Our Little Snowflakes

Talk about homework, and the creative ways that students blunder into it like someone putting their head down and running into a brick wall, are all too common among teachers.  I suspect this is because there are altogether too many people in these classes that only made it out of high school by some small miracle, or some large grade inflation.

For instance, after posting about my first homework earlier this week, I received an email from my colleague, Dr. P. N. Philpott.  He had received an email from one of his students:

"I just entered the data into webwork, and the online thing, and it gave me 167 for the variance and 12 something for the standard deviation.

How am I suppose to calculate those then?"

Intro stat, first time I've ever taught a sub-precalc level class.  It's fucking nuts.  I can't believe I ever thought badly of my calc students' maturity or sense of initiative.

The "online thing"?  THE ONLINE THING?  Damn, son.

In such a brief message, there seem to be an impressive number of things going wrong.  First of all, I shed a tear that my colleague has been forced to commit what I consider charity work (or possibly something akin to community service punishment) by teaching not just a sub-precalc level class, but statistics.  There's a reason many schools separate the statistics department from the mathematics department.  If it were calculus-based statistics, or an amusing subject like conformal invariants of random processes, then it would be more tolerable.  But this...doesn't sound much better than babysitting preschoolers.

This class is presumably taken by people for whom this will be their sole math class.  People who have spent their whole life trying to dodge thinking.  This email bears this idea out.  Dr. Philpott understandably has been reduced to an apoplectic rage at the ignorance.  No matter how much you lower your standards, there will always be those ready to disappoint you.

I do find it somewhat sad that these online services and programs have been cropping up in recent years in the futile effort to make it easier or...I shudder to say...fun to learn math.  I expect more often than not, the students try to use them as an excuse to be more lazy, and think even less.  The slightest problem that comes up, they come running to their professor.  It's a wonder they can operate a computer well enough to send an email.

The obvious answer to the question, "How am I suppose to calculate those then?" (while trying as hard as possible to ignore the grammatical error - we can leave that to the English professors to pick it to pieces) is, "You calculate it the way that we discussed in class, which is also the way it is done in the book.  If you have trouble using a tool designed to make your life easier and more convenient, I suggest you build character by calculating every variance and standard deviation for the remainder of the semester using nothing more advanced than a slide rule.  And no, I will not teach you how to use a slide rule."  If they try to ask a follow-up question, refuse to answer until they show you their calculations.