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>Passing a Calculus test doesn't necessarily predict if the student can apply their knowledge to production to generate new ideas and widgets which make our liv

>Passing a Calculus test doesn't necessarily predict if the student can apply their knowledge to production to generate new ideas and widgets which make our lives better It actually does though, because if he fails, then you can be completely certain that he can't.

xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
No, you can't. You can only possibly be completely certain that the student is not good at calculus tests.
- impossiblefork 4y ago
  If you can't do calculus in a stressful situation, you can't do it, anymore than you can understand french if you can't understand it when people speak it at full speed.
  - xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
    Huh? How often is calculus ever done in stressful situations outside of tests? Seriously this seems like a bad example... I feel like you're making my point here. I can speak french and be spoken to, order off a menu, etc. but I can't understand when two native speakers are conversing. Are you saying I don't understand french?
    - impossiblefork 4y ago
      When the deadline for your papers are approaching, when your competitors are closing in and about to scoop you, when you're using calculus in order to make financial trading decisions, etcetera. Everything is time constrained.
      - thethethethe 4y ago
        > Everything is time constrained Yeah but not to the same degree or in the same way. Having to sit in a room with no sources for an hour and shit out some test answers is not really same as having weeks to apply yourself with access to appropriate resources, references, and guidance from more senior coworkers.
        impossiblefork 4y ago
        The way I see it, you should be able to do calculus without pen or paper, so certainly without references or guidance. If you want to be creative the first step is to put the problem in your head so that you can actually ponder it. If you have to pour over references and look things up, then you're not in the game any more than you can play chess if you have to look up the rules as you play.
        thethethethe 4y ago
        This doesn't align with my experience writing software and applying maths to engineering problems. I am working a lot with statistics in my current role but if you asked me to take a stats test, I would almost certainly fail without references. Does this mean I am bad a stats? Perhaps? Does it matter? No. > If you want to be creative the first step is to put the problem in your head so that you can actually ponder it. If you have to pour over references and look things up, then you're not in the game any more than you can play chess if you have to look up the rules as you play. It seems like you are confusing the problems with the solutions. If you can understand the problem well enough, the solution will become obvious, even if you never took the math class--at least that's how it works for me. I do best when I have an actual real-world problem to solve, not a conceptual one created by an instructor.
        lordnacho 4y ago
        So you have all the Laplace transforms memorized just in case some internet person asks you how to model a wheel going up a ramp at the origin? Everyone on my engineering course did this question, but my guess is zero of us could solve it right now from memory. A fair portion would be able to solve it with some references available. But you're making the other guy's point for him here. It's a waste of your mind to have test-taking skills memorized.
      - iopq 4y ago
        I've never worked in a company where we were time constrained or stressed. I could always tell my boss "it's not going to be done by the deadline" and he'd have to come up with a way to do plan B.
        impossiblefork 4y ago
        Yes, the deadlines come from customers and the competition, not from bosses.
        iopq 4y ago
        Then it's not necessarily a "deadline", but a suggestion. Most of the time it's better to do something the right way than to artificially hurry developers to hack something together that will bite you later in the form of bugs
        impossiblefork 4y ago
        Yes, although in this I was thinking less about software and the like as such and more about things like pricing derivatives contract that somebody wants and things like that, and of course, then you must do the right computation.
thethethethe 4y ago
I know this isn't true because of my own experience. I've always been bad at math, I failed precalculus multiple times in both highschool and college, I never got past my first year of calculus in college, I wasn't able to pass descrete maths, and I never took an algorithms class but, never the less, I am applying statistics to novel problems at my day job and people are lining up to work with me and my career growth is accelerating faster than those around me who certainly got better marks than I did. How is this possible? I'm not entirely sure, however, it indicates that academic tests don't actually measure ones ability to apply themselves and their knowledge to real problems that people actually have outside of an academic setting (i.e the real world), which I believe is the primary point in the "anti-testing" narrative.
- impossiblefork 4y ago
  But do you actually calculus and are the problems you attack actually difficult? Failing something multiple times in the past also doesn't mean that you don't know it now.

xyzzy_plugh 4y ago

No, you can't. You can only possibly be completely certain that the student is not good at calculus tests.

impossiblefork 4y ago
If you can't do calculus in a stressful situation, you can't do it, anymore than you can understand french if you can't understand it when people speak it at full speed.
- xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
  Huh? How often is calculus ever done in stressful situations outside of tests? Seriously this seems like a bad example... I feel like you're making my point here. I can speak french and be spoken to, order off a menu, etc. but I can't understand when two native speakers are conversing. Are you saying I don't understand french?
  - impossiblefork 4y ago
    When the deadline for your papers are approaching, when your competitors are closing in and about to scoop you, when you're using calculus in order to make financial trading decisions, etcetera. Everything is time constrained.
    - thethethethe 4y ago
      > Everything is time constrained Yeah but not to the same degree or in the same way. Having to sit in a room with no sources for an hour and shit out some test answers is not really same as having weeks to apply yourself with access to appropriate resources, references, and guidance from more senior coworkers.
      - impossiblefork 4y ago
        The way I see it, you should be able to do calculus without pen or paper, so certainly without references or guidance. If you want to be creative the first step is to put the problem in your head so that you can actually ponder it. If you have to pour over references and look things up, then you're not in the game any more than you can play chess if you have to look up the rules as you play.
        thethethethe 4y ago
        This doesn't align with my experience writing software and applying maths to engineering problems. I am working a lot with statistics in my current role but if you asked me to take a stats test, I would almost certainly fail without references. Does this mean I am bad a stats? Perhaps? Does it matter? No. > If you want to be creative the first step is to put the problem in your head so that you can actually ponder it. If you have to pour over references and look things up, then you're not in the game any more than you can play chess if you have to look up the rules as you play. It seems like you are confusing the problems with the solutions. If you can understand the problem well enough, the solution will become obvious, even if you never took the math class--at least that's how it works for me. I do best when I have an actual real-world problem to solve, not a conceptual one created by an instructor.
        lordnacho 4y ago
        So you have all the Laplace transforms memorized just in case some internet person asks you how to model a wheel going up a ramp at the origin? Everyone on my engineering course did this question, but my guess is zero of us could solve it right now from memory. A fair portion would be able to solve it with some references available. But you're making the other guy's point for him here. It's a waste of your mind to have test-taking skills memorized.
    - iopq 4y ago
      I've never worked in a company where we were time constrained or stressed. I could always tell my boss "it's not going to be done by the deadline" and he'd have to come up with a way to do plan B.
      - impossiblefork 4y ago
        Yes, the deadlines come from customers and the competition, not from bosses.
        iopq 4y ago
        Then it's not necessarily a "deadline", but a suggestion. Most of the time it's better to do something the right way than to artificially hurry developers to hack something together that will bite you later in the form of bugs
        impossiblefork 4y ago
        Yes, although in this I was thinking less about software and the like as such and more about things like pricing derivatives contract that somebody wants and things like that, and of course, then you must do the right computation.

thethethethe 4y ago

I know this isn't true because of my own experience. I've always been bad at math, I failed precalculus multiple times in both highschool and college, I never got past my first year of calculus in college, I wasn't able to pass descrete maths, and I never took an algorithms class but, never the less, I am applying statistics to novel problems at my day job and people are lining up to work with me and my career growth is accelerating faster than those around me who certainly got better marks than I did. How is this possible? I'm not entirely sure, however, it indicates that academic tests don't actually measure ones ability to apply themselves and their knowledge to real problems that people actually have outside of an academic setting (i.e the real world), which I believe is the primary point in the "anti-testing" narrative.

impossiblefork 4y ago
But do you actually calculus and are the problems you attack actually difficult? Failing something multiple times in the past also doesn't mean that you don't know it now.