When you knew without a doubt you were right? So last night, my daughter (who's in an "advanced" math class) asks me to help with her homework which includes powers and the order of operations. Thee problem is 4 to the 3rd power, which of course is 64. I try to explain that you can simply translate this into 4x4x4, and she is convinced her teacher has told her there's some "extra" math you have to do. She doesn't know how to explain it, but she's so sure of it she debates with me forever. Now, I start doubting myself and have to go google it just to double check myself. I confirm I am correct and try to convince her of this, yet she still think it's not quite right. I have skype up, so I ask a friend of ours, and he confirms it, but she's so adamant about it that the issue doesn't drop. Finally, I just tell her "I think you misunderstood something from the teacher, do it my way and I will go to school with you in the morning and we'll ask the teacher", which she agreed to do. I tell you, I knew I was right, and had proof to back me up but DAMNED if I wasn't thinking about it all last night. We did go in together and she and I went to speak with her math teacher (on a side note, 5th grade teachers seem a lot more uptight than 4th grade teachers) and he confirmed for Shannon that Dad was in fact correct. It's still nice to have these small victories as a parent.
I took a speech class at UT. For the entire class, the professor lectured us on how unhealthy it was to brush one's teeth. He referenced studies, he explained the effects of friction, etc. He then asked the class how many people were going to change their dental hygiene. About 90% of the class raised their hand. At that, he told us that we'd just learned the art of persuasive speaking and that everything he'd said was a bunch of made up ********. It was a good lesson.
That's awesome NAIU. I have determined from reading my original post that should she ever need help with spelling and/or punctuation, she's screwed.
Holy **** NAIU, I had that same class, and I still think about that all of the time. For about an hour I was fully convinced that it was bad for you to brush your teeth more than once a day.
I took a class my freshman year I think it was some experimental speech or english class. Our lab was having a speaker come and give a persuasive speech. We had a General, Madelyn Murray O'Hair and some other interesting and persuasive speakers. They all made very strong points, but int he end the thing you had to look at was the underlying premise. If you start with the basis that 4 to the 3rd power is not 4x4x4, then you can come up with a lot of wrong answers, but sound convincing in doing so.
I have this happen all the time. Mostly at work. There's something about the way kids can argue that would make you doubt your own name.
I have the same issue with my son..Amazingly even though I have taken a bunch of advance mathematics classes (diff eq and above) my son will still swear I am teaching him his middle school math wrong and not the way the teacher taught it. He swears teacher will mark his work wrong.
I'd tell my son to do it the best way and if the teacher marks him wrong I'll go teach the teacher the right way to do the math.
You should absolutely mark the teacher's mistakes and send it back to him/her. Granted she'll probably end up flunking you kid, but it's a small price to pay!
The professor you guys are talking about was (John?) Daley; damn near everyone I knew at UT took that speech class...
