[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Fail.
[/quote]
At least post a fail picture, so I have something to laugh at, if you’re going to act like a 13 year old. 
You all are children.
Your efforts at trying to prove these questions too hard are failures, are accomplishing nothing but showing that you don’t measure up to 19th century 8th graders on some very simple stuff, when the problem just is that you can’t do the questions.
Which has to be the Internet definition of “fail.”
You keep insisting that interest formulas have to be memorized to solve the questions but it just isn’t so. Nothing is needed but the most basic understanding and the most basic arithmetic.
Here are the interest questions of what you call a “stupid test” for the claimed reasons you cited. I’ll solve them for you and I think you yourself will be saying, “D’oh!!!”
Treating a month as 30 days, 8 months and 18 days is 258 days.
This is 258/365 of a year. Treating a year as 365 days.
258/365 times 7 percent is 4.95 percent.
Remember, this is NON-COMPOUNDED so it is just this simple.
Boy, what a toughie!!! Aw geez, have to remember a FORMULA for that!
17.5% times $1535 is $268.63.
You do have to know what APR is to solve the problem. The test-taker should assume, given that the question provides no such data, that fees are not involved.
EDIT: You know what, we have to split the “fail” on these two questions. I didn’t intend for the problem to include monthly payments and threw in “credit card” just to make it modern, not spotting that would imply monthly payments. That does throw the problem. The above would only be an approximation. It still doesn’t require “memorization” as you contended but rather only understanding: but I agree the correct solution would be harder than I intended. The situation I had in mind was a simple note paid at the end of the year, perhaps generated out of having just read Write a Promissory Note as one of the original questions. But then I went and threw in a modern detail making it different.
But the above simple-interest one, I think you gotta take the “fail” on that one.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Your efforts at trying to prove these questions too hard are failures, are accomplishing nothing but showing that you don’t measure up to 19th century 8th graders on some very simple stuff, when the problem just is that you can’t do the questions.
[/quote]
I never said anything, ever, about them being “too hard.” Infact, I mentioned them being overly simplistic. My issue was that the questions do not provide an accurate test of mathematical knowledge that is relevant today.
Your failure to address this leads me to believe that you never actually bothered to read my posts, but are just intent on being “correct.”
The only failures is your inability to provide adequate counterpoints to any of my arguments.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
You keep insisting that interest formulas have to be memorized to solve the questions but it just isn’t so. Nothing is needed but the most basic understanding and the most basic arithmetic.
[/quote]
I never stated they HAVE to be memorized, but merely that answering them correctly can be done simply by memorizing. Someone could complete this test that has only the most BASIC of mathematical knowledge, while it is feasible for someone with sophisticated training to fuck it up simply by not recalling some trivial conversion factors, or perhaps just going “screw it” when attempting to recall the formula for compound interest, or remembering its lightly incorrectly.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Here are the interest questions of what you call a “stupid test” for the claimed reasons you cited. I’ll solve them for you and I think you yourself will be saying, “D’oh!!!”
[/quote]
I think the issue is that there is a misunderstanding of what exactly my objection to your modernized test is. Again, the questions are not hard, and I have never stated as such. I’ll let you go back and reread my posts to determine my true point of view, instead of repeating it yet again here.
Also, there is another HUGE issue with this “test” that wasn’t even brought up. It barely touches upon the whole huge range of math that middle schoolers are taught. I recall learning about basic probability and statistics, simple algebraic ideas (equations of lines etc) This is what matters today; not recalling that there’s 2.54cm to an inch.
Well, it was fun debating with you. Neither of us are going to change each others minds. 
Well, before you wrote, and yes I did read your posts:
And now after I’ve shown that that is not true, that nowhere was a memorized formula needed, you now claim:
Most people interpret “requires” as meaning “have to.”
I agree: I’m not going to get you to agree that a person who in thousands of hours of “education” as well as in the rest of their life doesn’t know what ONE metric unit of length is in terms of the inch/foot/mile units they are more familiar with is either showing deficiency in education or an attitude of mind that is hostile to knowing such things or at the least apathetic, which are qualities that merit failing questions on tests of general education.
