What is the mathematical definition of "about"?

Could you please point me to a reference. Need this to dispute a score on a test for school

Devoid of context, this is a silly question.

Given that, you're probably on the losing end of this.

I'd say 4.6-5.4 is about 5.

So there is no mathematical definition?


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How "about" are we talking?

Not one that one would expect to quote completely devoid of context.

But at least you're not asking what the mathematical definition of "normal" is...

So basically. Had a test question that had 2 correct answers.

Select true statement:

One was “the life expectancy has increased more than 3 decades since 1900”

The other was “the life expectancy in America is about 80 years”

I selected the latter and got the question wrong. I’m trying to make a solid care to dispute as the course material lists female life expectancy as 81.6 and male at 76.9


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Interesting case. When you have 80, "about" can be either 79.5-80.5, or 75-85, or something in between. You are right, because why would especially your interpretation be wrong?

Thank you,

Just making sure I’m not off base before I go at it with my professor over this. Any credible reference or documentation you could point me to?


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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_figures

U da man


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Confirmation bias.

I would say that the second statement is neither true nor false because it is insufficiently precise. If you had to pick one that is definitely true, it's the first statement.

So do you think I shouldn’t even bother disputing it?


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You should think about the actual learning objectives of the course. Most likely, the word "about" was supposed to indicate to you that the statement could not be determined as either true or false. If that's the thing you were supposed to understand, and that's the thing you got wrong, it doesn't matter if you try to argue that the statement *could* be interpreted as true. You've completely missed the point, and so you're unlikely to get the point back.

Also, you should think about whether it matters. Suppose you won the dispute. I can't tell you how many students have a solid 85% in a class and fight to win back one point on a test to raise their grade to 85.1%. It's the sort of thing where your professor will be thinking, "Thanks for wasting my time."

Vagueness is studied more in computer science and philosophy than in math. Humans are better at it than computers.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vagueness/

100% agree here, especially the second paragraph. I recently emailed my professor about a lost mark on an assignment. That mark was literally worth .1% of my grade for the course. I knew this at the time, but I was sufficiently annoyed that I contacted him anyways. I feel really silly about it now. Normally I let these things slide unless it's a much more substantial part of my grade.

Also, when answering multiple choice questions, remember that you should be looking for the "more correct" answer. While I agree that your answer is right, the other one is more correct.

On the other hand we need to kick some ass at times.

This. If your objective in school is to learn then grades are irrelevant. If your objective in school is to get a piece of paper to prove your competency then a single point won't affect your grade significantly. If you are a perfectionist who needs that point to get 100% on the test then go for it.

I think I've been wasting teachers' time since elementary school when there was a test question about ages and birthyears. "Bob is 15 in the year 2001, what year was he born?" Of course I had a problem with that question because it depends on the specific date and his birthday since ages are always truncated (unless you're "6 and a half!") and can represent a range of values.

You are 15 in 2001 means that at some point in 2001 you became 15 exactly what on earth lol. If others say things that are not well defined the proper response is to define them both ways and make all happy showing as a student that you can recognize all angles but still choose one that is the most rational.

So it's not about 15, it's 15. So the person was born sometime in 2001-15=1986.

Its stupid to round ages unless one wants specifically to describe the closer integer years alive as evidenced by the fact one is not 18 until they have had their birthday eg for legal consent sexual relationship purposes or alcohol purchase, voting (hopefully)etc.

Its also "unethical" to round ages because eg i plan in the last 3 days of the time i have to become 1 year older officially to revolutionize the world, make millions, etc ie why do you take away from me the chance to do it before then lol.

Have a scholarship and need to maintain a GPA of +3.75 for school to be affordable to me.

1 percentage point can be the difference between $6000 or 0.

Unfortunately my school only uses whole letter grades to calculate gpa so a 89 is effectively the same as an 80


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But the question remains: Will it actually make such a difference? I would suspect that the amount of time you spend trying to decide whether to fight for this point would be better spent actually taking the time to adequately prepare for future exams.

And it's probably not 1 percentage point of your overall grade. Maybe one percent on your grade for this test but this test might be something like 20% of your grade, so that the influence is 0.2% of your overall grade.

The further you pursue this, the more you sound like a high achieving but also high strung and not entirely rational student.

About 40000 votes or less than 0.04% of voting people cost the US the abysmal dive of the Trampland era from which it will recover because it always does but damn, its the second time since another even more ridiculous Florida 0.0005% of the voting people "decided" that US would "invade" effectively Iraq over nothing and deal with it the way it happened with even Syria probably losing a lot of its future because of it (but of course the killer dictator there and extremist groups too ). Those tiny bs accidents prove more than anything before how important tiny parts are.

A tiny probability is the reason you are you and not another sperm cell winning the game.

That said of course the greatest time investment is in effort to ace future classes and have the right winning motivated attitude rather than wasting time on small edges unless they are the final ones that decide everything.

You want to win points back? Do a personal work on the topic you lost points and submit it as your ethical response to the adversity. The teacher may be moved by it. It is the right way to be moved.

The quiz was 10% of my final grade and had 10 questions. So this question is 1% of my overall grade.

If it was something like .02% I wouldn’t even sweat it

FWIW I got an 80% on another assignment worth 10% and 100% on everything else. So right now the best possible grade I could for is a 97%. Meaning that I can only lose another 7% before my scholarship is gone school becomes much more expensive

Not sure why Im coming off as irrational. Debt is serious business


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So to be clear, you're starting to freak out because you've missed something like 3 questions over the course of an entire semester. What is the rate at which you are missing questions (perhaps using units of "missed points per week") and how much time is left in the semester?

Yes, debt is serious business. Panicking over every single problem you get wrong is not conducive to you actually performing well. By spending as much intellectual power as you've apparently been spending fretting over this single problem (and your grade), you've probably lost opportunities to engage in the behaviors that *actually* impact your grades, such as focusing on learning course content, practicing appropriate study skills, and the added stress has probably lessened the impact of your studying in general.

I've seen high-strung grade-centric students before. Some of them are like time bombs that are always on the verge of self-implosion because "OMG THE BEST I CAN DO IS 97%??!??!" just isn't a good way to facilitate actual learning.

It's true I am extrapolating from my own experiences and you maybe really aren't like that. But from how you created this thread and the type of point you're trying to argue.... I feel like I've seen this movie before.

True and False requires one of the answers to be true, and all of the other answers false.

Clearly, the increase in life expectancy since 1900 is over 30 years, if this was the correct answer.

The second answer is purposefully vague, and can only be selected if all the other answers are false.

This requires the student to properly evaluate the truth of every other answer besides the vaguely acceptable answer.

Since the increase in expectancy is a fact located in the course material, the student was unsuccessful in determining the truth of that answer.

I suggest studying the nature of University level tests, and recognizing these types of logics used by the test preparers. This will give you a small boost on all your similar tests, since you are likely making this small error in other subjects that feature more nuanced subject matters (not the hard sciences or mathematics).