Synonymous with barely imprecise. Math is not usually barely imprecise formally.

Or almost precise.

I just want to keep my scholarship man. Every point helps.

I’m still really unsure what I’ve done to give the impression I’m high strung or irrational.


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I don't dispute either of these statements.

Come back in about 5-7 years and reread this thread.

False. One statement can be true and the other can lack a truth value.

Example: Pick the true statement:

1) 2+2 = 4
2) This statement is false.

My statement is wrt taking an exam. Can you provide an example of a test question, where my statement is not applicable?

The example given, where the word "about" was used, is an example. It's just not as extreme as the one that I gave. I would not say that it is false that US life expectancy is about 80 years. But it's also not definitively a true statement.

If someone says they are 15, their true age is within the interval [15, 16). If someone is 15 in 2001, they were born in either 1986 or 1985 depending on whether they've had their birthday yet this year.

Everyone is thinking too hard about OP's question. The answer is that it's a bad question. I am so thankful that I dropped out of high school and college.

You're rambling.

Agree. Point taken.

The “about” answer is clearly intended to trip up the student. However, to select this answer requires the other very specific answer to be explicitly false. This is the logic behind the question.

This particular example does not seem unusual, iirc my uni exams. Wether or not this leads to an exploit (picking the only answer that is specific) is tricky. I could see the ambiguous answer as “the most true” answer if the other one was in fact incorrect.

If a test featured many such questions, it would be poorly written, imo. However most of these types of questions are usually exploitable, and a student can learn to guess with a much better than 50/50 success.

I might agree with this, but it depends on the learning outcomes being sought. But since we don't have the rest of the test, we can't really say much about it.

What you are calling "exploitable" is what others may call "critical thinking." I think if you can do better than 50/50 based on your knowledge of the outcomes being measured, that's not necessarily a problem for the test.

The only thing that matters is which one of those points was covered in the course lectures or reading material. Definitely not a silly semantic argument about the test question, which only proves to the teacher that you didn't pay attention.

And as has already been answered, there is no mathematical definition for the word about. Any specificity of range would be contextual.

LOL Tapatalk?

They were both covered


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No i am not rambling. If you have sex with a girl that is 17 and 9 months you are in trouble right? You do not round it to 18. First of all ethically you shouldnt, even if its attractive in your mind and she behaves as if she adores you because they are probably not mature enough yet when the age difference is significant, even if they look like they are. Second it is illegal technically.

So when they say they were 15 at 2001 it means precisely what i said or it can be all over the place and then the question is stupid. It better means that they became exactly 15 and not 16 at some point in that year. So what on earth is the deal? Everything else is ill defined. So you answer like i did and then you add also the other things regarding what possibly some people mean by age 15.

But it says Bob was 15 in 2001. It doesnt say Bob was considering himself still 15. One is only 15 during one day so to speak. The rest is 15+ extra time or 14+.


If you have a problem with the question you answer it the right way that it becomes meaningful, which is what i did, and then you add your other ideas as side note about the fact that some people call themselves 15 during part of the year. Then the teacher will be amazed at your intellect and care unless they are insecure aholes.

But your way of imagining it is wrong, avoiding to call it confidently 2001-15, because it doesnt recognize that if what you think is true then sometime in 2001 they were also 16. So why are they telling me they were 15 if they were also 16? Therefore i can only conclude that they were precisely and only 15 during 2001 or the question is not a proper one hiding other info.

They would have told you that Bob considered himself 15 sometime during 2001 if they wanted you to be that creative and imagine such things without exposing themselves as wrong that he was also 16 that year.


Do not consider yourself thankful your dropped out of high school and college. They probably failed you and now you want to fail them too. No matter how smart of creative one is they can still benefit from a proper formal education completed. I suggest using all kinds of local colleges and community college schools that you can take all kinds of cool classes that can top even university classes at any age.

If one designs a proper sequence of classes you can become an expert in tons of things from a position of adult thinking that the kids fail to grasp when they take these classes. You will have a harder time learning these things than the kids do (unless still below 30) but you will make more from them if you put the effort and you will put them to better use than most of the young ones. Everyone that does that has my highest respect for the faith they show in the power of the individual human spirit at any age.

Sometimes you say some really intelligent stuff. Other times you are borderline incoherent. It's pretty clear English is not your first language. I'm not trying to insult you, but I'm pretty sure that's why I'm having a hard time understanding you, and you may be misunderstanding me.

Having sex with a 17 year old is not a crime in many places. The age of consent here is 16 AFAIK. I don't know why you're talking about rounding to the closest integer. Truncating is rounding down/flooring. If you are 17 and 9 months your age is truncated to 17.

I think you're rambling because you're off on a tangent not related to the original discussion. I was never talking about rounding to the nearest integer like that.

It's a societal convention to truncate ages. Saying someone is 15 means their age is in the interval [15, 16). I am having trouble following you, so I'm probably just going to leave it at that. I'd settle with agreeing that it's a bad question.

I failed in high school due to apathy more than anything else. All of my classes were trivially easy. I dropped out of community college with just a few credits remaining for my 2-year degree. It's not that I couldn't pass, it's that I finally learned that school wasn't for me. Continuing doing something I hated would have been a waste of time. I also dropped out of high school with only a few credits left. IIRC I only had a government class left and electives for my senior year because I exhausted all the math and science courses in 10th grade. Our school only offered up to calculus which I took in 9th grade, and I took physics in 10th grade and that was it. It probably contributed a lot to my drop-out that I didn't have any math or science classes to interest me in 11th grade.

