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.
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.
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.
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.
My father was once given 96% on an exam (probably maths) on the principal that nobody should be able to get 100%
It's odd (what coppice said). Mathematics does not have fuzzy marking like, say, a language exam. If you get all answers correct, you would get 100%.
A simple example:
VC(t) = ϵ(1−e−t/τ)
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.)
It's odd (what coppice said). Mathematics does not have fuzzy marking like, say, a language exam. If you get all answers correct, you would get 100%. There is a marking scheme with marks allocated to each question according to each part of the answer that needs to be provided to obtain the marks. For someone to get 93% that means that marks were dropped somewhere, probably due to not providing some expected element of some answers, or maybe by being incorrect in some answers that were given.
A simple example:
VC(t) = ϵ(1−e−t/τ)
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.)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.
It's even worse when I write it down because my handwriting is very slow and scruffy. My hand doesn't do as it's told and sometimes I just randomly write the wrong letter for no reason. I was diagnosed with dyslexia, but probably have dyspraxia, as my reading is fine.
Mathematics is great in that it's either right or wrong, which isn't the case with other softer subjects, but that means there's less room for error. I can misspell words and the sentence still makes sense, but miswriting a symbol or number would lose me more marks.
It's odd (what coppice said). Mathematics does not have fuzzy marking like, say, a language exam. If you get all answers correct, you would get 100%. There is a marking scheme with marks allocated to each question according to each part of the answer that needs to be provided to obtain the marks. For someone to get 93% that means that marks were dropped somewhere, probably due to not providing some expected element of some answers, or maybe by being incorrect in some answers that were given.Unfortunately, mathematics is not what is used to be in the minds of some people. Get a load of this nonsense.
It's odd (what coppice said). Mathematics does not have fuzzy marking like, say, a language exam. If you get all answers correct, you would get 100%. There is a marking scheme with marks allocated to each question according to each part of the answer that needs to be provided to obtain the marks. For someone to get 93% that means that marks were dropped somewhere, probably due to not providing some expected element of some answers, or maybe by being incorrect in some answers that were given.Unfortunately, mathematics is not what is used to be in the minds of some people. Get a load of this nonsense.
WOW. In these four pages there is a small amount of truth and potential added value. Buried among a lot of trash, and wit much opportunity to misunderstand the little that is useful.
A simple example:
VC(t) = ϵ(1−e−t/τ)
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.)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.
OK, so you literally can't comprehend the formula. Shame, but that the "fault" lies with you, not with maths or the notation.
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
A simple example:
VC(t) = ϵ(1−e−t/τ)
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.)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.
OK, so you literally can't comprehend the formula. Shame, but that the "fault" lies with you, not with maths or the notation.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.
I was straight-A full scores in mathematics in high schoolI 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.
A simple example:
VC(t) = ϵ(1−e−t/τ)
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.)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.
OK, so you literally can't comprehend the formula. Shame, but that the "fault" lies with you, not with maths or the notation.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.
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.
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.
I was straight-A full scores in mathematics in high schoolI 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.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
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.
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.
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
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.
There are 26 letters in the alphabet, which should be more than enough.
There are 26 letters in the alphabet, which should be more than enough.But who says the alphabet you are using is THE alphabet to use for math? There are so many different sets of symbols in use across the globe. Think about Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek to name only a few. Unicode defines about 150000 different characters. In math and science quite a few Greek characters have a special meaning like lowercase tau, upper case delta and last but not least, lower case pi. You really have to consider math a language in itself.
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.