In the Cross Product section, one of the motivating questions is "How and when is the cross product of two vectors defined?" which leads me to believe the authors don't understand what a motivating question is …
It's going to be tough to assess the efficacy of these schools, mostly because we can only wait-and-see how these kids turn out. But also, how do you correct for the fact that many (most?) of these students have savvy, affluent, involve parents and would probably be doing comparatively as well in any other school?
Selecting trig, "A right triangle has tanθ= ¾. If the side adjacent to θ is 30, what is the length of the opposite side?" The language/grammar is imprecise. What's it mean for a triangle to "have" tanθ= ¾? Should be that the triangle has an angle θ such that has tanθ= ¾. Also, "If the side adjacent to θ is 30 …" should refer to the "leg" adjacent θ; the hypotenuse is also a side adjacent to θ.
Taking the diagnostic, I just got the question "What is the opposite of -2?" Is it +2? Is it -½?
Edit: I restarted, selecting just Abstract Algebra as my diagnostic topic, and was shocked to get this question again! In Abstract Algebra! So far none of the questions in Abstract Algebra have anything to do with Abstract Algebra …
I wonder who would install this onto their calculator in earnest. Like, who’s the segment of folks with the savvy to learn about this and install this on their TI calculator, but who aren’t savvy enough to just learn to do the computations in curricular calculus class?
I used to use a TI-89 in high school, which had a calculus-enabled CAS built-in. It was really handy for checking my work and for working on components of problems. And if you're in a class where the work is more applied math, like physics, it's really helpful so that you can think of the overall problem without getting bogged down in the computation.
I 'cheated' in my Astronomy 1001 class by reverse engineering some sort of moon phase calculation I was supposed to do every day, by hand, for a month.
I didn't want to check the location of the moon at the same time every day so I just worked out the math instead, and then fudged the numbers on the worksheet so they wouldn't look too perfect.
There is absolutely an overlap in those two circles. The venn diagram is almost exclusively people who are heavily motivated by novelty and hate the drudgery of actual work. I have been a pathological member of that particular venn diagram overlap for my whole life. It's exactly as maladaptive as you might imagine.
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