The “show your work” is about checking if you understand the logic in getting the answer. We had lots of questions out of 5. Right answer was only worth 1 mark, the other 4 were the steps and reasoning.
This type of setup punishes those that skip right to the answer, or have memorized answers. But rewards those that show they know the concepts
I think you are missing the point about the goal of schooling, it is not to get correct answers but to teach people methods of problem solving, so when faced with a brand new problem you can extrapolate methods and find a solution. As acedemia progresses solutions are not possible in your head, so applying principles is the goal.
So, by your logic, any student who doesn’t conform to the specific, approved processes and methodology is therefore wrong, is that it?
Tell me, do you value the perspectives of others, or are you concrete in the surety that yours is always the infallible way? Is everyone who does something differently from the way you do it, wrong?
What do you hope to gain in your escalation of commitment? Or is lecturing me its own reward?
Having gone forward from high school to undergrad, to half a dozen graduate schools, I do think I’m at least somewhat privy to the methodologies of academia- in fact, I even studied process design at MIT, among other things. What I find most, is that rigid thinking is more susceptible to Group Think than allowing room for alternative paths to a desired outcome.
Does that make me right, and you wrong? Or vice versa? No, probably not in either case. But it certainly doesn’t make you right in an absolute sense, which is the sentiment you seem to be pushing.
I was explaining why they want you to show your work. I work with a lot of engineers who got the right answers on tests in university, but you give them a unique problem they can’t reason out a new method to solve it. This is why testing wants you to show your work so somebody can check you are connecting the dots of reasoning.
All they would have to do tgough is make the question multipart, so step A asks for a certain portion, step b asks for next portion, and so on.
Passing University doesn’t always mean you can think. Granted other testing is needed to assist non typical learners
I was always a space cadet in class, falling behind, but accelled in testing, add on top that I sucked at showing my work, and my teacher was adamant that I must be cheating somehow.
Maybe you do, but some arrive at the answer using the wrong techniwue that doesnt work when the equation is altered. There is no way you are doing calculus and functions and relations in your head. Process and method is the important part.
By you, I mean plural you. Like a prof has a class of people to ensure they grasp the fundamental underlying concept, not just running through the paces. For a personal example, I had a Descriptive Geometey course in college. Early stuff is easy, later techniques for finding shortest distance between two topologies in 3d space based of 2 flat images are complex. I was working 50 hours a week and just had a kid, so my level of focus on this course was too low. For the exam I did not know all the mulitprojection methods well enough to solve them, so I just used my ability to imagine the spatial shape, and sketched them down. Turned out my guesses were good and got highest mark. Prof gave me kudos in front of class on how well i had completed it. But in fact I really had no clue hoe to solve the complex topologies properly. Had he asked for the staging projecrtions to be turned in I would have failed the course. This is what I meant by getting the right answers doean’t test that “you” know the underlying concepts.
i typed a bunch, but it disappeared. I will try again. For example I had a topology descriptive geometry solving exam, I had not had time to learn how it was done due to job/life events.
I used my spatial sense to sketch up the solutions, because I didn’t know the methods well enough to actually solve it. Got a great mark on the exam, prof gave me kudos in front of class. So while my faked end solutions passed the check, had the prof asked for the projection stage sheets to be turned in (showing how you work through the problem) I would have failed.
Right answers don’t mean you know the material. And by you I mean the plural you, not you personally.
The profs are aaking to see work to see if you know the principles. People can arrive at an answer that looks right by doing the wrong things
Ok but forcing me to show my work was one of those things I hated until I was extremely grateful for it. I didn’t need to show my work to prove my answer was correct in elementary school, but it was a slow drift from “I can do it in my head with ease” to “I need to document my steps so I can check where the error occurred”. Also “it’s not enough to be correct, you need to be correct with evidence” is the reality for people who do math for a living
I had to retake an algebra 2 exam multiple times because they thought I was cheating- including sitting IN the principal’s office, yet the scores were all within points of each other.
They were so fucking salty about it too when there was no “gotcha.” I wish I could time travel back to advocate for myself, because I would have TORN THEM A NEW ONE. My parents were apathetic cowards.
I would have sued them personally for defamation just under the small claims court amount ($10k) with a jury demand. Small claims cases in my state cannot be dismissed for cause of action. They could ask for a summary judgement, but that would still cost more in attorneys fees than just settling.
I deconstructed the underlying methodology of the creator of the system in order to understand their internalized blind spots or artificial limitations imposed on them by unrelated third parties at the time of the systems creation.
It’s funny, because in high school, I remember getting poor marks on proofs - and HATING them - because I was like “this is so fucking obvious jesus tap dancing christ” and just… skipped lots of steps.
Fast forward to college and logic theory: that ended up being one of my favorite classes, because machine theory and problem reduction is a fascinating domain, and FAR more interesting than “prove this shape is the shape we say it is” or whatever vapid bullshit they had us doing in high school.
