{"id":42,"date":"2004-11-06T20:10:38","date_gmt":"2004-11-06T20:10:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/?p=42"},"modified":"2004-11-06T20:10:38","modified_gmt":"2004-11-06T20:10:38","slug":"writing-mathematics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/?p=42","title":{"rendered":"Writing Mathematics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.izzycat.org\/math\/index.php\" target=\"_blank\">Isabel&#8217;s math blog<\/a> is one of those rare things &#8211; a mathematics blog; let&#8217;s hope it will inspire others. Isabel is a fourth-year undergraduate mathematics student at <a href=\"http:\/\/web.mit.edu\/\" target=\"_blank\">MIT<\/a> who has been marking first-year students&#8217; homework. She makes some excellent points that are relevant at all levels including A-level.<\/p>\n<p>I hope she won&#8217;t mind me quoting some of what she says at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.izzycat.org\/math\/index.php?p=67\" target=\"_blank\">on grading homework<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If the problem calls for some numerical answer, or for some symbolic expression as an answer, and the student produces a wrong answer, they can&#8217;t get full credit. (Very near full credit, say nine out of ten, is possible.)<\/li>\n<li> Not surprisingly, if you know what the answer to a problem is supposed to be, it&#8217;s easy to make errors that &#8220;cancel each other out&#8221;; if you know where the target is you&#8217;ll make some pretty strange logical leaps to get there. (I&#8217;ve been guilty of this too. Potential approaches to a problem that seemed incredibly stupid at noon the day before the homework is due seem quite reasonable at three in the morning.)<\/li>\n<li>The question is, how does one teach students &#8220;clarity&#8221; in mathematics? One of the things I notice is that the students don&#8217;t realize the power of the English language. They write down endless strings of equations, and make no effort to connect these with words that explain what they&#8217;re doing. Fortunately for them, as the grader I know what they&#8217;re trying to do. But at the same time, sometimes I don&#8217;t know what they&#8217;re trying to do; they manage to confuse me quite thoroughly.<br \/>\nThere seems to be a flaw in mathematics education &#8211; that we don&#8217;t teach students how to write mathematics.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My thoughts exactly  \ud83d\ude42 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Isabel&#8217;s math blog is one of those rare things &#8211; a mathematics blog; let&#8217;s hope it will inspire others. Isabel is a fourth-year undergraduate mathematics student at MIT who has been marking first-year students&#8217; homework. She makes some excellent points that are relevant at all levels including A-level. I hope she won&#8217;t mind me quoting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixthform.info\/maths\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}