47*3) but then did the multiplication directly (47*3=120+21=141). I did use the round+add/subtract afterwards in the 29-hour-wage question though.
Better yet, rather than testing the student with the question and just getting a boolean pass/fail - the teacher should ask the pupil around their thought processes when they look at the problem - "talk me through it".
Here in Czech republic, 7th or 8th graders do this in geometry. Part of the year is spent over writing down instructions how to construct given shapes (for example 30 degree angle using only compass and staightedge) or following such instructions in practice.
Everyone makes life changing decisions that involve maths - quite advanced math, at that - regularly. For instance, take this type of question:
Deadly disease X has a prevalence of 1 in 10,000. Consuming substance A reduces your risk by 80%. Deadly disease Y has a prevalence of 1 in 500. NOT consuming substance A reduces your risk by 20%. If this is all that is involved, should you or should you not consume substance A?
Many decisions we make involve things like this. If one lacks the ability to reduce the maths, how can one live?
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Tests from 2005 to 2007 are available at http://fcat.fldoe.org/fcatrelease.asp
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
I considered the 50*3 approach for an instant, but decided that 40*3 + 7*3 was easier because I do addition faster than subtraction.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
I do 47 * 3 like I would on paper: 7 * 3 + 4 * 3 * 10 (i.e. ((4 * 10) + 7) * 3)
But on the more complicated problem I used the following strategy:
28 / 4 = 7
8 / 4 = 2
so 288 / 40 = 7.2
7.2 * 29
is 7.2 * 30 - 7.2
is 72 * 3 - 7.2
is 216 - 8 + 0.8
is 208.8
I like doing problems like this in my head as I feel that it helps practise my short term memory.
As someone with a masters in maths and PhD in physics, this is the same way I did the calculation. In fact, I suspect it's the way anyone who knows some more advanced maths would do it: What you've effectively done (in maths language) is:
1) Use the associative property of multiplication and its inverse: (AB)C=A(BC).
2) Rewrite the unknown product 47*3 in terms of two known products, by first rewriting 47=50-3, thus (50-3)*3.
3) Expand the bracket: 47*3=50*3-3*3.
Now this is much akin to the 'normal' method used to teach kids, except they always expand their brackets in terms of positive numbers broken up by powers of 10, ie 47=40+7, however from a mathematical standpoint there's no reason not to use any splitting you like, only the expedience of learning a limited number of multiplications.
The true gift of good mathematicians is not only being able to make these thought processes, but properly explain them so that others can too. Far too often maths as it is taught is just a voodoo recipe for performing calculations rather than a well explained, reasoned setup. This is fine for people who merely have to perform the function (much as you don't need to know the workings of an internal combustion engine to drive a car) but if you want to derive a deeper understanding of what's going on its woefully insufficient.
I'd done fine at maths throughout school until mid-way through higher (roughly final year of highschool level) I was suddenly struggling. There were whole sections of the syllabus where I just couldn't see it. There'd be a question and I just couldn't grasp how to get from the info given to the solution required. I failed my mock exam, and not just marginally.
I was a "B maybe A" in all other classes. The teacher was pretty good and everything.
As luck would have it, my dad was friends with an engineer who offered some tutoring. First couple of sessions were straightforward and he said he didn't know what the problem was. He was giving me stuff that was as hard as it gets in the exam and I was able to solve them and explain it, not just following memorised procedures. Next session we came across something I just had no idea. He walked through solving it and one of the steps I was just what? I can't even remember what it was, some concept that once you have it you don't even think about it, like how you can multiply both sides of the equation to simplify. He'd barely started explaining it and I was like ooh - it just clicked.
We abandoned the sessions soon after that because I'd literally gone from being an D/E to a strong B student in but a moment of comprehension. I must have simply been off sick that day or something, and the specific weakness never picked up in marking - perhaps due to rather large class sizes. I suspect that's not the real root though. Mid-way through the year, the classes were shuffled and my desk partner was changed from a friend who I worked well with to someone I didn't know and pretty much didn't work with at all. It was probably about this time my grades began to fall and my friend's grades slipped as bad as mine (he was the other mock fail). But he wasn't as lucky as me, he didn't have a dad with an engineer friend, he failed the finals while I was a couple of points away from an A.
