Stupidity in math books

[notfred]

If I get an assignment to do problems numbered 1-10 on a specific page of a book, I expect to do 10 problems. 10 is a significantly smaller number than the 37 problems I have to actually do.

STOP MAKING MATH PROBLEMS WITH SECTIONS A-H, JUST MAKE THEM DAMN SEPERATE PROBLEMS!

That annoys me. :| I'd rather get an assignment for numbers 1-37 than an assignment for 1-10 that's actually 37 problems.

 

[yhelothar]

Don't do it then.. unless you're still in gradeschool

 

[gotensan01]

I think the point is to break a very difficult, long problem out into steps to finally reach the answer. Good life skill?

 

[Rapidskies]

When I was a kid I used to have this green machine toy and I would ride like the wind. Well one day after many months of riding the metal brace holding it together broke. I cried about it but of course I was six at the time.

 

[nietsni3]

uhm you make a point.

 

[BespinReactorShaft]

Mathematicians are among academia's greatest sado-masochists.

 

[Epoman]

4+4 = 44

 

[Wallydraigle]

Don't look at it as being ripped off, look at it as getting 27 bonus problems for free!

 

[MrCodeDude]

I hate that too. Why have a, b, c, d, e, etc.

Especially on tests. We had a 20 question test, except four problems had 5 different parts to them.

 

[her209]

Cartwheels!!!

 

[raptor13]

Doing A-H makes a lot more sense to me than saying "Problems 9 - 17 refer to the following scenario:" everytime there is a multi-part question. It's the same amount of work so what does it matter? All I see here is you falsely anticipating an easier assignment than you got. Sorry, dude.

 

[notfred]

Originally posted by: gotensan01
I think the point is to break a very difficult, long problem out into steps to finally reach the answer. Good life skill?

8. Use Quine's method to show that each well formed formula is a tautology.
a. ( A implies B ) and ( B implies C ) implies ( A implies C ).
b. similar to a
c. similar to b
...
h.

 

[Kibbo]

A Prof or teacher is going to assign you the number of questions s/he thinks is neccessary. The page formatting is irrelevant. Skip the repetitious questions if you get it. Do them all if you don't. Remember that in most classes, especially intro classes, the prof is assigning enough questions to properly teach to those of average intelligence. If you are above that, self-edit.

 

[element]

That must be really easy math if they expect you to do 37 problems. The math I took we had 3 or 4 problems and that was enough to fill pages and pages of work.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

I get really sick of that too, my physics teacher assigned 1-7 and each damn problem had an A,B,C,D and maybe an E to it. At first I just plan on 7 problems, then all of a sudden it's 28 :Q

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Originally posted by: element
That must be really easy math if they expect you to do 37 problems. The math I took we had 3 or 4 problems and that was enough to fill pages and pages of work.

even if it's easy, many times it's just busy work, gets tiring after doing it so many times

 

[xyion]

I would just work the first couple out all the way, and then just put the answers down for D-x. Always got me full credit.

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: lirion
Don't look at it as being ripped off, look at it as getting 27 bonus problems for free!

I was going to give you a :thumbsdown: but you made me laugh so here's a :beer:.

 

[TitanDiddly]

:beer:

 

[Yo Ma Ma]

You should bring this up in class to the prof. Perhaps the other students will chime in and support your protest. Perhaps not.

 

[KnickNut3]

Sometimes, letters are parts of a larger problem, at which point lettering is appropriate.

However, sometimes you get the stupid "evaluate the following integrals" and each of 1 through 10 has 6 integrals lettered a-f. That's stupid.

 

[Yomicron]

My current math class is like that. Looking at the problem list, the assignment didn't seem too bad, but it ended up being 90 problems. Some of the students complained and for our second assignment we only had 59.

Thankfully it's just a matrix analysis class, so the problems are fairly simple.

 

[TuxDave]

I had a static mechanic midterm that had only 1 problem. Section A-E had an object and we did lots of calculations on it. Sections F-I is when we turned the object upside down.