/sci/ - Science & Math

>>10413826
Some execute procedures as if reading tea leaves or tarot cards.
e.g. in a junior-level EE course, on a question regarding sensor input. 12 students out of ~50 decided that [math]y = f(x) \implies x = \frac{y}{f}[/math], then stopped there, unable to go any further and unsure of what went wrong.

Some don't understand arithmetic so they if they make a mistake in the procedure they can't identify it. Student (in an EMF course) multiplied two fractional numbers (i.e. between 0 and 1) together with calculator, came up with result larger than either of the two numbers. Proceeds to blindly carry this obviously invalid result forward into the problem, gets stuck, wonders if perhaps the question is broken.

Sometimes you teach a technique and they distill it into a pattern which is overly simple and incorrect, or form a mental picture of the system which is wildly incorrect (particularly in programming courses). But they don't (or can't?) know their mental picture is wrong and will swear up and down that they understand the material, so it's hard to get them to examine it.

And these aren't the remedial bunch. These are electrical engineering majors at a tier 1 university.

>>10134169

>>9661492
you can

>>9647097

>>8799185

>>8779456
It's based on the theorem in pic related

>>8779498
>>>/pol/

>>8650080
git gud

>>8542093
they're significantly more likely to be wrong than right, if their arguments don't make sense