>> According to my fellow teachers these boys are not bad, they are
>> typical. I hope for the safety of my country that serious engineering
>> work is very quickly outsourced to countries where 18y boys still have
>> at least some feeling for numbers and values...
>>
>
>I think your students are not too bad. After all they are first year
>students.

So? That math is so basic that they should be able to do it without any 
calculation aids before going to secondary school, let alone tertiary 
education. It was for this sort of problem that the company I first worked 
for gave incoming apprenticeship hopefuls a basic maths test (see previous 
post on this tag). 

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