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Thanks for the thorough response here. You wrote, "Our recent push to improve our math content hasn't yet touched the decimals exercises but it will soon." But

Thanks for the thorough response here. You wrote, "Our recent push to improve our math content hasn't yet touched the decimals exercises but it will soon." But Mr. Khan posted a video of a new decimal exercise just last week, which is what prompted the post. I get that everything can't be perfect right away. Somebody at KA has been working on decimals instruction in the past year, so it was frustrating to see that this instruction was not substantively changed. I look forward to the more robust content to come.

spicyj 13y ago
In this particular case, the exercise is one that we've had since November 2011. This week we made a push to have videos created whenever an exercise doesn't have an accompanying explanation, which is why that video was created specifically for exercise. Reviewing content of the exercises is a separate and important task which is ongoing – as you point out, the exercise itself has a few problems and we'll be sure to revisit its content in the coming months. Thanks for your useful criticism. (And sorry for not responding yet directly on your blog or to you on Twitter – it was on my to-do list but as I opened Hacker News this morning, I felt the need to comment here, as response speed is key on a site like this.)
- Trianglemancsd 13y ago
  Fair enough. Thanks for the reply. No worries about the forum for the response.
  - spicyj 13y ago
    One more thing: As I was looking through our content, I found we have a new exercise on comparing decimals! It was written just 10 days ago (and hasn't yet been added to the main site): http://sandcastle.khanacademy.org/media/castles/Khan:master/exercises/comparing_decimals_1.html http://sandcastle.khanacademy.org/media/castles/Khan:master/... With questions like 0.3 __ 0.03 and 0.02 __ 0.1, I think you'll find that the exercise touches on exactly the misconceptions that you've seen. In addition, the hints use area models to explain the comparison, just as you suggest in your post.
    - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
      Minor bug report, hints 3 and 5 (where the values are displayed as hundreths) overlap with the previous hints (where they are shown as combinations of tenths and hundredsths) for me on Firefox/Ubuntu, but look fine on Chromium/Ubuntu.
      - spicyj 13y ago
        Thanks, should be fixed if you reload.

spicyj 13y ago

In this particular case, the exercise is one that we've had since November 2011. This week we made a push to have videos created whenever an exercise doesn't have an accompanying explanation, which is why that video was created specifically for exercise. Reviewing content of the exercises is a separate and important task which is ongoing – as you point out, the exercise itself has a few problems and we'll be sure to revisit its content in the coming months. Thanks for your useful criticism. (And sorry for not responding yet directly on your blog or to you on Twitter – it was on my to-do list but as I opened Hacker News this morning, I felt the need to comment here, as response speed is key on a site like this.)

Trianglemancsd 13y ago
Fair enough. Thanks for the reply. No worries about the forum for the response.
- spicyj 13y ago
  One more thing: As I was looking through our content, I found we have a new exercise on comparing decimals! It was written just 10 days ago (and hasn't yet been added to the main site): http://sandcastle.khanacademy.org/media/castles/Khan:master/exercises/comparing_decimals_1.html http://sandcastle.khanacademy.org/media/castles/Khan:master/... With questions like 0.3 __ 0.03 and 0.02 __ 0.1, I think you'll find that the exercise touches on exactly the misconceptions that you've seen. In addition, the hints use area models to explain the comparison, just as you suggest in your post.
  - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
    Minor bug report, hints 3 and 5 (where the values are displayed as hundreths) overlap with the previous hints (where they are shown as combinations of tenths and hundredsths) for me on Firefox/Ubuntu, but look fine on Chromium/Ubuntu.
    - spicyj 13y ago
      Thanks, should be fixed if you reload.