Hacker News Reader

Comment by nohuck13 | Hacker News Reader

The UCSD report shows some of the questions they asked incoming students.

39% got this right:

    Round the number 374518 to the nearest 100

34% got this right:

    Find 13/16 ÷ 2.

2% got this right:

    If a=-2 and b=-3, evaluate ab² - a/b

https://senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347/sawg-report-on-admissio... page 49

View on HN

To clarify, these are percentages for the sample of students taking the remedial Math 2 class, not generally. Two percent is still crazy low though, that's practically nothing.

A yep that's a critical piece of information.

For context, "In the 2025 incoming class, this group constitutes roughly one-eighth of our entire entering cohort."

To be fair, the ÷ symbol for division must be abolished.

I did fall for it just now, but I think it's typically easier to read when handwritten.

What is the correct order of operations there? I'm treating both representations of division as equivalent, so just running the whole thing from left to right. But there's no reason that because both operators indicate division, that they must have the same precedence.

A shocking number of Americans are also functionally illiterate. I think 21% or about 41 million Muricans.

54% of Americans read below a 6th grade level.

We don't need to know how to do these things when we can just have someone/something do it for us.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com