If I'm trying to visualize it, it's always easier for me to start with the 150 and then add or subtract from it as required. 150 is a nice rectangular shape I can hold on my head without too much effort. If I was say trying to hold 141, it would be a rectangle of 140 with an annoying little extra thing I'd have to remember with it.
Aggh, not explaining this well, probably best I'm not a teacher.
I think it just boils down to the fact that I firstly try to break the question down (obviously), but break it down into things I can hold easily in my head - and this guides how I choose to break it down. It's not the operations I find hard, it's the variables.
150 fits easily as say 'one visual unit'
141 is harder as just considering that number, I'm mentally holding that not as 141, but (14*10)+1. Everytime time I need to recall that number, there's 3 f'in parts of it to juggle, so I'd like to push these 'hard' variables towards the end of my thought process, so I have to deal with them for the absolutely minimum length of time.
Thinking it through even more, I have 'emotions' towards numbers. If I was just asked which number do I prefer, I'd choose 150 over 141. 150 feels friendly, 141 is a pain in the arse and I wish to spend as little time as possible even thinking about it.
That's why good multiple choice tests have ringer answers to short circuit this kind of logic. REALLY good multiple choice tests have the incorrect answers being the *right* answer for different mistakes. If there is an answer that's correct for (47 * 75) - 25, you know you need to get that kid glasses.
First, they cite the wrong exam. This school board member was not complaining about the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, but rather the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, or FCAT. (The NAEP test adjusts the skill level of its questions on the fly as you're taking the exam, and returns a score that is percentile-based. I'd actually like to see what this board member scores on the NAEP...it's a very good metric that can be used to measure one's skill level, and is not biased or corrupted by political influence.)
Second, the sample questions are misleading. Not only are they "4th grade" & "8th grade" leveled questions (not the 10th grade exam that this board member was complaining about), but even those questions are not as difficult as you will commonly find on a state exam. If you want to see the types of questions on the FCAT, you can look at the item sampler here.
I work in Education up in Minnesota. As you can see on page 13 of this report, there is a downward trend across grade levels in "percent proficiency." While the average joe might conclude that most 3rd grade teachers are fantastic while most 11th grade math teachers need to be fired, the skeptic while (rightfully) question the validity of the test. For example, on that table, you'll see that all the 2011 results are about 10-12% lower than their previous years (except the 11th grade). That's because, in 3rd - 8th grade that year, the state moved to a newer, more difficult exam which emphasizes heavier Algebraic understanding (with completion of Algebra I by 8th grade). Because the standards became more difficult, scores dropped. But the uninformed Joe would just conclude that teachers are getting lazier and use these results as a way to blame schools for not doing their job. (These changes to the standards have not affected the 11th grade yet, but will in two more years.)
I personally coached students for and administered the 11th grade exam last year at my school. The questions on the exam are not simple. Rather than throw traditional skill-based questions at you, the questions are worded in a very complex manner, requiring a deep level of understanding of the skills required to solve the problem in order to recognize which skills are required to solve the problem, much like that FCAT exam I linked to above. This test is not a valid metric of what students know or don't know; I saw one student personally who had no problems with the worksheets I provided him during our coaching sessions, but bombed the exam, not because he was stupid, but because he gets severe test anxiety. Other students told me that they just didn't understand what many of the questions were asking them to calculate.
The upper-level state exams are engineered to fail students, so that schools can be labeled failures. Particular politicians want schools to appear as though they are not doing a good job, to validate the privatization of our educational system. While you hear the expression "raising the bar," what they are really doing is increasing the failure rate. It's absurd what kids are being asked to accomplish; cognitive science has shown that what kindergartners and 1st grade students really should be doing is playing and reading, and we're trying to sit them down and teach them Algebra skills. (If you don't believe me, ask a 1st grade teacher in the state of Minnesota...even 1st grade standards now are engineered to incorporate "Algebraic thinking".) It's downright ludicrous, and it's all a political game.
