Cheat Sheet or Not?

[RAMd®d]

I never had a "cheat" sheet option for tests. You knew it or you didn't. But that was more than 35 years ago.

And there were no calculators. Later, there were slide rules.

Life may be an open book tests, but there are though processes that should be developed long before one tries to look up the right formula.

Some advanced math classes allow calculators, and I hear even some lesser jr and high schools do as well. The former, I can understand, I think. But with the latter two, without understanding *how* to solve for Whatever, how can they even pick the right formula?

I think a lot more rote work should be required given the poor performance of a lot of kids these days.

Just a for instance... cash registers at fast food and many other establishments that calculate the change required from payment tendered. I almost never see anybody "count back" the change. Without that feature, I wonder how many employees, particularly younger ones could make proper change.

But since today's world is an open book test, I guess that kind of ability is useless.

[Jimmypoo]

graylocks wrote:
so, am i just an aging curmudgeon?

Hard to beat that self-assessment for true comedic appeal!


Blooz! You have competition!

[BernDog]

Markintosh wrote:
A strategy I often utilize is to offer students a very limited amount of space for a cheat sheet. They will often go through a lot of evaluating steps to decide what they need, and a lot of rewriting to get it to fit. Often, by the time the test rolls around, they don't even need the cheat sheet.

I love hearing ideas like this. Thanks!

[SDGuy]

graylocks wrote:
in my son's high school, and many other schools from what i gather in casual conversation, students are provided with a sheet of formulas to refer to when taking a math test. including final exams. my son asked me if this was the case back in my day. my answer was a resounding Hell, No! my school never even have open book tests which i'm not opposed to for some testing during the term. but a cheat sheet, essentially, for a final - oh , please, has the world gone mad!

Depends on the level of the material in the class. I wouldn't expect this to be available until, maybe, a calculus class. Anything lower than that (e.g. algebra, geometry), the kids should have a certain level of background knowledge stored in their brains. I remember some upper division math & engineering classes in college where having a sheet of formulas was an absolute requirement for the midterms & finals. You still had THINK and to know which ones to use - much like real life. You also had a leg up (timewise) if you already had them memorized...

graylocks wrote: ...am i just an aging curmudgeon...

Uhh...yeah, probably...

[mrthuse]

It's refreshing to find a thread where everybody's pedagogical observations and pov are tenable (so far). Nietzsche is smiling.

If this continues, we'll all be tilting at windmills by morning.

[Paul F.]

As the son of a 30 year math teacher, and as someone whose hobbies often require math, I often wonder about modern teaching...

Give the students both the formula, and a calculator, and what are they actually learning? They can't remember the formula, and they can't do the math to solve it without a calculator...

If I'm in my shop, and I need to calculate (for example) the cutting speed for a particular tool on a particular material, unless I want to waste a lot of time, I need to be able to recall both the formula (4 * C)/D, if not the different values of "C"... though it's easy enough to remember a few "ball park" values for common materials I might machine.
And most of the time, I can do the math in my head...

There are lots of formula's in the shop that I wouldn't reasonably expect someone to know... but then again, not expecting someone to know ANY of them, nor be able to do the math for SOME of them mentally, is.. well.. borders on the ridiculous!

I know that math class is not a work environment...
But to not prepare students to do ANY remembering of formula's or ANY manual calculation... Madness (OK... maybe that's excessive).

And I say all this as someone who is pretty awful at mental math!

[graylocks]

i'm just now catching up to this thread i started. FWIW,the class i'm referring to is 9th grade math which in Georgia is an integrated curriculum of Algebra, Geometry, Statistics, and Probability. i believe his freshman physics exam also had a cheat sheet.

[Kiva]

Paul F. wrote:
Give the students both the formula, and a calculator, and what are they actually learning? They can't remember the formula, and they can't do the math to solve it without a calculator...

!

I guess one way to look at it is that they're learning the why of the problem and *part* of the how..(?) given a list of formulas and a calculator, you have to know the procedure in order to pick out the right formula. With enough repetition, they'll start to memorize the math that can be done in the head...and for those who can't remember it, they can still perform the same task.

I still stay give 'em bonus for memorizing the formula / not using a calculator. But don't make everybody memorize it. That just screws anybody with the reasoning ability (most important), but, perhaps, with some form of a learning disability.

With my grad students, for essay tests, I give them a list of 7-9 questions and tell them 3-5 will be on the test - verbatim. These are 2-5 page answers each, mind you. I then tell them the best way to study is to get in a group, split up the questions, then trade the answers and discuss them over and over, etc.

Each person who follows this studying procedure says they come into the test and breeze through it and even remember the content years later.

kiva