Today was my first class, two combined sections of the
non-calculus College Physics. I will meet my third section
tomorrow. Thirty nine students were present. I turned my
face toward the blackboard and asked.
"Please raise your hand if you do not know what sine and
cosine are in mathematics." I asked somebody else to
count hands in order not to intimidate anybody. Four
hands were counted.
Then I turned toward the class and said "Use a piece of scrap
paper and a pencil, but not a calculator, and answer the
following question. What is the angle whose sine is 1/2?
You have two minutes."
After two minutes I said "The correct answer is 30 degrees.
I want to know how many of you got the correct answer."
I turned my head toward the blackboard again and said: "raise
your hand if your answer was correct." Only 11 hands were
raised.
I would appreciate if those who teach a similar college course
could conduct the identical survey and shared the outcome
with me in private (kowalskiL@mail.montclair.edu). I would
like to know how my students compare with others and what
the overall situation is. Please send me a message with only
three numbers, like
39,4,11.
The first is how many students were surveyed, the second is
how many declarations of not knowing about sine and cosine
and the last is the number of correct answers. At the end of
the next week (after 9/14/2001) I will add numbers and post
the result. Just for fun. Comment in public if you wish.
Ludwik Kowalski