On Thursday, July 3, 2003, at 12:35 AM, Henry Baker wrote:
Does anyone know any more about the problems referred to below with the NY State Math "Regents exam"?
In the NYTimes there was an example of one of the problems on the test, which simply asked what the diagonal distance of a rectangular (3D) box is in terms of its sides -- not an especially difficult question for a junior or a senior in high school who has even a smattering of math and/or physics.
I looked at the exam on the web. There were many questions that to me seemed poorly designed. This particular question as you paraphrased it may be something that you think most people *should* be able to do, but in reality I think few high school graduates actually master it, since, in particular, solid geometry is generally not taught. The actual question was about a juice container something like 2" x 4" x 5", and it asked how long a straw would fit diagonally, to the nearest tenth of an inch. A straw is not the same as a line, and the thickness of the straw (not specified, of course, and *intended* to be disregarded) would actually be likely to change the answer. People who've been taught a particular mechanical formula for this particular question can do it, but otherwise, it's likely to be a time-consuming and futile exercise, compounded by trying to calculate square roots presumably without a calculator. Another question that annoyed me: there was a multiple choice question, what's the inverse of the statement "If Jane works hard, she earn lots of money". This term "inverse" I haven't seen or heard used for a long time ... what's the point in teaching it, especially in this context where logic is a frivolous exercise. The immediate problem is that it's a poorly-designed test, with no care taken to remove cultural snags (the built-in assumption that people are from well-off suburbs) and without calibration to the actual subjects. The fact that 2/3 of the population failed it doesn't mean anything, as an isolated statistic, except that the test was not suitable. The bigger problem is that the entire testing mentality has been working to undermine teaching kids to actually understand math---especially kids in underperforming schools, where intense pressure is brought to teach to the test. Bill Thurston