WitCH 12: Duplicitous
The following WitCH comes from the VCE 2014 Specialist Exam 1: The Examiners’ Report indicates that 81%, 48% and 45% of students received full marks for parts (a), (b) and (c), respectively.
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WitCH 11: Impartial
The following WitCH comes from (CAS permitted) 2018 Specialist Mathematics Exam 2: The Examiners’ Report indicates that about half of the students gave the intended answer of D, with about a third giving the incorrect answer B. The Report notes: Option B did not account for common factors and its last term is not irreducible, […]
WitCH 10: Malfunction
It’s a long, long time since we’ve had a WitCH. They have been not-so-slowly accumulating, however. And now, since we’re temporarily free of the Evil Mathologer, it is the WitCHing hour. Due mostly to the hard work of Damo, all of the outstanding WitCHes have been resolved, with the exception of WitCH 8. That one […]
Signs of the Times
Our second sabbatical post concerns, well, the reader can decide what it concerns. Last year, diagnostic quizzes were given to a large class of first year mathematics students at a Victorian tertiary institution. The majority of these students had completed Specialist Mathematics or an equivalent. On average, these would not have been the top Specialist […]
Feynman on Modernity
We plan to have more posts on VCAA’s ridiculous curriculum review. Unfortunately. Now, however, we’ll take a semi-break with three related posts. The nonsensical nature of VCAA’s review stems largely from its cloaking of all discussion in a slavish devotion to “modernity”, from the self-fulfilling prediction of the inevitability of “technology”, and from the presumption […]
VCAA Puts the “Con” into Consultation
As we have written, the Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority is “reviewing” Victoria’s senior secondary maths, which amounts to the VCAA attempting to ram through a vague and tendentious computer-based curriculum, presented with no evidence of its benefit apart from change for the sake of change. Readers can and should respond to the VCAA’s manipulative […]
Reviewing the VCAA Review – Open Discussion
The VCAA is currently conducting a “review” of VCE mathematics. We’ve made our opinion clear, and we plan to post further in some detail. (We’ll update this post with links when and as seems appropriate.) We would also appreciate, however, as much input as possible from readers of (especially critics of) this blog. This post […]
The Wolfram at the Door
(Note added 20/4: A VCAA questionnaire open until May 10 is discussed at the end of this post. Anyone is permitted to respond to this questionnaire, and anyone who cares about mathematics education should do so. It would be appreciated if those who have responded to the questionnaire indicate so in the comments below.) Victoria’s […]
PoSWW 4: Overly Complex
This PoSWW comes courtesy of a smart Year 11 VCE student who, it appears, may be a rich source of such nonsense. It’s an exercise in the Jacaranda text MathsQuest 11, Specialist Mathematics (2019). To be honest, we’re not sure the exercise below is a PoSWW. It may simply be a minor error, the likes […]
The VCAA Dies Another Death
A while back we pointed out two issues with the 2018 Specialist Mathematics Exams. The Exam Reports (though, strangely, not Exam 1) are now online (here and here). (Update 27/02/19: Exam 1 is now also online.) Ignoring some fresh Hell suggested by the Exam 2 Report (B2(b), B3(c)(i), B6(e)), how did the VCAA address these issues? […]