I won't repeat my previously posted opinions concerning public education, as it would pretty much be a political tirade. But I will remark about a positive experience with a teacher, but one that was not in public education. In my freshman year at MIT, I took an honors chemistry class taught by J. S. Waugh (a great guy). A question on a quiz asked whether a certain reaction occurred. If you calculated the change in Gibbs free energy, you would conclude that the reaction was thermodynamically favored. However, having been a chemical hacker as a kid, I knew that in fact the reaction did not happen, and that was the official answer to the question. In the post-quiz discussion, a student complained that he should be credited for answering that the reaction does proceed, because being thermodynamically favored, it should proceed however slowly. The prof said he would give him the credit when the reaction completes. As for IQ, I dismiss the whole concept. IQ is the score on an IQ test, and nothing more. -- Gene From: Warren D Smith <warren.wds@gmail.com> To: math-fun@mailman.xmission.com Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2016 1:38 PM Subject: Re: [math-fun] Distributive law without +? (6th Grade) I also remember one time on a chemistry test being asked which has greater density: sodium or potassium I looked at the giant periodic table on classroom wall, and correctly answered sodium. The teacher graded me as "wrong" since I presumably didn't "understand the principle" that higher atomic weight, same column of table, implies greater density. No amount of protest and consultation of databooks availed. :) Later I noticed that a lot of questions on "IQ tests" simply do not have unique objectively correct answers. This did not appear to bother the psychologists devising those tests, who just chose one answer which according to them was "the only right answer"! A lot of the questions are not really about finding correct answer, they are about finding out whether the testee thinks in the same manner as the problem-creator. If does, then has "greater intelligence." If you gave really-maximally-correct answers to IQ test questions, they might be "answers a,b and c all may be justified, by the following reasoning xxxx" -- and you would then be graded as having "low intelligence" despite objectively doing a better job than all the other test-takers and the test creators! And then, the psychology community determined (in one of their "greatest discoveries") that "intelligence" was a pretty one-dimensional thing. I.e. you might think you are good at French and poor at crosswords, but according to the shrinks there is only one quantity "g" describing your "general intelligence" and hence your abilities at everything are all high or all low. The fact that the most-favored IQ tests today are largely not about correctness, but rather about consensus, was of course not discussed at all, and surely couldn't have anything to do with that "great discovery" could it? Shut up, critics. -- Warren D. Smith http://RangeVoting.org <-- add your endorsement (by clicking "endorse" as 1st step) _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun