PhotoMath Solves Math Problems via Video
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@Dashrender said:
As the husband of a math teacher - The whole point of showing work is three fold:
1 - you're not cheating
2 - If you make a mistake, the teacher can see where you made it and try to help you
3 - See that you are actually learning/doing a process which becomes more important the further down the road you get.1 - This only helps catch that a little, and cheating really only hurts the cheater. This is like refusing to help someone out of a well with rope because you fear that they will hang themselves. What other class cares about the journey and not the destination? English class doesn't make you "build up sentences" to prove you didn't copy them.
2 - True, but this doesn't explain punishment for not doing it. It's the opposite, in fact.
3 - I don't buy this one. If you can do the work with fewer steps and find it intuitive you are in better shape. Showing rudimentary work once the problems are trivial makes no sense unless your goal is so slow people down because they are too far ahead.
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There is a reason why it's the "normal" class work that tends to require this stuff and not the competitive math stuff, the stuff that really gets you into colleges and gets scholarships. Punishing the good students in the hopes of helping the middling students is bad practice. It's "no child left behind" which is just the nice marketing speak for "no child gets ahead."
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
As the husband of a math teacher - The whole point of showing work is three fold:
1 - you're not cheating
2 - If you make a mistake, the teacher can see where you made it and try to help you
3 - See that you are actually learning/doing a process which becomes more important the further down the road you get.1 - This only helps catch that a little, and cheating really only hurts the cheater. This is like refusing to help someone out of a well with rope because you fear that they will hang themselves. What other class cares about the journey and not the destination? English class doesn't make you "build up sentences" to prove you didn't copy them.
2 - True, but this doesn't explain punishment for not doing it. It's the opposite, in fact.
3 - I don't buy this one. If you can do the work with fewer steps and find it intuitive you are in better shape. Showing rudimentary work once the problems are trivial makes no sense unless your goal is so slow people down because they are too far ahead.
I agree with Scott. Being forced to show work on problems I could easily do in my head and get right 99 times out of 100 was tedious and frustrating. Also, a lot of teachers looked for specific patterns, and if you didn't follow those patterns, you'd be marked as wrong .
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As someone who is Aspy and doesn't solve problems the way that other kids did, this was very frustrating and made learning math hard, slow and boring. It made school painful and didn't allow me to exploit my nature learning abilities and forced me to be useless.
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@Dashrender That is understood, but it's part of the "one-size-fits-all" educational approach that I hate so much. As a former straight-A student with a math major and a 98.9 GPA, I don't think there was anyone questioning whether I understood the process, or whether I had any reason or desire to cheat. Some kids got discouraged by how easy it all came to me, and the teachers (some, not most) would look for ways to knock a point off here and there to keep me as close to the "norm" as possible. It happened in more than just math class, and I even had teachers laugh as they openly admitted, to my face, that was exactly what they were doing. It wasn't fair to the average kids that I was too smart, and I was therefore penalized in a sad attempt to maintain the status quo. Case in point; I get 100% of the correct answers on the one test that matters for the course, and I get 3 points deducted because I didn't write down quite enough of the steps for some of the problems. I even made a point of writing down way more than I did for any assignment all year long. I think I finished about 20 minutes before the next person, so I "obviously didn't take enough time", or some BS like that.
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@scottalanmiller said:
As someone who is Aspy and doesn't solve problems the way that other kids did, this was very frustrating and made learning math hard, slow and boring. It made school painful and didn't allow me to exploit my nature learning abilities and forced me to be useless.
Yes, Scott used to rub sticks together to solve math problems. Sadly, he was robbed of his "nature learning abilities" and forced to assimilate.
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It's a means of discourages kids who like math, that's for sure. It might help someone who is struggling, but those who struggle with math are unlikely to use much of it, no matter how much they are pushed to learn, in high school. Most jobs require essentially no math and most of the population retains no math from high school after graduation. The only real bad outcome is if those who do enjoy and excel at math are discouraged. That kind of forcing people to show steps makes math students, especially, reconsider math and science jobs to a large degree because it discourages them from taking math in college or, in many cases, going on to college at all.