And I don’t think you’re going to agree even with my fundamental point that these things are properly dealt with as matters of understanding what things are and how they relate with each other, not memorization though bad education approaches them from the direction of memorization. I had an entire post devoted to this or as Tgunslinger put it,
Your posts reveal an approach that is 180 degrees the opposite direction in this regard. Rather than knowing about zebras that they have stripes and look a lot like horses – not from “memorization” but from knowing about zebras – you would have it that a person must memorize “What animal has stripes and looks similar to a horse?” to be able to answer such a question on a test.
(I mean, if you extended your approach shown in your posts regarding arithmetical word problems to this problem.)
Of course you wouldn’t actually do that with the zebra as you learned this outside of the educational system, but the approach you showed with these questions was just like that. NONE of them require formula regurgitation: they require understanding what volumes are and things like that.
So I don’t think I’m going to change your mind. You have a fundamentally different approach. Rather than feeling a student should know about 72 that among other properties, it is 8x9, just as he knows things about animals, to you I take it (if you are consistent) it seems he has to have “memorized” multiplication tables. Yeah, a poor educator almost undoubtedly taught it that way, and it can be done, but when that is THE approach to learning, students fail to be able to answer, for example, word problems. Everything has to be laid out for them – 8 x 9 = ? – or else they cannot solve them, because, just as you claimed until now when you denied ever saying it, they think they need a memorized formula and can’t figure which one to pull out.
And you’re not going to change my mind that education ought to accomplish such things as bringing students to an ability level sufficient to solve the questions in the modernized test.
So at least we’re agreed on that!
^This is a stupid question. Do they really expect you to memorize this sort of information?
Do you really know what a bushel is if you don’t know what volume it is – can’t relate it to volumes you do know?
Nope, you don’t.
Therefore neither you nor I really know what a bushel is. It’s some amount that we don’t know what it is.
Back in the 1890s it was pretty relevant to very many people to know what volume a bushel was.
All that one has to do to modernize this question, if it is desired to see how people today do on equivalent questions, is to change to a different unit of volume that is a unit that they should know and understand.
Yeah i could see that, so i guess the answer would be no, i would not pass this exam haha.
Yes, I also would have had no hope with the bushels or the rods or anything similar.
On that question with the rods – now I spent really only a matter of seconds substituting things for the modernized test – at first I tried to come up with an equivalent involving acres and a commonly understood unit such as feet, but the only relations that seem simple to know on that one are that a square mile is 640 acres, or that 1/4 mile on a side gives 40 acres, or an 1/8th mile gives 10, any of which can be used to solve any such problem, but I don’t realistically expect that most people know that or that they should know it. People in general just don’t work with land areas much these days so it’s an odd fact that a person might have seen once or twice but quite possibly no more than that, never having to apply it.
(Personally I happen to know the above quite possibly only because of once owning a 40 acre piece of land that was exactly 1/4 mile on each side.)
So I wasn’t able, at least quickly, to come up with a modern equivalent on the “rods” question.
- A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
1 standard bushel weighing 60 lbs (in terms of wheat) has a volume of 2150.42 cu in, the volume in question is 2x10x3 which equals = 60 cu ft. And to convert the supposedly known volume to cu ft, you have to divide by 12^3 to compensate for volume. This leaves you with 1.244 cu ft, this divided by the initial volume gives you approx 49 bushels, which WOULD be the correct value assuming you could fill the back of the wagon fully and neatly.
So no, this question does not require any special memorized equations, all i really needed to know was the volume of a bushel of wheat. Replace bushels of wheat with iPhones and i’ll bet most kids could solve this problem.
And quite possibly it would have been easier for the students in 1895: they might have seen a hundred times that a bushel was 1.244 cubic feet, so unless they were hostile or apathetic to picking up such knowledge, they could have plugged that right in and found this an extremely brief calculation.
I agree with BlakedaMan that you get out of it what you put into it. Thanks to your post I find it interesting that a bushel is this particular number of cubic feet and am glad to know it, and therefore probably will remember it. (It helps that it is a facile number to remember.)
Very true, that would have simplified the equation a good bit. But it does go along with the unit conversion theme
I still don’t get the logic behind imperial units. People who thought of that were on some kind of drugs. It’s just… I wouldn’t use the word “wrong” but “strange” or “uncomfortable” I would.
Fahrenheit scale also.
Fahrenheit temperature has a more logical basis than might be apparent.
It is a development from the Romer temperature scale, which set the freezing point of salt brine at zero degrees and the boiling point at 60 degrees.
