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skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

I think grading is obsolete. Grade inflation increased a lot the past 30 years. Ironically, it has increased the least at the least prestigious colleges. Pass/fail is the way to go. Don’t know if this would mess up things like applying for graduate school or jobs but let’s end the farce that grading has become.

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

This is because 100-200 level math courses are not about teaching anything, but about filtering out students who can't do the work.

This is 100% incorrect.

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

I’ve done this but then you end up with students who are not used to “thinking”. They do bad on the test. Now I’m known as a hard teacher. Now people avoid my classes. Administration hounds me for having s low passing rate. I need a job. I now give easy tests.

The real issue as I see it is that no one wants to face the reality that far too many incapable, incurious people are going to college. So I pretend to give real tests and pretend to give real grades and students feel good about themselves and my classes fill.

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

Around 50% of higher education in the United States is done at community colleges. Tuition accounts for 2/3 of our budget. State subsidy for 1/3. In the past the numbers were reversed. Enrollment in higher education went through a decade long decline. It is now the case that colleges are chasing tuition dollars. Students are the client.

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

For online courses it is no longer the case that exams are proctored in person. Most higher education in the United States is done at community colleges and regional state universities.

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

….and data-driven propaganda (= cheating dumb people out of their votes).

I like the phrasing you used.

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

In the old days the money public colleges got to operate overwhelmingly came from the state. Now it comes overwhelmingly from tuition.

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

You can't "not sign up" for linear algebra if it's in your curriculum.

Same in the U.S. but you can sometimes find an online offering. If you don’t know what you are doing or don’t care then always take the online offering. Much easier to cheat.

My ex-girlfriend is German. She cheated on her exams to get her agricultural engineering degree at university. This was in the 80s.

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

Yes. But people now teaching at higher education institutions need their classes to fill. That means we need to treat our students as if they are our customers. We must please the customer. In years past the attitude was that society at large was our client. Today the student is our client.

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

Roughly 50% of higher education occurs at community colleges. We don’t do research. What you pay for the class does not correspond to what I make. I’m not paid enough to do all the stuff that is suggested in the comments.

The top earning professors in the nation in mathematics are all very good research mathematicians

skhuntedon Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations

I’ve been teaching in higher education for 30 years and am soon retiring. I teach math. In every math course there is massive amounts of cheating on everything that is graded that is not proctored in a classroom setting. Locking down browsers and whatnot does not prevent cheating.

The only solution is to require face-to-face proctored exams and not allow students to use technology of any kind while taking the test. But any teacher doing this will end up with no students signing up for their class. The only solution I see is the Higher Learning Commission mandating this for all classes.

But even requiring in person proctored exams is not the full solution. Students are not used to doing the necessary work to learn. They are used to doing the necessary work to pass. And that work is increasingly cheating. It’s a clusterfuck. I have calculus students who don’t know how to work with fractions. If we did truly devise a system that prevents cheating we’ll see that a very high percentage of current college students are not ready to be truly college educated.

K-12 needs to be changed as well.

skhuntedon 'Islands' of regularity discovered in the famously chaotic three-body problem

What you say is correct but isn't it the case that numerical solutions necessarily involve approximations and the error in those approximations in some systems becomes too great over time. Thus the predictive power isn't there for numerical solutions that is present when exact solutions are known.

skhuntedon How I animate 3Blue1Brown [video]

His lectures are terrible explanations and he doesn’t use professional looking graphics. Khan Academy is not a good product. My opinion refers solely to the math content.

skhuntedon How I animate 3Blue1Brown [video]

I’ve done things like this. Back when Flash was around and Captivate was first out I created interactive lecture videos. One in particular was, I thought, really good. It was an explanation of how progressive tax systems work and how the amount of tax paid is a piecewise defined function of salary. Included in the videos at various places were concept questions. The video would stop at such a question and when you answer it would continue.