Lol I hated this too, I really did. But like a lot of answers here, I can appreciate it somewhat now. Especially when trying to learn to code.
I think learning to break down problems might even be MORE valuable to people like us with ADHD, even if we hate it, because we tend to intuit our way through things by the seat of our pants.
Also sometimes I got really lucky and arrived at the correct answer in a bizarre and inconsistent way.
In the end, it’s very valuable to be able to communicate your process to others. Even if it’s irritating and awful to get through.
I also wonder if those like myself, who really REALLY hated math until my brain started to appreciate it in my adult years, just gnash our teeth at these memories because it made us feel stupid when we struggled to keep up with that slow, methodical raw-logic stuff…
EDIT: I can see you were the polar opposite of myself, ridiculously GOOD at math but found it a waste of time showing how you got there. That makes sense. I have zero idea what that’s like lol.
This reminds me of a punishment homework thing I was given in my youth, I had to write out something a bunch of times, which was a shit punishment to begin with and only happened once in like, grade 3 or something. Maybe even grade 1 when we were learning to write, idk. Maybe it wasn’t a punishment (it felt like one).
Instead of writing the letter “i” at the start of every line like I was supposed to, I just put a long line down the page to be that letter on every line.
The only part of this that I remember to this day is that I got it back with that line circled in red and the word “lazy!” Written next to it, with points off of the assignment for it.
That’s literally the only thing I recall about it, that finding an “easy” way to write the same letter across multiple lines was lazy, therefore I’m lazy and worthless. I don’t even remember if I passed or failed it, because that was less important to my young mind than being called lazy for simply trying to optimize my working time.
I dunno, but at this point I kind feel like that teacher was a bit of an asshole.
You gotta try to make a perfectly spaced dashed line down the page, as fast as you can. It’s a bit of a challenge and get all the I’s out of the way. Then the teacher can’t say boo.
I basically don’t write anything anymore. So no matter how “lazy” it might be, a dashed line like you suggest is a skill issue that I couldn’t master at age… 7?
I still haven’t because I don’t put pen to paper often, if at all. If I need to write 100 lines of the same thing, that’s what copy/paste is for.
I will say though, I’ve found putting pencil/pen to paper and brain dumping to be rather therapeutic at times! In your secret notebook you can even trash that teacher that tried to dissuade you from writing. :D
Well, for me, it’s not that I don’t write because I can’t, or that I don’t want to; I just work with/on/around computers/devices so much that I usually find paper to be inconvenient.
Getting a thing signed by e-signature vs having to print, sign, and mail/deliver a document to someone is just a lot easier for me.
I absolutely can write, and I sometimes find putting pen to paper to be therapeutic, but ultimately I tend to use digital forms of record keeping and note taking, much more than physical copies.
What I would consider is a writing tablet where I can quickly scribble notes into, similar to writing on paper, that then get transcribed into text by OCR or something… I don’t have the money for that.
Oh yeah for productive purposes I totally get you. I haaaate paper ending up on my desk. Especially because it always seems to be things in that weird limbo of “Can I throw this away or do I need to keep it for some reason?” and it just starts piling up everywhere.
I run Paperless NGX on my server now so I can just scan, automatically sort, and shred a majority of mail now lol.
Sooo I run my PaperlessNGX service on my home server, on which the storage drives are in a mirror configuration. But RAID is not a backup! So they’re periodically uploaded to an offsite / cloud service I pay for called iDrive.
When you specify the storage location though, I’m sure you could use something like Borg Backup or any other solution, if you wanted. :)
Then they also get mad when you find an easier way to accomplish the same thing in a fraction of the time or even automating it.
“Why didn’t you show your work, so I can see how you think?”
Because I did it in my head and got the right answer. This isn’t about you.
The “show your work” is about checking if you understand the logic in getting the answer. We had lots of questions out of 5. Right answer was only worth 1 mark, the other 4 were the steps and reasoning. This type of setup punishes those that skip right to the answer, or have memorized answers. But rewards those that show they know the concepts
What part of what you said changes what I said?
That you need to show your work, so they can test if they taught you the principles.
Right, so nothing.
My brain didn’t go through the steps like that. It looked at the problem and found the answer.
It’s why they thought I was cheating: my scantron results were above 90% correct, and the written portion was scored abysmally for lack of work.
That’s a failure of Test Design, not of student ability.
It doesn’t matter if you use mental math or not, you just need to write what you did in your head on the paper.
Yes. Having been there, and done that, I would agree that it should count. My teacher disagreed.
What did you write then? I’m confused. You showed how to solve the problem and got it marked wrong?
I think you are missing the point about the goal of schooling, it is not to get correct answers but to teach people methods of problem solving, so when faced with a brand new problem you can extrapolate methods and find a solution. As acedemia progresses solutions are not possible in your head, so applying principles is the goal.
