Easy Marks
I just finished grading half of the first set of Math025 exams (the version A ones). Usual types of errors, but one problem was SO bad that I almost wish I were the con artist type. Seriously. Problem states that the price with 5% tax was $106.25. What was the original price? Nearly every answer was LARGER than 106.25, some by several THOUSAND. Yikes. I mean, if nothing else, common sense should have told them something was wrong. So I'd like to sell them something that was worth, say, $100, then tell them that with sales tax it came to $1000. Not sure that many of them would know the difference. I think maybe one student actually got it right, and one was almost there (multiplied by 0.95 instead of dividing by 1.05), but the rest... I hope when they go shopping they have a math-guru along.
4 comments:
That is just sad. I bet they all complain that they'll never need math in real life anyway, too.
LOL. Yeah.
Oh, another question went something like: "It's 21 miles from Pocatello to Blackfoot. Robert is biking at 14 mph. How long to get there?"
I had one or two people tell me over 10 hours! (Thankfully, MOST students got that one).
I wonder if they realize that they do this kind of thing every time they drive home ofr the weekend.
Yeah. The thing that puzzles me is that I've had students who could figure out the answer to semi-complicated word problems in their head, but as soon as you ask them to write an equation for it, they go blank. They're DOING the equation in their heads, whether they realize it or not.
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