Monthly Archives: March 2012

x to the minus 1 = 1 over x. OK?

I have posted before about the difficulties that students have with fractions and the problems that this causes. Many others recognise the same difficulty. On a related point, students also have problems with reciprocation, and sometimes it is simply that they don’t … Continue reading

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Yet more problems with significant figures, using a calculator for scientific notation and precedence

The question shown was originally planned to assess students’ ability to estimate, but since we can’t prevent them from using a calculator, I adapted it to test calculator use as well. 43% of the analysed 14943 responses were correct, and the … Continue reading

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