My first step was to laugh at the "you can use a calculator" instruction - what the heck? What are they testing with this question?
He continued, “It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate.
Yeah, something is wrong. If he took a test with questions like the sample, how the hell did he manage to get a BS without the ability to figure even one of them out. "you can use a calculator"!!!!
I'd really, really, really like to review the original test now...
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Actually that was one of his complaints: it's almost impossible for any responsible adult to see or evaluate the tests. He had to pull strings to be allowed to take it, and he's a school board member.
I don't know whether he's right about the contents of the test, but he's absolutely correct that that degree of secrecy is not healthy - especially when students are being denied diplomas based on the test.
Especially once you realize that 3*7=21 and only one answer ended in 1.
That's why good multiple choice tests have ringer answers to short circuit this kind of logic. REALLY good multiple choice tests have the incorrect answers being the *right* answer for different mistakes. If there is an answer that's correct for (47 * 75) - 25, you know you need to get that kid glasses.
That's why making multiple choice tests (and grading them) is so frigging difficult to do very well. To do it completely perfectly you need to be able to predict all possible incorrect interpretations and be sure that none of your "wrong" answers are "right" in a way that you would want to give points for.
Of course, before you go through all that effort (or any formal evaluation for that matter) you should probably figure out exactly why you want to do the testing in the first place. If the point is to use the evaluation to assist in the learning then maybe time would be better spent by having the students create tests for each other and then go over them together in groups, or something "radical" like that. It is not clear that formal grades and exam scores out of 100 give any real benefit to the learning process.
Here is an old article by Alfie Kohn about reasons to question the whole process of formal grading:
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/grading.htm
GRADING
The Issue Is Not How but Why
By Alfie Kohn
Why are we concerned with evaluating how well students are doing? The question of motive, as opposed to method, can lead us to rethink basic tenets of teaching and learning and to evaluate what students have done in a manner more consistent with our ultimate educational objectives. But not all approaches to the topic result in this sort of thoughtful reflection. ....
If you can't do the math without a calculator, you should not be doing it!
Fight Spammers!
The test he took was the 10th grade one. The article says the example questions come from the 4th and 8th grade tests.
The 'guestimation' strategy fails at question 5 that has two answers that are very close to each other ($203.00 and $208.80). However, my mathematical instincts tell me that 203.00 is an unlikely outcome when multiplying with 29. I used a calculator to confirm my guess (as allowed by the test).
I calculated the hourly rate and found out that the last digit is not zero.
It is what it is.
When I studied in USSR, at the age of 8 (year 2, later 3) we learned multiplication tables from 2 to 9, and a table was always printed (in the form of a matrix -- ex: http://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/4517/17743163.28/0_54108_6ffd7748_XXL.jpg ) on the back cover of every "math" (5mm square-ruled as opposed to "language" wide-ruled) student's "thin" notebook (I think, each "thin" notebook had 24 or 36 pages but I may be wrong about the exact numbers). "Thin" notebook was always single-subject, supposed to be used for classroom and homework exercise only, it was graded after every assignment and discarded after being filled, so students wouldn't lug around old dirty notebooks with obsolete content. Same style of notebook was used in all years from 1 to 10 (later 11), so that table at the back of the notebook was constantly present in the student's life until graduation.
Multiplication by 0, 1 and 10 was studied as a special case, and multiplication by numbers higher than 10 was supposed to be calculated and never memorized.
I honestly don't know how it works in US, but apparently it's different.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
You still don't need the calculator. The problem is (29 * 288) / 40. Reduce that to (29 * 72)/10, and you immediately see the last digit must be 8.
See the relatively recent teacher cheating scandal in Atlanta: http://www.ajc.com/news/investigation-into-aps-cheating-1001375.html I don't see an issue with sharing copies of tests AFTER tests have been completed but sharing copies of tests with people like the guy in the article (who appears to be incompetent) is just asking for more cheating (people who don't support the notion of standardized tests or the content of the tests or who have a vested interest in their school looking good on the test may be inclined to cheat).
