Oh goodness...you really touched a nerve with that one! In a former
position, I had the pleasure of teaching statistics--and I mean that; I
love teaching that course. But I also had the burden of convincing
students that to understand statistics fully, one must compute the
statistics "by hand," at least early on in the course.
For example, I assigned frequent problem sets for homework, which we graded
in class and discussed both the solutions and the errors. But I always
insisted that students showed all of their work, rather than just using a
calculator to obtain the answers and then simply recording those answers on
their papers. I gave only partial credit to students who showed final
answers but not the intervening steps. The common reaction was, "how dare
you give us such _busy work_!"
I firmly believe that asking students to show their steps in the
computation of descriptive stats, correlations, and t-tests is _not_ too
much to ask. Later on, when we begin the more difficult statistics, I find
that students are much more likely to be able to comprehend them, and more
importantly, communicate verbally and effectively about their meanings. I
teach students how to use SPSS later in the course; reading and
interpreting the printouts is a challenge for many students.
I am very interested in other TIPSters views on this. "How dare I ask
students to show their work on math problems!" Indeed...
Barbara Watters
Penn State Erie, The Behrend College
At 08:20 AM 12/22/2000 -0500, Beth Benoit wrote:
>For the first time that I can recall, I had quite a few students who were
>unable to fully answer this question:
>
>"Using Terman's formula, what would be the IQ for a child who is seven years
>old, but is able to answer only those questions we would expect a
>six-year-old to answer?"
>
>Answer: "I don't have a calculator, but I know it would be 7/6 X 100."
>
>We are raising a generation of college students who can't divide 7 into 6
>without a calculator? I've long become accustomed to handing a sales clerk
>$1 for a 99� item, and watching as he/she looks at the cash register display
>a second time to be sure that the appropriate change should be 1�, but in
>college??
>
>God help us.
>
>Beth Benoit
>University of Massachusetts Lowell
