On Jun 12, 2007, at 11:07 AM, Mike Hord wrote:

> Ah, the sanity check.  Another completely missed concept.
>
> At my previous job, my boss taught a course in endocrinology.  One test
> had a question to the effect of "a healthy patient is observed to 
> consume
> 1-L of fluid over a 2-hour period.  Calculate renal output."  Answers 
> varied
> from tens of mL up to multiple L.  Very few, if any, of the students 
> thought
> to consider that if one liter goes in, one liter had BETTER come out.
>

Heh.  I did an EE exam like that.  A bunch of the questions had 
intuitive
answers (for example, one was to figure out the positioning of too coils
to get maximum magnetic linkage.   I said something like "knowing how
transformers are constructed, the answer must be 'B'"  (IIRC, it was a
multiple choice test.)) I tied a teammate for the highest grade in the
class.  HE was dumbfounded, since
HIS test was COVERED in math...  heh heh.

On the bright side, my grade-school kids bring home homework problems
where they are asked to "estimate" the answer to a problem, so I guess
this is a recognized issue.  (I'd feel a little better if the kids
were also coming home with explicit estimate strategies...)

The big problem is probably that outside of science an engineering,
no one really uses basic math skills anymore.  Computers do all the
work; you're not really going to argue with the neatly printed and
totaled restaurant receipt, are you?

BillW
-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist