Comment on Close enough for government work
NeptuneOrbit@lemmy.world 2 weeks agoYeah I mean in some cases it’s not hard to surmise. Given the context (class, diagram) and how many numbers you have assigned, what formulas are available to you, you might be able to guess the teacher shoved the numbers into the wrong formulas to create the incorrect answers. For some classes simply supplying nearby numbers to the correct response might not be “real” enough.
Student logic is certainly a thing, but I can’t image it much help for the complexity shown in the meme. Basic geometry or math word problems as found in biology or statistics? Yeah sure
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
A teacher mentioned i had a skill for calculated guesses and my first though was “Why aren’t you teaching me to hone the skills i am good at rather then forcing me to do it in a way i have an handicap (memory).
NeptuneOrbit@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Because actually learning will do both. Learning only calculated guesses will only really teach you how to deal with manufactured scenarios. I won’t really even serve you much past high school.
webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
I have to disagree. Being able to obtain close enough accurate results without needing to calculate or measure is incredibly useful on a daily basis.
Ever had to pick the right size drill or screwdriver bit out of a mix? Thats the kind of skill this most often relates to.
combined with real measurement it becomes intuitive knowledge to verify my own measurements.
In school i just had to do extra work to be able to write down a formula. I agree thats not useful but i was still practicing the same algebra to do so.
Trying to remember the formulas from my head turned out to be literally impossible for me. I got a diagnosis post education and i may explain why i developed this ability from need to make up for my disability.
NeptuneOrbit@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Sure.
But if their isn’t some human author to your problem, student logic will be way less helpful than logic actually honed by learning how to learn.
sukhmel@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
What you provide as an example isn’t quite what is called an educated guess, more like the ability to subitize and estimate well. Those skills are more likely to be improved only with experience and the teacher would not be able to help hone them really.
With what you said about visualizing and feeling what an answer could be, I would expect there to be some form of synergy between your ability to grasp the formulae and the mentioned ability to estimate things. With this the teacher could have helped by teaching you properties and basics about different formulae, but the problem with that approach is that you will at some point stumble upon a limitation of what can be guessed and will likely not know about it.