I recall struggling with a teacher because they graded us on taking notes. I do not take notes. I hate authoritarian teachers that think they know the best way for a student to learn. It took some effort to explain that note-taking is just not how I learn and that I wasn't going to do it.

I am not against education in general, I just don't think I benefit much from formal education. I never had a class challenge me and I hardly ever learned anything from lectures that I couldn't learn from a book. The most I ever learned in school was from a professor who gave me a book that I could study on my own.

I hate formal education because it's not about learning. OP is so concerned about his grade, his scholarship, and his eventually degree that he is forgetting that school should be about learning. IME it's rare to meet a student who seems to care about learning. I have considered taking classes again for fun, but I have no interest in a degree. I hate the concept of degrees.

I also hate the class sizes. I imagine I could probably benefit from having 1 on 1 sessions with an instructor. Other students are mainly a hindrance.

Now I'm rambling.

I was about to nit up this thread by stating that America != USA, until I realized that the species that had undergone a change in life expectancy was never stated. If the questions were presented as the OP described them, there are plenty of opportunities to be technically correct (the best kind of correct).

OP, if the professor doesn't agree to give you the point, then go to the Dean of Students. You win this 95% of the time because we don't like arguing about these things with admin.

Interesting. Our Dean of Students would never push faculty to change grades for something like this.

Probably not relevant anymore, but I don't agree with this advice. Most students don't utilize their prof's office hours as much as they should. Bring in your test and argue your case (don't be a dick though). Even if they don't change the grade, putting a face to your name is usually long-term helpful and talking over the material in person is usually better for learning anyway. Imo, it is a best practice as a student to visit your TA's or prof for any plausible reason you can.

Ill give you some non-academic, real world advice.

The rational thing to do is fight for every possible point you can if your scholarship is in jeopardy. Putting that on the backburner for a semblance of 'getting a proper education' is ludicrous considering you are going to forget the vast majority of information you're exposed to throughout university. Anything learned can always be relearned if necessary; paying off student debt takes a ton of energy and robs you of potential futures that you will never be able to redo.

School is not primarily about learning, it's about passing tests to get a piece of paper, so fight for the point and save yourself years of debt slavery by any means possible (and without doing detriment to future grades, ofc).

I'd agree with you if this were the straw that breaks the camel's back. But it's not. And since it's going from a maximum of 97% to a maximum of 96%, it's not the right time to invest a lot of time yelling and screaming about these points. It's too far away from the event horizon, and the argument is too weak to make this *the* moment to stand on.

And that's real world advice as well. If you're "that guy" all the time, you're probably never going to get anywhere useful in life. You have to pick your battles wisely.

I 100% agree that not enough students use their professor's office hours, and that going to office hours is a good thing. But we may have a different sense of the term "argue" here.

I'm certainly not opposed to the idea of going in to talk to the professor about this point. But given how wrong it appears he is, I'd definitely take the tack of "I got this wrong, but I don't understand why" instead of going in to "argue the case." I think that mentality leads to students being more frustrated and less open to learning the things they're supposed to be learning. It also means that the student is almost certainly going to leave the office hours having not accomplished the desired goal ("to change the grade") instead of focusing on the fact that the student accomplished a desired goal for the course ("to have learned something").

You're assuming the professor will be annoyed by the kid trying to squeeze out points. That's not necessarily the case; he might even admire it. One thing that is certain about my life is that I've gotten a whole hell of a lot more out of it by being a persistent pain in the ass than by waiting to make a stink. In my experience most people get the message eventually that your standards are higher and adjust accordingly.

You can be tactful and dont split hairs. But do not wait for the straw that breaks the camels back. Ensure the camel is never strained by whatever means necessary so you can ride it into the sunset, debt-free.

If it is the case, then it's a rarity. The entire structure of the problem was transparent enough that there's an obvious correct answer and an obvious distractor. There's very little to admire in trying to argue over it.

This is almost certainly not one of those times. The professor will not look at a student arguing over points and think, "Wow! His standards are higher than the other students and I should treat him differently."

Ironically, trying to argue this particular problem is exactly trying to split hairs.

I think you are underestimating the diffidence most students have towards their professors and so missing that almost any plausible reason/excuse to visit the professor should be encouraged. Many students are worried that their questions (in or out of class) are too trivial or betray too much ignorance and so keep silent. That worry is counterproductive to their own education and students should discount it as a reason stopping them from talking to their teachers.

You're literally suggesting the kid should keep quiet until it's a crisis point. That's the exact opposite of what he should do. He should be making strides to build rapport with his professors at every opportunity and that includes going and talking to them about every single percentage point that can reasonably be questioned. This will show he is a serious student that is highly concerned about his results. You seem to think that will make him stand out poorly to his professors when it's likely the exact opposite. You dont strike me as an agreeable person, so it makes sense that you have this point of view.



It depends on the professor. Because you see things in a highly solipsistic way, I can understand how you would project your own reaction onto everyone else on earth, but that is clear evidence against your opinion, not for it.

The fact you think its irrational to argue about points when a. Points are almost all that matters in school and b. The accumulation of those points can mean the difference between a debt laden future and a debt free one proves it's only irrational based on what you yourself value. Good, rational advice doesnt care about your values. The kid is right to be worried about graduating with debt, and should put graduating without debt at a much higher priority than anything else, especially the amount of rote information he retains.