Polynomially Perverse

What, with its stupid curriculastupid texts and really monumentally stupid exams, it’s difficult to imagine a wealthy Western country with worse mathematics education than Australia. Which is why God gave us New Zealand.

Earlier this year we wrote about the first question on New Zealand’s 2016 Level 1 algebra exam:

A rectangle has an area of  \bf x^2+5x-36. What are the lengths of the sides of the rectangle in terms of  \bf x.

Obviously, the expectation was for the students to declare the side lengths to be the linear factors x – 4 and x + 9, and just as obviously this is mathematical crap. (Just to hammer the point, set x = 5, giving an area of 14, and think about what the side lengths “must” be.)

One might hope that, having inflicted this mathematical garbage on a nation of students, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority would have been gently slapped around by a mathematician or two, and that the error would not be repeated. One might hope this, but, in these idiot times, it would be very foolish to expect it.

A few weeks ago, New Zealand maths education was in the news (again). There was lots of whining about “disastrous” exams, with “impossible” questions, culminating in a pompous petition, and ministerial strutting and general hand-wringing. Most of the complaints, however, appear to be pretty trivial; sure, the exams were clunky in certain ways, but nothing that we could find was overly awful, and nothing that warranted the subsequent calls for blood.

What makes this recent whining so funny is the comparison with the deafening silence in September. That’s when the 2017 Level 1 Algebra Exams appeared, containing the exact same rectangle crap as in 2016 (Question 3(a)(i) and Question 2(a)(i)). And, as in 2016, there is no evidence that anyone in New Zealand had the slightest concern.

People like to make fun of all the sheep in New Zealand, but there’s many more sheep there than anyone suspects.

UPDATE (04/02/19): An Oxford school text joins in the fun.

NAPLAN’s Mathematical Nonsense, and What it Means for Rural Peru

The following question appeared on Australia’s Year 9 NAPLAN Numeracy Test in 2009:

y = 2x – 1

y = 3x + 2

Which value of x satisfies both of these equations?

It is a multiple choice question, but unfortunately “The question is completely stuffed” is not one of the available answers.

Of course the fundamental issue with simultaneous equations is the simultaneity. Both equations and both variables must be considered as a whole, and it simply making no sense to talk about solutions for x without reference to y. Unless y = -7 in the above equations, and there is no reason to assume that, then no value of x satisfies both equations. The NAPLAN question is way beyond bad.

It is always worthwhile pointing out NAPLAN nonsense, as we’ve done before and will continue to do in the future. But what does this have to do with rural Peru?

In a recent post we pointed out an appalling question from a nationwide mathematics exam in New Zealand. We flippantly remarked that one might expect such nonsense in rural Peru but not in a wealthy Western country such as New Zealand. We were then gently slapped in the comments for the Peruvian references: Josh queried whether we knew anything of Peru’s educational system; and, Dennis questioned the purpose of bringing up Peru, since Australia’s NAPLAN demonstrates a “level of stupidity” for all the World to see. These are valid points.

It would have been prudent to have found out a little about Peru before posting, but we seem to be safe. Peru’s economy has been growing rapidly but is not nearly as strong as New Zealand’s or Australia’s. Peruvian school education is weak, and Peru seems to have no universities comparable to the very good universities in New Zealand and Australia. Life and learning in rural Peru appears to be pretty tough.

None of this is surprising, and none of it particularly matters. Our blog post referred to “rural Peru or wherever”. The point was that we can expect poorer education systems to throw up nonsense now and then, or even typically; in particular, lacking ready access to good and unharried mathematicians, it is unsurprising if exams and such are mathematically poor and error-prone.

But what could possibly be New Zealand’s excuse for that idiotic question? Even if the maths ed crowd didn’t know what they were doing, there is simply no way that a competent mathematician would have permitted that question to remain as is, and there are plenty of excellent mathematicians in New Zealand. How did a national exam in New Zealand fail to be properly vetted? Where were the mathematicians?

Which brings us to Australia and to NAPLAN. How could the ridiculous problem at the top of this post, or the question discussed here, make it into a nationwide test? Once again: where were the mathematicians?

One more point. When giving NAPLAN a thoroughly deserved whack, Dennis was not referring to blatantly ill-formed problems of the type above, but rather to a systemic and much more worrying issue. Dennis noted that NAPLAN doesn’t offer a mathematics test or an arithmetic test, but rather a numeracy test. Numeracy is pedagogical garbage and in the true spirit of numeracy, NAPLAN’s tests include no meaningful evaluation of arithmetic or algebraic skills. And, since we’re doing the Peru thing, it seems worth noting that numeracy is undoubtedly a first world disease. It is difficult to imagine a poorer country, one which must weigh every educational dollar and every educational hour, spending much time on numeracy bullshit.

Finally, a general note about this blog. It would be simple to write amusing little posts about this or that bit of nonsense in, um, rural Peru or wherever. That, however, is not the purpose of this blog. We have no intention of making easy fun of people or institutions honestly struggling in difficult circumstances; that includes the vast majority of Australian teachers, who have to tolerate and attempt to make sense of all manner of nonsense flung at them from on high. Our purpose is to point out the specific idiocies of arrogant, well-funded educational authorities that have no excuse for screwing up in the manner in which they so often do.

Factoring in the Stupidity

It is very brave to claim that one has found the stupidest maths exam question of all time. And the claim is probably never going to be true: there will always be some poor education system, in rural Peru or wherever, doing something dumber than anything ever done before. For mainstream exams in wealthy Western countries, however, New Zealand has come up with something truly exceptional.

Last year, New Zealand students at Year 11 sat one of two algebra exams administered by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. The very first question on the second exam reads:

A rectangle has an area of  \bf x^2+5x-36. What are the lengths of the sides of the rectangle in terms of  \bf x.

The real problem here is to choose the best answer, which we can probably all agree is sides of length \pi and (x^2+5x-36)/\pi.

OK, clearly what was intended was for students to factorise the quadratic and to declare the factors as the sidelengths of the rectangle. Which is mathematical lunacy. It is simply wrong.

Indeed, the question would arguably still have been wrong, and would definitely still have been awful, even if it had been declared that x has a unit of length: who wants students to be thinking that the area of a rectangle uniquely determines its sidelengths? But, even that tiny sliver of sense was missing.

So, what did students do with this question? (An equivalent question, 3(a)(i), appeared on the first exam.) We’re guessing that, seeing no alternative, the majority did exactly what was intended and factorised the quadratic. So, no harm done? Hah! It is incredible that such a question could make it onto a national exam, but it gets worse.

The two algebra exams were widely and strongly criticised, by students and teachers and the media. People complained that the exams were too difficult and too different in style from what students and teachers had been led to expect. Both types of criticism may well have been valid. For all of the public criticism of the exams, however, we could find no evidence of the above question or its Exam 1 companion being flagged. Plenty of complaining about hard questions, plenty of complaining about unexpected questions, but not a word about straight out mathematical crap.

So, not only do questions devoid of mathematical sense appear on a nationwide exam. It then appears that the entire nation of students is being left to accept that this is what mathematics is: meaningless autopilot calculation. Well done, New Zealand. You’ve made the education authorities in rural Peru feel very much better about themselves.

UPDATE (04/02/19): Lightning strikes twice, and thrice.