40% of College Students get this question wrong. AND IT MAKES ME ANGRY!

Mozared

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Stop being elitist. I got this years ago, but because I don't care in the slightest about algebra I'm not too sure whether I'd do it right again (I did a semi-decent attempt, got to " x^2+9, but I've probably forgotten something now" and just went "ah well, lets look"). Trust me when I say you can mean something and not know algebra.
 

qeinar

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Jul 14, 2009
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(x+3)^2
(x+3)(x+3)
x^2+3x+3x+9
x^2+6x+9


easy stuff. ^^ would be harder (but still easy if it was: (x+3)^2=0
or even harder: cos(2x)*sin(3x)^4=24*cos(12x)
 

Chipperz

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buggy65 said:
College is supposed to be a place of higher learning. To get into college you must also pass high school and a number of exams. Yet, based on a recent campus wide survey conducted at my school 40% of college students cannot FOIL. I am a math major and this saddens and angers me. So Escapist, I ask you:

FOIL: (x+3)^2
EDIT: FOIL also means Expand...

Please put your answers in spoiler tags so people can't cheat without actively looking. To do a spoiler tag you place [mathspoiler]{content}[/mathspoiler] but remove the "math" part.

Remember, 40 freakin' percent fail at this. Try not to be one of them.

The correct answer is
{x^2+6x+9}
Don't worry, I'm studying Games Design and the stultifyingly obvious things that people get wrong on this very website ('Day One DLC should have been on the disk!' is a fun one to start) get me pissed off, especially seeing as this is a place where people should have at least some knowledge about games.

Also, fun fact - I aced all of my Key Skills during my A-levels. Highest score on each one (level 3? 4? I can't remember). I then went to uni and did two years of Literature before dropping out and doing admin and computer support for two years. I took the Key Skills tests again last year and managed to drop to level 2 on Maths, and only just kept level 3 by something like 2% on English. This is because even in a job that required me to set up a database and work on statistics for a good part of a year, most of the stuff they teach you in a maths lesson will never be used again unless you go for something that actively requires algebra.

Agayek said:
Edit: Also, there are a lot of people who study fake majors (like Art, Music, etc), and they don't tend, or need, much in the way of math classes so it's somewhat understandable. Depressing, but understandable.
I know this has already been commented on, but this is one of the most spectacularly ignorant things I've ever read. That's a feat, you should be proud.
 

Kruxxor

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Jan 18, 2009
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buggy65 said:
College is supposed to be a place of higher learning. To get into college you must also pass high school and a number of exams. Yet, based on a recent campus wide survey conducted at my school 40% of college students cannot FOIL. I am a math major and this saddens and angers me. So Escapist, I ask you:

FOIL: (x+3)^2
EDIT: FOIL also means Expand...

Please put your answers in spoiler tags so people can't cheat without actively looking. To do a spoiler tag you place [mathspoiler]{content}[/mathspoiler] but remove the "math" part.

Remember, 40 freakin' percent fail at this. Try not to be one of them.

The correct answer is
{x^2+6x+9}
So I need to expand (x+3)^2 ?
Okay

(..x..+..3..)..^..2
(.....x......+......3.....).....^.....2


I win?
 

Cabboge

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So a quick word to all those who believe that art is a "fake major".

It's funny because I will get paid well from doing a job I love, I will easily secure a job form college to retirement with wonderful job security and I won't hate myself every night because I will be doing something creative that provides society with the necessary cultural fix that people truly love.

You can argue that you would rather watch TV than visit a theatre to see play but keep in mind that all of Hollywood and television ride on the world of theatre. Seriously all the great big name actors today, guess when they come from and where they return to consistently.
 

ottenni

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Hey i can do that. And personally that doesn't bother me that they cant do that. If 40% couldn't write a resume that would be worrying, because i'm sure more than 40% of college students wont be following a profession that will require them to *FOIL* (we used different terminology but i'm sticking with what the OP uses) but knowing how to write a resume is something you are much more likely to need.
 

gim73

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Nomad said:
Agayek said:
Edit: Also, there are a lot of people who study fake majors (like Art, Music, etc), and they don't tend, or need, much in the way of math classes so it's somewhat understandable. Depressing, but understandable.
This is an attitude that I never understood. I understand that you say so mostly in jest, but you must be partly serious even to have thought of the statement in the first place. Why is natural science more valuable than, say, social science?

