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> my homework never ran to 81 pages, but I suspect it's just scale Schools assign homework problems that (a) have known answers, and (b) are scoped so students
by jacobolus 5y ago
> my homework never ran to 81 pages, but I suspect it's just scale
Schools assign homework problems that (a) have known answers, and (b) are scoped so students can be expected to finish within a week.
There are undergraduate math theses where the novel technical part runs into the tens of pages even though the key insight is one simple idea.
- jerf 5y agoMy point was about "insight -> final paper" size, not whether or not things have a known answer or anything like that.
- jacobolus 5y agoI agree! My added point is that the reason undergraduates don’t end up with very long homework papers is not that they couldn’t understand or solve very finicky problems if they put in the time, or that the prerequisite concepts involved in such problems are far beyond their understanding, but that homework is carefully designed to be digestible and scope-limited.