3 ms·

My feeling is that what you say is true to a varying degree, dependent on the course in question. Maybe more particularly the level of the course. For proofs ba

My feeling is that what you say is true to a varying degree, dependent on the course in question. Maybe more particularly the level of the course. For proofs based math where the goal is to write a proof, I'm more inclined to agree with you. Especially since there can be more than one "correct answer" and seeing one may or may not help you at all in understanding why/how another one would be constructed. But for lower level "grind and chug" Maths classes (High-school algebra, intro Calculus, non-proofs-based Linear Algebra, etc) I think there is value in having access to "the answer". Certainly at least for a subset of the problems one works on, IMO.

marginalia_nu 5y ago
> But for lower level "grind and chug" Maths classes (High-school algebra, intro Calculus, non-proofs-based Linear Algebra, etc) I think there is value in having access to "the answer". Certainly at least for a subset of the problems one works on, IMO. I think there is a value in introducing the concept of verifying your answers early, as your ability to perform calculations is beyond useless if that isn't something you are thoroughly familiar with. If you're just doing the calculation but not the verification, you're skipping half the exercise.
- mindcrime 5y ago
  Sure but those two positions are not mutually exclusive. I don't think I ever took a Maths class that didn't introduce the idea of verifying your answers. But at the lower level, most of them used books that provided answers for some but not all of the exercises. If nothing else, this is an advantage from a time efficiency viewpoint, as you can more quickly identify the problems you got wrong, and focus your review time on those. Those presumably being the ones most likely to highlight some misunderstanding of the material. If time were infinitely available maybe the distinction wouldn't matter, but things being what they are...
tarentel 5y ago
Definitely agree with this. At least for me when taking undergraduate math, once you get to the proof based stuff, often times seeing the answer was in no way helpful. You either knew you proved it correctly or you weren't able to do the mental gymnastic it required to get there and seeing an answer was likely not going to help. I usually just had to re-read the book and try different things, take a break maybe, or something before I would finally get the intuition or whatever to really grasp it. For calculation based math, which this course sounds like and based on a sample test I looked at, more or less is, having some subset of answers would definitely be helpful. I am not sure why they would make it more obtuse than it needs to be. I thought the course I took on multivariable calculus and linear algebra were quite easy but the number of people who dropped math entirely after those was pretty drastic. I don't think you really need to make these classes unnecessarily hard to weed people out. They'll do it themselves anyway.

marginalia_nu 5y ago

> But for lower level "grind and chug" Maths classes (High-school algebra, intro Calculus, non-proofs-based Linear Algebra, etc) I think there is value in having access to "the answer". Certainly at least for a subset of the problems one works on, IMO. I think there is a value in introducing the concept of verifying your answers early, as your ability to perform calculations is beyond useless if that isn't something you are thoroughly familiar with. If you're just doing the calculation but not the verification, you're skipping half the exercise.

mindcrime 5y ago
Sure but those two positions are not mutually exclusive. I don't think I ever took a Maths class that didn't introduce the idea of verifying your answers. But at the lower level, most of them used books that provided answers for some but not all of the exercises. If nothing else, this is an advantage from a time efficiency viewpoint, as you can more quickly identify the problems you got wrong, and focus your review time on those. Those presumably being the ones most likely to highlight some misunderstanding of the material. If time were infinitely available maybe the distinction wouldn't matter, but things being what they are...

tarentel 5y ago

Definitely agree with this. At least for me when taking undergraduate math, once you get to the proof based stuff, often times seeing the answer was in no way helpful. You either knew you proved it correctly or you weren't able to do the mental gymnastic it required to get there and seeing an answer was likely not going to help. I usually just had to re-read the book and try different things, take a break maybe, or something before I would finally get the intuition or whatever to really grasp it. For calculation based math, which this course sounds like and based on a sample test I looked at, more or less is, having some subset of answers would definitely be helpful. I am not sure why they would make it more obtuse than it needs to be. I thought the course I took on multivariable calculus and linear algebra were quite easy but the number of people who dropped math entirely after those was pretty drastic. I don't think you really need to make these classes unnecessarily hard to weed people out. They'll do it themselves anyway.