Agayek said:
I term anything where the ultimate goal is to not really produce anything useful (or where the value is subjective) as a "fake" major.
I can honestly not think of one single useless subject, or one where the value is entirely subjective.

I could argue that advanced mathematics is useless, because it seldom reaches practical application and instead becomes numbers for the sake of numbers. The same goes for advanced physics. There is a value in it, however, because it has long-term applications and indirect effects. So does art and music - which also have direct effects to boot, as a musician is bound to produce music and a painter is bound to produce paintings.

Agayek said:
I will say, though, that any and all politicians are, as a group, basically useless though. If only because the US government has very successfully jaded my views on such things in recent years.
Err... I'd like to know how you reached that conclusion. Politicians enable everything else in society, as they distribute common resources and dictate common policy. Politicians, as a group, are not only absolutely essential to society, but also probably the most underappreciated and exposed professional group of all.

That the US government stinks is first of all subjective - and I believe you critizicised "fake majors" earlier for having subjective values. Second, even if that is true, it is hardly the politicians' fault. They're elected to enact certain policy - and the voters decide what that policy should be through the general elections. If they didn't enact the policy they were elected to enact, they wouldn't be doing their jobs properly. If you disagree with your national policy, take it up with your national populace, not the politicians. It's the populace that make the final decision.
Advanced math useless? Not on your life! Do you like your bridges standing tall or falling down in a storm? Math shows us how things work. It drives the physics that make things move the way they do. Math is essential to making modern life possible. It's great because everything builds up to a great finish. By the time you are fooling around with differential equations you have the basis of algebra, trigonometry, series and a few other tools to make it work nicely. Then things start getting too complicated to handle on paper and you need to bust out with computers. You don't know advanced math until you have to run a code for hours to solve a problem.

Also, saying that so many college students get the question wrong is rather irrelevent. A decent chunk of college freshmen drop out before finishing their first semester. Most people don't stick with the same degree they started with, changing degrees several times each year until settling for something entirely different. You start the term with a packed room, and some people are standing. A week later everyone has a seat. By the time you finish your first midterm there are many empty seats. Of course there are always THOSE classes where you only see half the class on the exam days. In your upper division classes you don't see that sort of behavior if you have a REAL degree. College math? Most degrees only require college algebra. Of course scientists and engineers require higher math because it's nessesary for what we do. You'll probably never have to show how heat dissipates off of a pin fin, a fact that you should be happy about.

What IS disappointing about this statistic is that most college algebra tests are scantron, which means the right answer IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM! Multiple choice math tests are retarded. It works for history and that kind of crap because it's a bunch of frivilous facts that resemble eachother and you are just memorizing the answers. For a math test it's the process that has to be tested, not the answer. I loved my college physics class because our professor always graded every question for the process, not the answer. Get the right answer and you get a single point. The other nine points go to the steps in getting the answer. Error carried forward and the right work around it would get most of the credit.
 

FireFox170

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That's easy because it's a perfect square, but add in a bunch of negatives and positives, different numbers aside from a 3....that's what throws me off.
 

cannibalnana

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Agayek said:
Edit: Also, there are a lot of people who study fake majors (like Art, Music, etc), and they don't tend, or need, much in the way of math classes so it's somewhat understandable. Depressing, but understandable.
hate to double post, but this caught my eye and now I'm gonna have to laugh at your ignorance. I'm a music major and I know math. That's because I payed attention in high school and the teachers didn't need to hold my dick while I peed.
 

asinann

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They get it wrong because only about 2 groups of people on earth need it: astrophysicists and math majors. Seriously, how many occupations actually USE algebra? The ones that do are important, I'll give ya that, but there aren't many of them.
 

Gardenia

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(a+b)^2 = a^2 + 2ab + b^2
That's not to suggest I haven't forgotten that simple rule once or twice in the heat of the moment.
 

spinFX

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Aug 18, 2008
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I did high level maths in highschool and continued them in uni so yes, this question was easy.

BUT

Who cares if people get it wrong? I'm sure they're asking arts students this and the arts students I know would have no freaking clue how to do this.

Bam.
 

MissGinaKid

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I have no idea what this is about. I havn't learned about this but i want to get into Fashion so i guess it doesn't matter.ki
EDIT: Okay after thinking about it math is used in fasion mostly for mesurements and such.
Just as an add on to this debate on rather Art subjects are useful or not, Some art schools add culinary skills as an art subject. Is being able to make good food useless?