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Admit your Brain lock

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nctnico:

--- Quote from: coppice on April 03, 2024, 02:44:02 pm ---
--- Quote from: Siwastaja on April 03, 2024, 11:50:23 am ---I was straight-A full scores in mathematics in high school

--- End quote ---
I find it amusing when younger people say this. When I was at school I never got above 93% in maths. All answers correct. All workings shown. That got me 93% consistently. 70% would get you an A, as the questions were tough enough that this restricted those As to less than 10% of students. I find the expectation that anyone but a genius on a good day would get 100% on an exam an indictment of that exam. A well formed exam should be able to separate even the top 1% of student's performances in that exam.

--- End quote ---
I find this an odd reasoning. If you have all the answers correct, you should get a 100% score. I'm not opposed to including more complicated questions to get from 70% to 100% though.

Then again I have had my fair share of inconsistent teachers. Like one who taught digital logic design and made tests where you could score 110%. And at one point I fail a math test while having all answers correct. I missed a few classes due to illness so my father (who is rather math savvy) helped me to catch up with math but made me use me the wrong (according to the teacher) method to get to the right answer  :palm:

Zero999:

--- Quote from: tggzzz on April 04, 2024, 08:27:05 am ---
--- Quote from: Zero999 on April 04, 2024, 07:06:21 am ---
--- Quote from: tggzzz on April 03, 2024, 11:06:09 pm ---
--- Quote from: Zero999 on April 03, 2024, 09:19:55 pm ---
--- Quote from: IanB on April 03, 2024, 02:36:22 pm ---
--- Quote from: Zero999 on April 03, 2024, 12:38:09 pm ---A simple example:
VC(t) = ϵ(1−e−t/τ)

--- End quote ---

There may be a kind of analogy here with natural language. When I read and write, I don't see words as a group of letters, I seem them as pictures. Hence I quickly sense if a word is spelled incorrectly because when I see it the picture looks wrong.

When I look at the equation above, I also don't see a formula, I see pictures. I see voltage as a function of time, and I see that being a small number scaling a first order rise with a given time constant.

(If ϵ does not actually represent a small number, then that would be a poor choice of symbol in the equation.)

--- End quote ---
I just see letter and numbers. I read ϵ and e and t and τ the same. Then there's the nonsense of having lower and upper case in the same formula.

--- End quote ---

OK, so you literally can't comprehend the formula. Shame, but that the "fault" lies with you, not with maths or the notation.
--- End quote ---
Oh course I understand the formula. I just read it as numbers and letters. The notation is at fault because it would be easier to learn, if it didn't use similar letters.  |O

--- End quote ---

Well, that is a clearer statement. Because you have difficulty distinguishing between different letters, the notation everybody uses is wrong.

Provided the semantics of the equation and variables is adequately described/understood, I don't see any strong cause for complaint.

--- End quote ---
It isn't just me who has this issue.

There are 26 letters in the alphabet, which should be more than enough.

Not using weird symbols and upper lower case v and V would greatly improve the accessibility of mathematics.


--- Quote from: IanB on April 04, 2024, 01:24:19 pm ---This thread has been a bit of a revelation to me.

Previously, I would not have imagined that there are people who might have trouble seeing the difference between \$t\$ and \$\tau\$ in a formula. Or who might not make the immediate mental association that \$t\$ = "time" and that \$\tau\$ = "time constant".

Or that it is natural that both symbols are different forms of "t", since both symbols represent time and correspondingly have the same dimensions. It is thus a deliberate choice to have things this way, and the association of "t" with time would be lost if different symbols were used.

--- End quote ---
It's a bit confusing, when printed, although I can normally handle it, but I don't stand a chance of being able to write it down, without making an error. :palm:


--- Quote from: nctnico on April 04, 2024, 01:48:50 pm ---
--- Quote from: coppice on April 03, 2024, 02:44:02 pm ---
--- Quote from: Siwastaja on April 03, 2024, 11:50:23 am ---I was straight-A full scores in mathematics in high school

--- End quote ---
I find it amusing when younger people say this. When I was at school I never got above 93% in maths. All answers correct. All workings shown. That got me 93% consistently. 70% would get you an A, as the questions were tough enough that this restricted those As to less than 10% of students. I find the expectation that anyone but a genius on a good day would get 100% on an exam an indictment of that exam. A well formed exam should be able to separate even the top 1% of student's performances in that exam.

--- End quote ---
I find this an odd reasoning. If you have all the answers correct, you should get a 100% score. Then again I have had my fair share of inconsistent teachers. Like one who taught digital logic design and made tests where you could score 110%. And at one point I fail a math test while having all answers correct. I missed a few classes due to illness so my father (who is rather math savvy) helped me to catch up with math but made me use me the wrong (according to the teacher) method to get to the right answer  :palm:


--- End quote ---
If a maths teacher only gives 93% or over 100%, when all the answers are correct, complete with working, then he or she doesn't deserve their job, because they clearly don't understand percentages.

If you showed your method and arrived at the answer using logic, not just guesswork, then your method is the right one. The exception being the exam question specified which method to use, i.e. use mesh analysis to calculated the voltages in a resistor network and you used a different one.

IanB:

--- Quote from: Zero999 on April 04, 2024, 01:53:39 pm ---If a maths teacher only gives 93% or over 100%, when all the answers are correct, complete with working, then he or she doesn't deserve their job, because they clearly don't understand percentages.
--- End quote ---

As I observed above, there is typically, in fairness to all candidates, a defined marking scheme for exams. For each question, there are certain elements that have to be provided to get the marks. If you correctly provide all the elements required for a question, you get all the marks. If you do this for all questions, you should get full marks.

tggzzz:

--- Quote from: IanB on April 04, 2024, 01:24:19 pm ---Previously, I would not have imagined that there are people who might have trouble seeing the difference between \$t\$ and \$\tau\$ in a formula. Or who might not make the immediate mental association that  = "time" and that \$\tau\$ = "time constant".

Or that it is natural that both symbols are different forms of "t", since both symbols represent time and correspondingly have the same dimensions. It is thus a deliberate choice to have things this way, and the association of "t" with time would be lost if different symbols were used.

--- End quote ---

Agreed.

It would not, however, be wrong to use a different symbol for time and \$t\$ for something else - provided it was clearly stated. Nonetheless, that would be bad taste since avoiding following a "design pattern" would violate "the principle of least surprise".

Unfortunately too many schematics ignore design patterns :(

tggzzz:

--- Quote from: nctnico on April 04, 2024, 01:48:50 pm ---I missed a few classes due to illness so my father (who is rather math savvy) helped me to catch up with math but made me use me the wrong (according to the teacher) method to get to the right answer  :palm:

--- End quote ---

In the UK I was impressed about how teaching arithmetic to 7-11 year olds had improved.

In my day it was "follow the algorithm" - which was admittedly useful when I've had to implement floating point arithmetic! Nowadays they are taught that you can get the right answer by several different "successive approximations", e.g. 99y is easily calculated as 100y-y. That encourages a much better "feel" for the "shape" of numbers and arithmetic.

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