In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, dennis roberts <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>i would also like to again make a push for correct answers rising to the >approximate same level of importance as process ... we just cannot take >lightly the fact that when someone gets the wrong answer, saying that this >is not THAT important ... I agree. Getting the right answer is, after all, the ultimate objective. Achieving this objective requires more than just a knowledge of the correct process - it also requires the ability to carry out this process reliably. Ignoring this seems like an "academic" bias towards knowlege as opposed to skill. For real work, including academic work, the skills are equally important. Furthermore, avoiding the wrong answer often involves wider knowledge than just that of the process. I have many, many times seen answers from students who knew the correct process, but just made a silly arithmetic mistake - and then failed to realize that the resulting answer was ridiculous. Some students are unfazed by probabilities that are greater than one, by negative variances, and by estimates that are obviously completely ridiculous. Giving full or mostly full credit for such answers on the basis that they "just" made an arithmetic error does not seem to me to be reasonable. Radford Neal ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Radford M. Neal [EMAIL PROTECTED] Dept. of Statistics and Dept. of Computer Science [EMAIL PROTECTED] University of Toronto http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~radford ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list and remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES are available at http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ =================================================================