It hurts those that we should be encouraging (in math) the most while encouraging those that aren't self motivated, are trying to cheat or just aren't that interested.
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@scottalanmiller said:
It's a means of discourages kids who like math, that's for sure. It might help someone who is struggling, but those who struggle with math are unlikely to use much of it, no matter how much they are pushed to learn, in high school. Most jobs require essentially no math and most of the population retains no math from high school after graduation. The only real bad outcome is if those who do enjoy and excel at math are discouraged. That kind of forcing people to show steps makes math students, especially, reconsider math and science jobs to a large degree because it discourages them from taking math in college or, in many cases, going on to college at all.
It hurts those that we should be encouraging (in math) the most while encouraging those that aren't self motivated, are trying to cheat or just aren't that interested.
Very true, at least from my own perspective.
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For me it was actually the college math professors, no the high school ones, that drove me away from math and engineering. I knew more math in high school than I did in college, my professors were so bad that I actually lost abilities that I already had because they taught me so much bad stuff. It was so discouraging and such a waste of my time that it was the primary reason why I dropped out of college.
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@scottalanmiller Yeah, I honestly never went to college because all of the applications required writing essays. I hate writing essays, ergo, I never filled out a single application.
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OK Speaking of math - what do you guys think of Common Core?
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Don't ask.
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Oh boy as homeschooling parents don't get us all started on that one.
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@thanksaj said:
I agree with Scott. Being forced to show work on problems I could easily do in my head and get right 99 times out of 100 was tedious and frustrating. Also, a lot of teachers looked for specific patterns, and if you didn't follow those patterns, you'd be marked as wrong .
This, I had this argument with multiple math teachers in high school and college. If I can arrive at the same answer as you do while going through a different process (on paper or in my head) why am I being marked for that process.
The argument that I received is that it wouldn't work every time... when asked to give me an example they would rattle off a problem that was in the same form as the one before... either they didn't realize it or thought it was more difficult... when I gave them the answer, one of the teachers had to do it on paper to ensure I was correct. Frustrating to say the least.
Of course after 6 years of college (both grad and undergrad) I can no longer do even simple math problems in my head... which is even more frustrating then being confronted by a teacher.
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@coliver said:
This, I had this argument with multiple math teachers in high school and college. If I can arrive at the same answer as you do while going through a different process (on paper or in my head) why am I being marked for that process.
Logic would state that it is equally as likely that the teacher should be marked wrong. You each have your own process and there is no way to know which process is better. It is equally as wrong to show work as to not show work or to use one reliable process as another reliable process, in that case.
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@coliver said:
This, I had this argument with multiple math teachers in high school and college. If I can arrive at the same answer as you do while going through a different process (on paper or in my head) why am I being marked for that process.
Unless the instructions tell you to use a specific method, using a method other than the one they want shouldn't be counted against you.
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@Dashrender said:
OK Speaking of math - what do you guys think of Common Core?
The whole CC thing is so complicated and convoluted that as a parent, it is impossible to determine what is actually CC, what is just made up and what is an attempting implementation of the CC and not the CC itself. I can't really judge the CC very well, only the results of it. The results appear to be a complete abandonment of education in America. But is that the CC's fault or is that just the CC providing an excuse for schools to do less. I can't tell.
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@Dashrender said:
OK Speaking of math - what do you guys think of Common Core?
I've heard of the nonsense that is Common Core.
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What can you expect? The American model for education promotes mediocrity, while giving lip service to excellence.
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I read something last year (more earlier) about how our education system is actually just a way to keep the masses down. I personally don't believe that to be true - but I'll definitely give you that we are not using the best methods for teaching.
Global online individual learning is probably the way we need to go. Now just to find out how to build it and financially support it.
