On Wed, 2007-06-13 at 11:44 -0500, Mike Hord wrote:
> > True, but I suppose it depends "how" wrong. If one were to write kW
> > instead of kWh it could simply be an ommission of a single character,
> > and wouldn't warrant a "C".
> >
> > OTOH, if it's clear the person had no concept of what units were to be
> > used then yes, I think it's a good idea. TTYL
> 
> I couldn't disagree more.  Writing kW when you are asked for, for instance,
> the amount of energy require to boil 1-L of water, DOES demonstrate
> that the person has no concept of what units are to be used.
> 
> It's like saying "Why did I get this wrong?  The answer was -1024 and
> I wrote 1024.  Don't I deserve partial credit?  It's only off by the negative
> sign."  No, the answer is off by over 2000.  If you wrote 12 and the
> answer was actually 2017, would you expect credit?
> 
> Wrong is wrong.  The ONLY exception I could see is if a transcription
> error occurs- on my worksheet, the final answer is clearly written with
> kWh as the units, but I copied it over wrong.  That's worth something,
> maybe.
> 
> This attitude of "just one letter" or "just the negative sign" leads to sloppy
> workmanship which will ultimately get one into trouble.

But is punishing a person so severely for a simple mistake like that on
an exam, where the student is under immense pressure to perform REALLY a
good idea?

I understand that in real life a mistake like this can be very serious,
but we're not dealing with real life, we're dealing with a pressure
cooker situation as far from real life as it gets.

If OTOH it's clear the person has NO concept of what the units should be
then I agree a severe punishment is in order since it's obvious the
student doesn't have the knowledge. As for how to determine this it's
simple: if the student approaches you and asks why they got that mark,
and you ask them "why was kW wrong?" and they don't can't explain why,
then yes, the mark is deserved.

As for me, units were a wonderful crutch to confirm whether my answer
was correct. If you know you're units, you can often use them to
determine whether the operations/formulas you've used are correct. I've
used unit checking to confirm whether the formula I've written down is
REALLY correct, very handy.

TTYL

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