Re: Time to retire?

["Michael N. Monce" <mnmon@CONNCOLL.EDU>]

> Having asked a quiz question that went:  "What is the yearly,
> per-capita cost of.....? " which required that they would have looked
> at the hallway display that we've been working on,  half of the class
> answered with the total cost over 100 years--only a factor of 45
> billion too high!  25% knew and 25% were clueless.  But what about that
> first 50%?  If I give them credit for understanding the work 'yearly'
> (not certain I should), then they clearly don't understand the term
> 'per-capita' or else their reading skills don't include worrying about
> adjectives.
>
> Jim Green is always on us to use the most precise, formal Physics
> language, but how can we succeed at that when we can't even communicate
> in the vernacular (whoops--in ENGLISH).  All the students are English
> speaking by the way!  To twist a Beatles lyric--I've got to admit it's
> harder, getting harder all the time.....
   Well, Rick, a few years ago I got blasted for an exam question which was
a vector problem dealing with a sailboat and the wind direction.  I asked
for the direction of the wind with respect to the stern of the boat.  I was
taken to task by over 75% of the class because they claimed they weren't
sailors and didn't know the stern was the rear end of the boat. I'm not a
sailor either, but thought such a term was common knowledge. It never even
crossed my mind when writing the question that would be the difficult part.

                     Mike Monce