Right. Plus, he took the FCAT, but the article links to NAEP questions.
There are sample FCAT questions here: http://fcat.fldoe.org/pdf/sample/1011/math/FL522267_Gr10_Mth_TB_WT_r3g.pdf
Much harder and not the kind of math most people are doing as adults. The guy's point is that the test is bad and the math is disconnected from the math you really need in the world. He's got a point.
If you ask me 9*12, I'm still doing (10*12)-12
Nothing wrong with memorizing your 12-times table, just I can't see why you'd memorize that and not the 13-times.
My point (combined with that of another poster) is that if you teach up to 10x, the 11x and onwards seems a lovely point to break from rote learning and instead introduce long multiplication.
I'm not saying rote learning isn't important, it provides the foundations you need to build on. Additionally, as you perform mental arithmetic, you'll pretty much automatically memorize the 'sums' you use often. e.g. 25*3 I just know is 75. Doesn't mean I was ever told to learn 25*3 or 3*25 at primary school.
Then there's the ones you pick up later on, which are specific to what you do day to day. I know quite a few x*1024 multiples - but I'm not for one moment suggesting we formalize this for primary school children.
Parent post inspires me to raise a couple of points. Here is the first one:
He continued, “It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate.
So the guy is highly educated. To which the following aphorism applies:
Education is what you have left after you have forgotten everything you learned. --anon.
Will
How can you not know this as a grown up? Especially as a teacher. Honestly, everything except logarithms of decimal numbers isn't that hard once you figure out what's going on. Just requires some space in your memory and the ability to remember a number for a few iterations. On another note, this does say more about managers than about the difficulty of these tests.
Second of two points inspired by parent post:
If a school board member is incapable of passing the NAEP tests, how the hell can he function as a school board member? Would that not be like having a driver education instructor who cannot pass the drivers license examination? Yeah, lame, but at least it is a car analogy
Perhaps candidates for school board positions should be required to demonstrate a minimum level of competence in the subjects that high school graduates are supposed to have mastered.
Will
Yeah, something is wrong. If he took a test with questions like the sample, how the hell did he manage to get a BS without the ability to figure even one of them out. "you can use a calculator"!!!!
It depends on what the BS was in. A little more digging reveals this:
A resident of Orange County for three decades, he has a bachelor of science degree in education and two masters degrees: in education and educational psychology.
I'm not sure why the education undergrad degree was a BS, rather than a BA, but that, combined with the two master's degrees in education, explain a whole lot. He could probably have gone through all of those degrees, including the 15 hours towards a doctorate (by which he probably means an Ed.D., which is definitely not the same as a Ph.D.) without ever taking any math more advanced than basic algebra. Educational psychology might (and definitely should) have included basic statistics, but it might not have, and depending on the way the course was taught, might have been easy to skate through.
Also, being able to oversee a large budget tell me nothing about his math ability. It tells me he has basic Excel skills. If he thinks he doesn't need those math skills in his job, he probably doesn't realize how much more efficiently/accurately he could be doing his job if he did have and use them.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Except that some random Slashdotter managed to post a publicly available sample test, and another found publicly available copies of the actual tests from the last few years.
Impossible indeed.
... and be sure that none of your "wrong" answers are "right" in a way that you would want to give points for.
I was in a science class in middle school, and sometimes I would get back an exam that had an answer marked wrong that I had simply interpreted the question wrongly.. or something like that. Anyways, I would bring it to the teacher, explain my logic, and reasoning, and usually got a corrected grade for that question... probably more so, because I could explain my argument logically and rationally than for anything else. (I was like 12-ish, give me a break, I don't remember details.)
Of course, in college, I had a TA mark a problem dealing with induction that I did as wrong. I brought it to the professor, and he noted that it was indeed correct, and he ended up scolding the TA for marking my test wrong. Oddly, it was kind of a fallacious argument that the professor made. Basically, like, "I know this student is good, and is likely going to have the right answer, and you're in the wrong for not recognizing that." But then, the TA marked me wrong because I didn't fit his happy rote-memory version of what was correct, rather than me actually being wrong... so in a way, the TA kind of did deserve the scolding because he was grading brainlessly...
