Similar to some 2024 VCAA grading idiocy we have already noted, a colleague has just pointed out to us some idiocy from the grading of last year’s (CAS-poisoned) Specialist Mathematics Exam 2.
This “half a square” is not mathematics. It is anal retentive madness, courtesy of mathematical midgets who demonstrably lack any sense of proper mathematical thought or how to assess it.
Presumably, we’ll get the same grading idiocy from the same midgets this year. And, whether or not the same grading idiocy will appear, students will be stressing over whether the same grading idiocy will appear rather than concentrating upon anything of genuine mathematical depth.
CAS exams are insane. VCAA is insane.
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Oh shit. I’m a physics teacher who occasionally gets thrown a Methods or Spesh class. I have definitely been telling kids not to worry about this sort of thing for years. “The point is to generate some intuition about what the function is doing and to label key points. Nobody cares if it’s to scale”. Etc etc.
What does the word ‘sketch’ mean?? How does it differ from a plot?
More fool you, for thinking you were teaching on Planet Earth.
It is batshit insane, the antithesis of good mathematics teaching and good mathematics testing. All I can do is yell on this blog, but if VCAA repeats this fuckery this year I will be fucking yelling at them as loud as I fucking can. I fucking hate them.
Yeah – I’ve also been (appropriately) cavalier about asymptotes until seeing last year’s marking scheme. This year I told my students if there is a scale/grid, calculate a point on the asymptotes near the edge…
Apparently this is not a historically unusual requirement in marking such questions – but now that the marking schemes are released, we can all see it.
What makes you think this is “not a historically unusual requirement”?
I know someone who was in the assessor meeting where it was discussed. But I don’t have any documented evidence – eg old marking schemes / assessment guides.
So the suggestion is, “We have always fucked over students with this nonsense, so why would we stop now?”
I made no such suggestion.
Simon, of course I wasn’t imagining you would suggest anything of the sort. I am inquiring about the assessor meeting discussion. I’m not sure of the meaning of “it was discussed”.
But Marty, /surely/ students can “distinguish between exact and approximate presentations of mathematical results produced by technology, and interpret these results to a specified degree of accuracy” without that specified degree of accuracy (half square) stated on the question or in the instructions, that’s buried in the outcome 3 key skills… /s
I know from exams reports for General, that those exams get marked similarly with how least-squares lines are sketched. Either needing to pass exactly through/on the grid lines if exact or within the right square/edges of the square otherwise. But at least that is only two points on a straight line, not arbitrary points on a curve (surely the turning points students would aim to get relatively accurately positioned, especially when called out in the question).
Alex, are you really arguing for that fucking square that VCAA drew? Tell me no and we can discuss the rest. Tell me yes and I’m going to recommend you undergo a psychological assessment.
God no! (I tried to make the sarcasm as obvious as possible.)
How are students supposed to know that point in particular needs to be within that square and not some other point within another square without anything to tell them so? What if they student was accurate on that point but wildly inaccurate everywhere else? Will they suddenly they move the goal posts to some other randomly chosen point?
Turning points when they’ve asked for them is a slightly different story.
OK, sorry Alex. I’ll tell the psychiatrist to head back home.
Things are so insane, we are continually being asked to take seriously such lunacy, I cannot tell anymore.
On a placement there was a question on a sac where it asked you to sketch some exponential function. A previous part of the question asked you to evaluate the function at some x value. Most students didn’t have their sketch go through the coordinate they had earlier determined. I knew that obviously a sketch is a sketch, but I didn’t know if students should have been more careful with incorporating previous parts of the question. I can’t remember if the question stated to include any particular points (apart from intercepts). It must not have because why would I be having doubts about all this?
I didn’t take any marks off, just circled the coordinate and wrote ‘careful’. I still don’t know what would be the right thing to do. Obviously to prepare them for a VCAA exam you should let the students know that they have to be extremely precise with their drawing, but I don’t know if it’s ‘bad mathematics’ if they don’t draw through a known point or not.
Sorry if this is a bit rambly but I just have a lot of doubts about this, made worse by VCAA’s stupid demands of precision.
PS The sac was tech-free.
No, it is not “bad mathematics” to not draw through a known point. If the known point is some random who-gives-a-shit point then, unless explicitly instructed otherwise, the students should have proper license to not give a shit about the who-gives-a-shit point.
This is all utterly insane.
I know of a student who missed out on a raw 50 in Spesh because they lost one mark on E1 graph and one mark on E2 graph PRECISELY because of this.
I really fucking hate VCAA. With all my soul, I hate them.
Put me in the picture: I don’t understand the “half-a-square”business or even to talk about any square the turning point is in. The question does not appear to ask for it. Why not just indicate the points in question?
I think it’s VCAA-speak for how much wriggle room a student has for where a point on their graph is relative to the scale on the axes. It’s total nonsense, of course. Students should simply be given a set of axes with no scale and asked to draw a graph.
Ed, I am shocked that such a long-time and distinguished mathematician and devotee to mathematics education does not know the meaning of that box. Perhaps you need to go to one of VCAA’s reeducation camps.
🙂