Why wasn’t the freezing point of water chosen to be the zero degree value? Likely because weather conditions at least in most of Europe would often then have negative temperatures, which is less convenient than having them almost always be positive.
Why 60 degrees? This was a popular round number – e.g. there are 60 minutes in an hour, or 60 seconds in a minute; or somewhat similarly there are 360 degrees in a circle – as it is evenly divisible by many factors.
Wikipedia has a good writeup on how this evolved into the Fahrenheit scale. Briefly – though this isn’t mentioned – there was no convenient substance that had a fixed melting point at a temperature of interest such as roughly the hottest that weather usually gets in European countries, or the human body. And it was thought that human body temperature was a constant, or close enough.
Fahrenheit wanted finer gradations and so multiplied the scale by 4; this moved the Romer body temperature from 24 to 96; it put the freezing point of plain water at close to 32 degrees; Fahrenheit adjusted the scale so that it would be exactly 32 degrees as this put exactly 64 degrees between the freezing point of water and his body temperature value. 64 degrees was convenient because it is a power of 2, thus making it very easy to mark his thermometers.
His scale was later adjusted by others so as to put the boiling point of water at exactly 212, as this was 180 degrees above 32, 180 again being a convenient number (related to 60.) This moved human body temperature to the 98.6 value cited as nominal today.
Not a matter of having been on drugs, but a more complex history. Fundamentally in terms of any physics or other problem I can think of, unlike the metric units for other properties, there is nothing easier about calculating with Celsius than Fahrenheit. It’s purely a style matter.
(For some things it IS easier however to calculate in Kelvin or the Fahrenheit-based Rankine than with Celsius, though.)
Yeah, I read that article, it seems logical enough. But still, I feel it’s easier to handle something that starts with zero like Kelvin (Celsius for everyday stuff).
My two cents on this exam:
I DO think that a lot of it is formula memorization and unit conversion. Do I know the exact formula for interest and discount off the top of my head? Hell no. Do you know the formula for deformation of a load-bearing member as a function of it’s physical properties and size? I do. Those financial formulas might be basic for the kinds of people who deal with money, but my formula is the most basic for those dealing with materials under load.
That being said, I understand the concepts for every single question being asked and, if given a reference, I could do that whole test in under 20 minutes. I have a degree in Engineering, for fuck’s sake… I can do algebra without pausing my masturbation.
Going to Bill’s example, I couldn’t answer most of those because I don’t have much financial knowledge. I pay off my credit card every month, don’t carry a balance, and I know who to ask if I have an important decision to make.
Yes, financial knowledge is important. But being that I’m spending time learning how to design buildings that will support loads that would make your head spin and I haven’t had to deal with financial stuff much, I’d rather just find what I need when I need it than go out of my way to learn all kinds of things I might never deal with, or might only deal with once in my life.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Fahrenheit temperature has a more logical basis than might be apparent.
It is a development from the Romer temperature scale, which set the freezing point of salt brine at zero degrees and the boiling point at 60 degrees.
Why wasn’t the freezing point of water chosen to be the zero degree value? Likely because weather conditions at least in most of Europe would often then have negative temperatures, which is less convenient than having them almost always be positive.
Why 60 degrees? This was a popular round number – e.g. there are 60 minutes in an hour, or 60 seconds in a minute; or somewhat similarly there are 360 degrees in a circle – as it is evenly divisible by many factors.
Wikipedia has a good writeup on how this evolved into the Fahrenheit scale. Briefly – though this isn’t mentioned – there was no convenient substance that had a fixed melting point at a temperature of interest such as roughly the hottest that weather usually gets in European countries, or the human body. And it was thought that human body temperature was a constant, or close enough.
Fahrenheit wanted finer gradations and so multiplied the scale by 4; this moved the Romer body temperature from 24 to 96; it put the freezing point of plain water at close to 32 degrees; Fahrenheit adjusted the scale so that it would be exactly 32 degrees as this put exactly 64 degrees between the freezing point of water and his body temperature value. 64 degrees was convenient because it is a power of 2, thus making it very easy to mark his thermometers.
His scale was later adjusted by others so as to put the boiling point of water at exactly 212, as this was 180 degrees above 32, 180 again being a convenient number (related to 60.) This moved human body temperature to the 98.6 value cited as nominal today.
