How did she graduate from high school?

Yesterday, one of my students visited me in my office with a question about one of the problems we had done in class. The problem was this: If a machine can toss a coin 100,000 times per second and you want it to toss the coin 2.2x10¹⁹ times, how many seconds do you have to wait? She didn't understand why we divided 2.2x10¹⁹ by 100,000 to get the answer. In such cases, I tell my students to replace the large numbers by small ones, because the power of ten may be too abstract for them. I asked her, "if you can toss a coin two times per second, how many seconds does it take you to toss it ten times?" She said, "two divided by ten?" ... Because of grade inflation - which is out of my control - she is getting a low B in my course! This is a general-education course at an American public UNIVERSITY!



Has anybody else had a similar experience with their students? Is there anything anybody can do about it?



Sam

The Skeptical Educator

via JREF Forum http://ift.tt/1oanddE