Comment by tomp

1 year ago

My favourite part of my math education, solutions were always nice.

Compute the eigenvalues of a random-looking (but still integers) 4x4 matrix? Oh, it's sqrt(2), I probably didn't make an error in the calculation.

Then came the advanced physics / mechanics exam. It threw a wrench into our beautiful system. The results were just about anything, incredibly ugly, like the real world :yuck: :vomit:

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tomp

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timthorn  1 year ago

> Oh, it's sqrt(2), I probably didn't make an error in the calculation

You remind me of my university maths exam. In all the past papers, the eigenvalues came out to be round numbers. But in the real paper I sat, no matter how many times I tried to find my mistake, they didn't. I wasted hours of the exam on that.

It was the professor's final year before his retirement.

  • twright0  1 year ago

    The year that I took AP Physics, every single piece of study material and practice test exercised only really simple math - small numbers, everything cleanly worked out into integers, etc etc. I did almost everything in my head or with quick notes on paper. This pattern was so consistent I almost didn't bring my calculator into the actual exam because I hadn't needed it all year, and grabbed it only at the last second "just in case".

    Turns out that was not a design goal of the real exam and basically nothing worked out to neat, small integer solutions - I probably would have hard failed without the calculator. I'm still sort of confused why prep materials and the real exam diverged so much.

    • goodcanadian  1 year ago

      I had a university exam where my calculator literally didn't work. I put a note on the paper to that effect and worked out as far as I could by hand without actually giving any of the final answers. Given the test was about knowledge and not the precise answers, I don't think it harmed me any (my grade was over 80%).

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ertgbnm  1 year ago

Except in the real world we are allowed to offload the computation to a computer and have more time to double check things. Nice solutions are necessary due to time and resource constraints that exist within an educational setting.