Why Won’t My Child Show Any Work?

https://artofproblemsolving.com/news/articles/why-wont-my-child-show-any-work

by ALEXISGENIUS • 7 years ago

21 5 7 years ago

artofproblemsolving.com

kazinator• 7 years ago

Just re-compile the child with -O0, and step through it in gdb.

masonic• 7 years ago

What if he lost the source?

jimmydddd• 7 years ago

I agree with the general point of this article. But it's interesting that it seems to leave out one of the main reasons to show your work when in SCHOOL -- partial credit. If a student goes off course during an early step in a multi-step problem, the teacher will often give credit for steps performed correctly after the incorrect step (in the US--not sure about other countries). If the student doesn't shown their work, they will receive 0/40 points for a wrong answer, instead of, say, 30/40.

rhoyerboat• 7 years ago

as a student who didn't understand why I was getting it right more often when I wasn't showing my work, the assignment of credit based on this frustrated my education immensely.

figured out, a decade later, doing remedial math to get into calculus, that i was just a touch dyslexic. it had made me vulnerable to some seemingly algorithmic multiple-choice test trickery in their remedial math program, and explained where the requirements to show work had helped me to develop the wrong answer, so many times in high school.

understanding this and being able to give myself a pass where i could expect to transpose some variables .. i was actually sort-of talented and more importantly, i actually enjoyed it ..

tialaramex• 7 years ago

Weird. The reason Britain moved heavily away from trying to teach kids to "quickly" do mental arithmetic without workings is that that's almost completely useless. A machine will always be faster, more reliable and readily available. "Teach children to be good at mental arithmetic" is a non-goal in the 21st century.

The goal instead is to get them to understand what's actually going on - why 7 x 9 = 63 rather than merely the fact that it is, and the workings help assess that's achieved.

This really annoys parents, a parent who has maybe a B in GCSE maths from 1990 looks at their kid's homework and is appalled, why is my capable eight year old not jumping from 17 x 9 straight to 153 without all this nonsense?

Well, because we taught them to think about the number line, which means whereas for you exponentiation was a struggle and the hyper operators a mystery it will all make sense to these kids later because it's the same trick they already learned only more so.

Why Won’t My Child Show Any Work?

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