Ready for one more bizarre conversation?
Snowflake: I don't see why I missed this problem.
EMH: Oh, you mean the one with 2x=1.
Snowflake: Yeah, problem 4. I thought I did it right, I mean don't you just divide both sides by 2?
EMH: Yes.
Snowflake: So, doesn't that mean that the answer is 2?
EMH: No, it means that the answer is 1/2.
Snowflake: (clueless look)
Snowflake: Shouldn't we write the answer as 0.5 then?
EMH: No. You write the answer as x=1/2. But that has nothing to do with why you lost points.
Snowflake: (another clueless look) Then why did I lose points?
EMH: Because you wrote the answer as x=2.
What do you tell Someone who thinks that 1/2 and 2 are equal?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDMqZB10o8o
But that can be the answer for so, so many questions...
Or you give them a job at verizon...
DeleteI'm curious why 0.5 would not be correct.
ReplyDeleteThat was my question, but you were only telling the student to "write it as" 1/2 - to make sure they grasped the concept, presumably. Which, I gather, they did not do.
DeleteIncidentally my children in middle school pretty much have this concept down. So I'm a little concerned here ...
During a quiz this week a student started digging in his bag for a forbidden calculator. When I challenged him, he loudly objected that he couldn't multiply.
ReplyDeleteThe challenging math? X= a - 2b
a and b were given.
You really can't make this shit up.
Yeah, but math is hard as hell.
ReplyDeleteSomeone remind me to thank my mother for making me practice my multiplication tables when I was seven.
ReplyDeleteThis fool is so dependent on calculators, he or she can't see that 0.5 = 1/2. Life loves its ironies: when we use machines to do our thinking for us, it doesn't make us smarter.
ReplyDelete"What do you tell someone who thinks that 1/2 and 2 are equal?"
DeleteYou are a dumbass.
So they can't do math and they can't read or write. What's left?
ReplyDeleteYou don't really want an answer to that question Here are some possibilites:
Delete- Understand spoken English (or any other language)
- Stay awake for minutes at a time
- Chew their own food
The first one is already becoming a problem: i have colleagues reporting that step-by-step instructions are hard for some students to follow.
Everything short of wiping their butts for them!
DeleteWow, memories of 5th grade math.
ReplyDelete