In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, dennis roberts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >At 04:09 PM 3/26/2003, Herman Rubin wrote:
>>To make things more objective, multiple choice exams have >>become at least a major source of "information". These >>almost must be trivial pursuit; a good problem requires >>at least 15 minutes of available time, and should not be >>graded by the answer, but by the way it is approached and >>treated. Even breaking it down to its parts loses so much >>that the important parts cannot be tested. >i want to understand you ... are you saying that process is THE thing but, >results matter not? Results matter, but in a practical problem, the results will be obtained by a computer, which does not make mistakes in arithmetic, or getting a sign wrong, or the like. The important part is setting up the problem in symbols, using the appropriate concepts, sometimes doing the symbolic manipulation (this is often done by machines), and being able to interpret the answer after it has been obtained. Researchers may need to be able to manipulate, but the ordinary engineer does not, and possibly should not, to avoid the danger of formulating a differential equation he can solve, rather than one called for by the physical situation. -- This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University. Herman Rubin, Deptartment of Statistics, Purdue University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558 . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
