<story><title>Who or What Broke My Kids?</title><url>http://powersfulmath.wordpress.com/2014/04/30/who-or-what-broke-my-kids/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>falcolas</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m 36, and math in my youth was always about getting the right answer, and proving how I got that answer, even up through college calculus and discrete mathematics. Heck, that&amp;#x27;s one of the things I really enjoyed about math, when compared to, say, English.&lt;p&gt;So, if math isn&amp;#x27;t about getting the right answer, it&amp;#x27;s been broken a long time.&lt;p&gt;Even today, math as I&amp;#x27;ve explored it (which admittedly hasn&amp;#x27;t been much) has right and wrong answers. Sure, there&amp;#x27;s a bit of fuzz in the answers now, but a probabilistic model which can&amp;#x27;t determine ham from spam some majority of the time isn&amp;#x27;t kinda right, or even on the spectrum of right. It&amp;#x27;s just wrong, and needs to be fixed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>acangiano</author><text>When I was a kid I used to love solving the same problem in multiple ways. I remember during a written test in high school, I solved some pre-calculus problems in 4 or 5 ways within the allotted time. The coolest part for me was seeing that, no matter the approach, they all led to the same answer. I didn&amp;#x27;t need to wait for my grades back from the teacher to know if my calculations were right. I got confirmation by simply comparing the answers that each method I used provided. I admit that at times periods in Trigonometry provided a two second scare when the results were equivalent but appeared different on paper. Once I had to get my teacher to change my grade precisely for this reason.&lt;p&gt;Anyway, getting the answer right and seeing which different angles I could take to get to those results were entirely part of the reason why I loved math. The answer wasn&amp;#x27;t per se the number at the end. The answer was, for each method I employed, the right sequence of logical and mathematically sound steps to that final value.&lt;p&gt;I would have never really been so fascinated by mathematics and related disciplines if it weren&amp;#x27;t for that sense of absolute, meritocratic, objective wrong or right.</text></comment>
<story><title>Who or What Broke My Kids?</title><url>http://powersfulmath.wordpress.com/2014/04/30/who-or-what-broke-my-kids/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>falcolas</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m 36, and math in my youth was always about getting the right answer, and proving how I got that answer, even up through college calculus and discrete mathematics. Heck, that&amp;#x27;s one of the things I really enjoyed about math, when compared to, say, English.&lt;p&gt;So, if math isn&amp;#x27;t about getting the right answer, it&amp;#x27;s been broken a long time.&lt;p&gt;Even today, math as I&amp;#x27;ve explored it (which admittedly hasn&amp;#x27;t been much) has right and wrong answers. Sure, there&amp;#x27;s a bit of fuzz in the answers now, but a probabilistic model which can&amp;#x27;t determine ham from spam some majority of the time isn&amp;#x27;t kinda right, or even on the spectrum of right. It&amp;#x27;s just wrong, and needs to be fixed.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lighthazard</author><text>Weird, I&amp;#x27;m 26 and in college math was all about &amp;#x27;how you got there&amp;#x27;. Our tests were like essays, a single problem in either paragraph form or formula form, and several pages to write down how you achieved your goal. Following proper procedure was rewarded, even if the answer is wrong.&lt;p&gt;In high school, however, my school implemented a &amp;#x27;pass the test first&amp;#x27; policy. We learned what the Regents (spelling on this) exam would have and learned only that. Still, most of my teachers always graded the procedure and not the answers (in fact, my teachers suggested we look at the answers afterwards to compare if our answer is right).</text></comment>