I guess the point of my whole post is: students who can explain why they should be right should not be afraid to bring such concerns to the teacher. If a student is right just by dumb luck, they don't really deserve to be right at all, but a student who is actually thinking and reasoning deserves to be right even if his answer doesn't match the answer in the book. (That being said, (45 x 75) / 24 = 141, regardless of the explanation that the student gives...)
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"That's why making multiple choice tests (and grading them) is so frigging difficult to do very well. To do it completely perfectly you need to be able to predict all possible incorrect interpretations and be sure that none of your "wrong" answers are "right" in a way that you would want to give points for."
Tests are better planned than you think. When you construct a (good) test, all of the answers are put there BECAUSE they tell you something specific about the person taking the test. That's why on four answer questions you'll usually see that one answer is right, one answer is absolutely wrong (i.e. the test taker was guessing wildly) and the other two are the answers that the test taker would arrive at if they didn't understand something.
This can be done for two reasons.
First, it allows test takers who understand the subject well enough to eliminate some of the answers a better chance of getting the right answer, which (indirectly) gives students partial credit for partial knowledge.
Second, test can be scored with different values for different 'wrong' answers. For example, 'right' might be worth 5 points, 'wrong' might be worth 0 points, and the 'close' answers might be worth 2 points, explicitly giving students partial credit for partial knowledge.
And if the testing system is really smart, it can analyze the right and wrong answers and give better guidance to the instructor so that they know to provide specific guidance to the student. For example, if someone repeatly subtracts instead dividing, perhaps they're confused about what the division symbol means, so they can get help with that specifically. Or, as someone else in the discussion pointed out, if they read the division symbol as "+" then perhaps they need glasses. Most scoring systems don't do this, but some do. :-)
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Exams aren't supposed to benefit the learning process, they are supposed to test that the learning actually took place. They can benefit the teaching process, because analyzing the answers helps the teacher improve their methods.
Of course they are supposed to benefit the learning process! That is the whole point of the schooling system. If they are providing no educational benefit then why waste the time and effort doing them?
Raise the 12m long wall first, then lay the 5m long wall against it. Raise the 5m long wall.
Actually, it's a trick question, all the wood you used to make the walls were warped pieces of crap, which is all the lumber stores seem to sell these days.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Basic maths not useful in real world? Lets see - How much paint do I need to cover a wall? Gallon of paint says it covers X square feet, wall is LxH, so multiply and divide (then add a bit extra for spills). I guess he also has someone to help with his taxes, and help evaluate investments. And never makes use of any engineered products. Sigh.
Here's a link with some sample grade 10 questions: High school math
"Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house." -- R.A.H
The school board member took a test for tenth graders. The sample questions are for fourth and eighth graders. The impression given by submitter and editor is not supported by the evidence presented.
It should be illegal to say that freedom of speech should be limited.
No, that's how you are supposed to do the math if you understand it. Teachers who demand rote following of the rules are idiots and I will say that without any reservations, to their face, and I will never ever apologize for there's no need to when stating facts. Feynman was completely right about that.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
So, because this businessperson / board member didn't know a single answer on the math test, and only scored 62% on the reading test, you think the person is not stupid?
Here's the links to the FCAT tests: http://fcat.fldoe.org/fcatrelease.asp
And here's the direct link to the Grade 10 testbook with answers: http://fcat.fldoe.org/pdf/releasepdf/06/FL06_Rel_G10M_AK_Cwf001.pdf
Here's an example question which this person apparently got wrong:
And here's another:
Those problems are equivalent to (and actually easier than, IMHO) the 8th grade salary-based word problem. The article says that this board member is actually responsible for the budget at a multi-million dollar company. If this person seriously can't calculate percentages, and seriously thinks that this skill is not useful in anyone's everyday life, this person is a moron. Also, all of this person's supposedly business-savvy friends are morons, since they also somehow don't see the value in calculating profit as the difference between gross sales and expenses.