So, by your logic, any student who doesn’t conform to the specific, approved processes and methodology is therefore wrong, is that it?
Tell me, do you value the perspectives of others, or are you concrete in the surety that yours is always the infallible way? Is everyone who does something differently from the way you do it, wrong?
What do you hope to gain in your escalation of commitment? Or is lecturing me its own reward?
Having gone forward from high school to undergrad, to half a dozen graduate schools, I do think I’m at least somewhat privy to the methodologies of academia- in fact, I even studied process design at MIT, among other things. What I find most, is that rigid thinking is more susceptible to Group Think than allowing room for alternative paths to a desired outcome.
Does that make me right, and you wrong? Or vice versa? No, probably not in either case. But it certainly doesn’t make you right in an absolute sense, which is the sentiment you seem to be pushing.
I was explaining why they want you to show your work. I work with a lot of engineers who got the right answers on tests in university, but you give them a unique problem they can’t reason out a new method to solve it. This is why testing wants you to show your work so somebody can check you are connecting the dots of reasoning. All they would have to do tgough is make the question multipart, so step A asks for a certain portion, step b asks for next portion, and so on. Passing University doesn’t always mean you can think. Granted other testing is needed to assist non typical learners
I had the exact same problem.
I was always a space cadet in class, falling behind, but accelled in testing, add on top that I sucked at showing my work, and my teacher was adamant that I must be cheating somehow.
Do you understand the purpose of school, or…?
If I arrive at the correct answer every single time then I clearly understand the principles.
Maybe you do, but some arrive at the answer using the wrong techniwue that doesnt work when the equation is altered. There is no way you are doing calculus and functions and relations in your head. Process and method is the important part.
If Im getting it correct every time it is altered then clearly it isn’t an issue.
That is an assumption you aren’t really in a position to make.
By you, I mean plural you. Like a prof has a class of people to ensure they grasp the fundamental underlying concept, not just running through the paces. For a personal example, I had a Descriptive Geometey course in college. Early stuff is easy, later techniques for finding shortest distance between two topologies in 3d space based of 2 flat images are complex. I was working 50 hours a week and just had a kid, so my level of focus on this course was too low. For the exam I did not know all the mulitprojection methods well enough to solve them, so I just used my ability to imagine the spatial shape, and sketched them down. Turned out my guesses were good and got highest mark. Prof gave me kudos in front of class on how well i had completed it. But in fact I really had no clue hoe to solve the complex topologies properly. Had he asked for the staging projecrtions to be turned in I would have failed the course. This is what I meant by getting the right answers doean’t test that “you” know the underlying concepts.
i typed a bunch, but it disappeared. I will try again. For example I had a topology descriptive geometry solving exam, I had not had time to learn how it was done due to job/life events.
I used my spatial sense to sketch up the solutions, because I didn’t know the methods well enough to actually solve it. Got a great mark on the exam, prof gave me kudos in front of class. So while my faked end solutions passed the check, had the prof asked for the projection stage sheets to be turned in (showing how you work through the problem) I would have failed.
Right answers don’t mean you know the material. And by you I mean the plural you, not you personally.
The profs are aaking to see work to see if you know the principles. People can arrive at an answer that looks right by doing the wrong things
Ok but forcing me to show my work was one of those things I hated until I was extremely grateful for it. I didn’t need to show my work to prove my answer was correct in elementary school, but it was a slow drift from “I can do it in my head with ease” to “I need to document my steps so I can check where the error occurred”. Also “it’s not enough to be correct, you need to be correct with evidence” is the reality for people who do math for a living
Best I can do is lots of evidence proving I’m incorrect…
Better than no evidence
Literally every single damn math class I ever took
I had to retake an algebra 2 exam multiple times because they thought I was cheating- including sitting IN the principal’s office, yet the scores were all within points of each other.
They were so fucking salty about it too when there was no “gotcha.” I wish I could time travel back to advocate for myself, because I would have TORN THEM A NEW ONE. My parents were apathetic cowards.
Like all cutting injustices, it’s stuck with me.
I would have sued them personally for defamation just under the small claims court amount ($10k) with a jury demand. Small claims cases in my state cannot be dismissed for cause of action. They could ask for a summary judgement, but that would still cost more in attorneys fees than just settling.
That’s probably what better parents might have done. Mine did nothing.
Of course, to bring it up now is only to be met with a constant stream of, “I don’t remember that.”
The tree remembers what the axe forgets.
Suing who? Admins right? Because you wouldn’t get much out of teachers. (In the US anyway) 😂
You can put a lien on their house if they didn’t pay. Then if they want to ever sell the house or get another loan they have to pay you.
I deconstructed the underlying methodology of the creator of the system in order to understand their internalized blind spots or artificial limitations imposed on them by unrelated third parties at the time of the systems creation.