Not a matter of having been on drugs, but a more complex history. Fundamentally in terms of any physics or other problem I can think of, unlike the metric units for other properties, there is nothing easier about calculating with Celsius than Fahrenheit. It’s purely a style matter.
(For some things it IS easier however to calculate in Kelvin or the Fahrenheit-based Rankine than with Celsius, though.)[/quote]
That being said, i think the celsius scale makes a lot more sense for most people, case in point:
Freezing point of water: 0 C
Boiling point of water : 100 C
Even if i don’t use it, it made much more sense in chemistry.
[quote]matko5 wrote:
I still don’t get the logic behind imperial units. People who thought of that were on some kind of drugs. It’s just… I wouldn’t use the word “wrong” but “strange” or “uncomfortable” I would.
Fahrenheit scale also.[/quote]
Throw out the calculator and pick up a tape measure and the logic is very apparent. Fraction’s are much easier to deal with when measuring and cutting. If you really want to see the benefits of the imperial system, try using a metric tape measure sometime.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts. per bu, deducting 1050 lbs. for tare?
I don’t know what a ‘tare’ is, and have forgotten how long a rod is (except for mine).
[/quote]
Tare is just the weight of the container that you would obviously want to subract out to get the weight of the actual wheat. In this example the tare is likely the wagon that the wheat was transported in.
[quote]jahall wrote:
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Fahrenheit temperature has a more logical basis than might be apparent.
It is a development from the Romer temperature scale, which set the freezing point of salt brine at zero degrees and the boiling point at 60 degrees.
Why wasn’t the freezing point of water chosen to be the zero degree value? Likely because weather conditions at least in most of Europe would often then have negative temperatures, which is less convenient than having them almost always be positive.
Why 60 degrees? This was a popular round number – e.g. there are 60 minutes in an hour, or 60 seconds in a minute; or somewhat similarly there are 360 degrees in a circle – as it is evenly divisible by many factors.
Wikipedia has a good writeup on how this evolved into the Fahrenheit scale. Briefly – though this isn’t mentioned – there was no convenient substance that had a fixed melting point at a temperature of interest such as roughly the hottest that weather usually gets in European countries, or the human body. And it was thought that human body temperature was a constant, or close enough.
Fahrenheit wanted finer gradations and so multiplied the scale by 4; this moved the Romer body temperature from 24 to 96; it put the freezing point of plain water at close to 32 degrees; Fahrenheit adjusted the scale so that it would be exactly 32 degrees as this put exactly 64 degrees between the freezing point of water and his body temperature value. 64 degrees was convenient because it is a power of 2, thus making it very easy to mark his thermometers.
His scale was later adjusted by others so as to put the boiling point of water at exactly 212, as this was 180 degrees above 32, 180 again being a convenient number (related to 60.) This moved human body temperature to the 98.6 value cited as nominal today.
Not a matter of having been on drugs, but a more complex history. Fundamentally in terms of any physics or other problem I can think of, unlike the metric units for other properties, there is nothing easier about calculating with Celsius than Fahrenheit. It’s purely a style matter.
(For some things it IS easier however to calculate in Kelvin or the Fahrenheit-based Rankine than with Celsius, though.)[/quote]
That being said, i think the celsius scale makes a lot more sense for most people, case in point:
Freezing point of water: 0 C
Boiling point of water : 100 C
Even if i don’t use it, it made much more sense in chemistry.[/quote]
As a chemist, I can tell you that there is absolutely no difference in convenience of Celsius vs Fahrenheit other than that published values are given in Celsius or the units include Celsius and so therefore that’s what one has to work with.
But if the values were given in Fahrenheit and the units that included degrees were published in Fahrenheit, everything would be precisely the same.
To give you an analogy: there would be no difference in the difficulty of metric if the meter happened to be the same length as a foot. The convenience comes from the subdivisions or the multiples being factors of 10: e.g. the millimeter, the nanometer, and the kilometer.
Not from the particular choice of size for the meter itself.
Ditto for size of the Centigrade degree vs the Fahrenheit.
The inconvenient factor of each is that that the zero has no relation to any physical zero. Unlike the meter or the foot, where zero meters or zero feet are indeed zero distance.
This is why Kelvin or Rankine are more convenient than either Celsius or Fahrenheit for anything involving thermodynamics. (The sizes of the degrees are the same, but physical absolute zero temperature is the zero of these scales.)