2 ms·
> Today many students want everything "spelled out". They seem to be continually looking for "defects" in problems, but not with the purpose of furthering their
by decisiveness 12y ago
> Today many students want everything "spelled out". They seem to be continually looking for "defects" in problems, but not with the purpose of furthering their understanding by coping with ambiguity, but to provide an excuse for not even thinking further about the problem.
But shouldn't the burden be put on the educator to provide problem scenarios for understanding that aren't unrealistic? It just seems common sense to develop an uninterested attitude toward things that start out trying to prove by understanding a thing that could never happen.
- mikeash 12y agoThere's little that's less realistic than a fully specified problem with no ambiguity.
- banachtarski 12y agoI don't think so. Reality is always harder to model perfectly so the "unrealistic" problems are actually more approachable. When you compute the terminal velocity of a falling object, I assume that the first attempt assumes a vacuum, no fluid resistance, no relativistic effects, etc. (edit: and then there's the coriolis force, the azimuthal force, radiation pressure, electromagnetic forces, etc.) Posing problems that sidestep how nature might actually behave allows the educator to isolate concepts for the student and improve proficiency (before adding higher order perturbations).
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]