What was the result of this? Most didn’t watch the video and those that did didn’t finish it. Students largely don’t watch lecture videos or videos of any kind regarding math. For online courses students are using AI programs to do their work. They answer questions that should take minutes in seconds.

Most of the people I’ve responded to on the thread I started have no idea what they are talking about.

skhuntedon How I animate 3Blue1Brown [video]

You don’t know whether or not I’m good at my job. A well reasoned response would be different than the one you gave.

skhuntedon How I animate 3Blue1Brown [video]

3Blue1Brown’s videos are great and a treasure. I’m glad he does what he does.

skhuntedon How I animate 3Blue1Brown [video]

..why you're so strongly convinced that there's no room for improvement over the status quo.

I didn’t make this claim. I said that videos like 3Blue1Brown’s videos would not work in the classroom for most students. I further said that there was a reason things are done the way they are.

Imagine going to a place of business and seeing people doing their job. A job you’ve never done before. You start giving advice on what they should do. Most likely your views would not carry much weight or be worth much consideration.

skhuntedon How I animate 3Blue1Brown [video]

Here’s a thought for you. What percentage of the population wants to be mathematically literate given the amount of effort needed to gain that literacy? In my 30 years of teaching math at the college level the anecdotal evidence I have is that this number is quite low. Why do you think the number of mathematically literate people should be significantly higher than what it is?

What methods of teaching will work for those who don’t want to do the work to be mathematically literate?

skhuntedon How I animate 3Blue1Brown [video]

Yes. But in the classroom most students don’t want to learn. Hence my statement that it wouldn’t work in the classroom.

skhuntedon How I animate 3Blue1Brown [video]

Khan Academy uses lectures.

skhuntedon How I animate 3Blue1Brown [video]

What’s wild is people who haven’t taught thinking they know better than people who do teach.

skhuntedon How I animate 3Blue1Brown [video]

The vast majority of students never ask, “what if…” The vast majority just want to know the mechanics of doing the problems well enough to pass the test. At the time a student is taking Calculus 1 they don’t ask questions about why it works. They just want to know, for instance, the rules of differentiation. Later in life, when they have intellectually matured, videos like 3Blue1Brown are interesting and fascinating. The vast majority of students would not learn well from 3Blue1Brown type videos.

skhuntedon How I animate 3Blue1Brown [video]

What are those valid alternatives that work at scale for a majority of the population?

skhuntedon How I animate 3Blue1Brown [video]

Efficacy, maximal effectiveness over a large population, and because it works better at scale than other solutions.

skhuntedon How I animate 3Blue1Brown [video]

Pretty much everyone has ideas and opinions on teaching and what would work. It is easy to tell when such opinions are made by people with no experience teaching. In the same way a professional carpenter can tell when some wood work was done in an amateurish way.

Why do teachers do things the way they do? Is it because they are mostly stupid, incompetent people who haven’t thought as much about their job as amateurs have? Everyone has “the solution” but, yet, that great insightful idea doesn’t take off. Is it a conspiracy on our part? Perhaps it’s because that solution doesn’t work at scale.

skhuntedon Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

I do not. I do have a sense of the notion and make decisions for myself on whether or not something is worth my time. While her video might be accurate in this case her past casts doubt in my mind and as such I’ve decided not to watch it. Other people might find it useful to know about her past errors when deciding whether or not to watch this video.

skhuntedon Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

When people don’t have expertise in an area they are prone to making really dumb comments. She has a history of this on other topics. As such I think it’s appropriate to mention so that people can evaluate how much weight/time they want to spend on her video and views.

skhuntedon Elle's Homepage

Went to the site and saw “Nigger” floating around. Anonymity emboldens people. I guess this is why moderation is always needed.

skhuntedon Pink Floyd's David Gilmour: the wealthy have siphoned off music industry money

His opinion is correct or incorrect independent on whether or not he acts on his opinions.

skhuntedon Pink Floyd's David Gilmour: the wealthy have siphoned off music industry money

The correctness of his point is independent of him being or not being a hypocrite.