This is not an old one. It is from the 2019 Specialist Exam 2 and comes courtesy of student PURJ, who previously contributed to the discussion here. PURJ noted one, glaring, issue with the question below and its grading, but we think there are other issues as well. As with our previous WitCH, we’ll semi-update with excerpts from the examination report once people have had a chance to ponder and to comment.
Tag: calculus
WitCH 66: Bad Pipe Dream
This our final WitCH from the 2021 NHT Methods Exam 2. It is, in its own way, a masterpiece. Continue reading “WitCH 66: Bad Pipe Dream”
WitCH 65: Repeat Offender
The following is our second WitCH from the 2021 NHT Methods Exam 2.
WitCH 64: Decreasing Intelligence
Just in case anybody got the wrong impression and hoped or feared we’d turned over a new leaf, we’ll be posting a number of WitCHes in the next few days. We’ve finally had a chance to look at the 2021 NHT exams (although the exam reports have still not appeared). As usual, the exams are clunky and eccentric, and we’ll be posting a brief question-by-question overview of the exams. But, first, some highlights. Continue reading “WitCH 64: Decreasing Intelligence”
WitCH 58: Differently Abled
Like the previous post, this one comes from Maths Quest Mathematical Methods 11, and is most definitely a WitCH. It can also been seen as a “contrast and compare” with WitCH 15.
Subsection 13.2.5, below, is on “differentiability”. The earlier part of chapter 13 gives a potted, and not error-free, introduction to limits and continuity, and Chapter 12 covers the “first principles” (limit) computation of polynomial derivatives. We’ve included the relevant “worked example”, and the relevant exercises and answers.
A Choice of Difficults
You have a choice. The two questions below come from different exams:
- The first question was the final (half-)question from the NSW 2020 Mathematics Extension 2 Examination (scientific calculator permitted, plus provided formula sheet);
- The second question was the final question from the Victorian 2020 VCE Specialist Mathematics Examination (CAS calculator permitted, plus provided formula sheet).
Each question was (arguably) last year’s most difficult exam question on the most difficult mathematics subject in that state. Each question was effectively allocated just under 20 minutes to complete (11/100 x 180 and 13/80 x 120).
Now, you must choose: which question is better, in any sense of the word “better”?
NSW (Formula Marking guide and sample solution are here.)
VIC (Briefly discussed here, marking guide and sample solution are in your dreams.)
WitCH 47: A Bad Inflection
The question below is from the first 2020 Specialist exam (not online). It has been discussed in the comments here, and the main issues have been noted, but we’ve decided the question is sufficiently flawed to warrant its own post.
UPDATE (10/09/21) For those who’d placed a wager, the examination report (Word-doc-VCAA-stupid) indicates that a second derivative argument was expected. Hence, thousands of VCE students no longer have any sense of what VCAA means by “hence”.
WitCH 44: Estimated Worth
This WitCH is from Cambridge’s 2020 textbook, Mathematical Methods, Unit 1 & 2. It is the closing summary of Chapter 21A, Estimating the area under a graph. (It is followed by 21B, Finding the exact area: the definite integral.)
We’re somewhat reluctant about this one, since it’s not as bad as some other WitCHes. Indeed, it is a conscious attempt to do good; it just doesn’t succeed. It came up in a tutorial, and it was sufficiently irritating there that we felt we had no choice.
WitCH 39: Field of Dreams
This WitCH comes courtesy of frequent commenter, SRK. It comes from the 2016 Specialist Mathematics Exam 2. The examination report does not comment, except to indicate that about 2/3 of students gave the intended answer of B.
WitCH 38: A Deep Hole
This one is due to commenter P.N., who raised it on another post, and the glaring issue has been discussed there. Still, for the record it should be WitCHed, and we’ve also decided to expand the WitCHiness slightly (and could have expanded it further).
The following questions appeared on 2019 Specialist Mathematics NHT, Exam 2 (CAS). The questions are followed by sample Mathematica solutions (screenshot corrected, to include final comment) provided by VCAA (presumably in the main for VCE students doing the Mathematica version of Methods). The examination report provides answers, identical to those in the Mathematica solutions, but indicates nothing further.
UPDATE (05/07/20)
The obvious problem here, of course, is that the answer for Part (b), in both the examination report and VCAA’s Mathematica solutions, is flat out wrong: the function fk will also fail to have a stationary point if k = -2 or k = 0. Nearly as bad, and plenty bad, the method in VCAA’s Mathematica solutions to Part (c) is fundamentally incomplete: for a (twice-differentiable) function f to have an inflection point at some a, it is necessary but not sufficient to have f’’(a) = 0.
That’s all pretty awful, but we believe there is worse here. The question is, how did the VCAA get it wrong? Errors can always occur, but why specifically did the error in Part (b) occur, and why, for a year and counting, wasn’t it caught? Why was a half-method suggested for Part (c), and why was this half-method presumably considered reasonable strategy for the exam? Partly, the explanation can go down to this being a question from NHT, about which, as far as we can tell, no one really gives a stuff. This VCAA screw-up, however, points to a deeper, systemic and much more important issue.
The first thing to note is that Mathematica got it wrong: the Solve function did not return the solution to the equation fk‘ = 0. What does that imply for using Mathematica and other CAS software? It implies the user should be aware that the machine is not necessarily doing what the user might reasonably think it is doing. Which is a very, very stupid property of a black box: if Solve doesn’t mean “solve”, then what the hell does it mean? Now, as it happens, Mathematica’s/VCAA’s screw-up could have been avoided by using the function Reduce instead of Solve.* That would have saved VCAA’s solutions from being wrong, but not from being garbage.
Ask yourself, what is missing from VCAA’s solutions? Yes, yes, correct answers, but what else? This is it: there are no functions. There are no equations. There is nothing, nothing at all but an unreliable black box. Here we have a question about the derivatives of a function, but nowhere are those derivatives computed, displayed or contemplated in even the smallest sense.
For the NHT problem above, the massive elephant not in the room is an expression for the derivative function:
![\[\color{red} \boldsymbol{f'_k(x) = -\frac{x^2 + 2(k+1)x +1}{(x^2-1)^2}}\]](https://mathematicalcrap.com/wp-content/ql-cache/quicklatex.com-0450318234f50ede1f9be5cad116aad6_l3.svg "Rendered by QuickLaTeX.com")
What do you see? Yep, if your algebraic sense hasn’t been totally destroyed by CAS, you see immediately that the values k = 0 and k = -2 are special, and that special behaviour is likely to occur. You’re aware of the function, alert to its properties, and you’re led back to the simplification of fk for these special values. Then, either way or both, you are much, much less likely to screw up in the way the VCAA did.
And that always happens. A mathematician always gets a sense of solutions not just from the solution values, but also from the structure of the equations being solved. And all of this is invisible, is impossible, all of it is obliterated by VCAA’s nuclear weapon approach.
And that is insane. To expect, to effectively demand that students “solve” equations without ever seeing those equations, without an iota of concern for what the equations look like, what the equations might tell us, is mathematical and pedagogical insanity.
*) Thanks to our ex-student and friend and colleague Sai for explaining some of Mathematica’s subtleties. Readers will be learning more about Sai in the very near future.