It’s funny, because in high school, I remember getting poor marks on proofs - and HATING them - because I was like “this is so fucking obvious jesus tap dancing christ” and just… skipped lots of steps.
Fast forward to college and logic theory: that ended up being one of my favorite classes, because machine theory and problem reduction is a fascinating domain, and FAR more interesting than “prove this shape is the shape we say it is” or whatever vapid bullshit they had us doing in high school.
Lol I hated this too, I really did. But like a lot of answers here, I can appreciate it somewhat now. Especially when trying to learn to code.
I think learning to break down problems might even be MORE valuable to people like us with ADHD, even if we hate it, because we tend to intuit our way through things by the seat of our pants.
Also sometimes I got really lucky and arrived at the correct answer in a bizarre and inconsistent way.
In the end, it’s very valuable to be able to communicate your process to others. Even if it’s irritating and awful to get through.
I also wonder if those like myself, who really REALLY hated math until my brain started to appreciate it in my adult years, just gnash our teeth at these memories because it made us feel stupid when we struggled to keep up with that slow, methodical raw-logic stuff…
EDIT: I can see you were the polar opposite of myself, ridiculously GOOD at math but found it a waste of time showing how you got there. That makes sense. I have zero idea what that’s like lol.
I wouldn’t have minded it nearly as much, had they not accused me of cheating on the exam. That sticks in the craw.
This reminds me of a punishment homework thing I was given in my youth, I had to write out something a bunch of times, which was a shit punishment to begin with and only happened once in like, grade 3 or something. Maybe even grade 1 when we were learning to write, idk. Maybe it wasn’t a punishment (it felt like one).
Instead of writing the letter “i” at the start of every line like I was supposed to, I just put a long line down the page to be that letter on every line.
The only part of this that I remember to this day is that I got it back with that line circled in red and the word “lazy!” Written next to it, with points off of the assignment for it.
That’s literally the only thing I recall about it, that finding an “easy” way to write the same letter across multiple lines was lazy, therefore I’m lazy and worthless. I don’t even remember if I passed or failed it, because that was less important to my young mind than being called lazy for simply trying to optimize my working time.
I dunno, but at this point I kind feel like that teacher was a bit of an asshole.
You gotta try to make a perfectly spaced dashed line down the page, as fast as you can. It’s a bit of a challenge and get all the I’s out of the way. Then the teacher can’t say boo.
I basically don’t write anything anymore. So no matter how “lazy” it might be, a dashed line like you suggest is a skill issue that I couldn’t master at age… 7?
I still haven’t because I don’t put pen to paper often, if at all. If I need to write 100 lines of the same thing, that’s what copy/paste is for.
I will say though, I’ve found putting pencil/pen to paper and brain dumping to be rather therapeutic at times! In your secret notebook you can even trash that teacher that tried to dissuade you from writing. :D
(Got this idea from The Artist’s Way book. Lol)
Well, for me, it’s not that I don’t write because I can’t, or that I don’t want to; I just work with/on/around computers/devices so much that I usually find paper to be inconvenient.
Getting a thing signed by e-signature vs having to print, sign, and mail/deliver a document to someone is just a lot easier for me.
I absolutely can write, and I sometimes find putting pen to paper to be therapeutic, but ultimately I tend to use digital forms of record keeping and note taking, much more than physical copies.
What I would consider is a writing tablet where I can quickly scribble notes into, similar to writing on paper, that then get transcribed into text by OCR or something… I don’t have the money for that.
Oh yeah for productive purposes I totally get you. I haaaate paper ending up on my desk. Especially because it always seems to be things in that weird limbo of “Can I throw this away or do I need to keep it for some reason?” and it just starts piling up everywhere.
I run Paperless NGX on my server now so I can just scan, automatically sort, and shred a majority of mail now lol.
I should do this too. By and large there’s no reason to keep paper around anymore.
What do you do for backups?
Heya sorry for the delay. :)
Sooo I run my PaperlessNGX service on my home server, on which the storage drives are in a mirror configuration. But RAID is not a backup! So they’re periodically uploaded to an offsite / cloud service I pay for called iDrive.
When you specify the storage location though, I’m sure you could use something like Borg Backup or any other solution, if you wanted. :)
This is when you learn to just not tell anyone that you’re saving time and pretend it takes as long as everyone else lol
This applies so hard to programmers, as well. I love making things automated, but I never have the time to make them properly.
Come join us on the QA side! I’m an automation developer, so it’s my job to make things automated :)
Hahaha! I’m a full stack… I’m supposed to do both. Lol. I need more automation…!!!
Hello, me!
Why hello there, me! Have a great day. ;)
Me when I write a simple BASH script:
“Oh my gosh it actually WORKS!..Whelp, that should hold. On to the next thing!”