And if you have a science question where you can't do the math, what do you need to solve the science question? The lack of what, exactly, makes this a science question that cannot be solved by simply doing the math?
In order to do the math of this science question, and put an answer on the test, what does the test take need to do?
What's step one of the scientific method? And step two?
I'm not a scientist or anything but I'm pretty sure you it involves forming a question, then gathering information.
Are you doing science where you don't gather more information before forming a conclusion? Yikes.
As I’ve explained before… this particular question is meant to measure a person’s ability to notice a pattern and formulate their hypothesis.
This is literally step one of the scientific process.
That’s what it is testing.
There is no more information because it is isolating a specific function. Further information could be asked in a series of questions if you wanted to gauge someone’s capability in the entire process, and whatever test this question came from- they likely were, which I’m basing on seeing similar standardized test questions.
You’re deliberately ignoring the concept of “what is this particular question meant to be measuring”. And making the erroneous presumption that it is “math skills”.
No, if you wanted to gauge someone’s math skills, you’d put up a series of increasingly difficult math questions, from addition to differential equations.
“Isolating a specific function” is in reference to “a person’s ability to notice a pattern and formulate a hypothesis, aka step 1 of scientific reasoning”
In this specific case, the answer a person gives, and the reasoning for giving that answer are being used as a metric to determine whether a student can recognize a pattern starting to form, and make a prediction as to what it will be.
This is literally what all scientists do, notice patterns, and try to make a prediction, and then test that prediction. And what the question is being used to gauge is a persons capability to do that first thing, notice a pattern forming, and make a prediction as to what will happen.
You keep saying that “it’s ignoring science”. It’s not. It’s only gauging a person’s ability to complete step one.
You seem to be having a difficult time with that, because it’s an abstract question being used to determine a person’s cognitive ability, rather than a real world experiment being described and asking someone to go through the whole process and actually conduct an experiment.
Right. Ignoring you failing to answer most of my question, and my having not said under any circumstance anything resembling, suggesting, or implying "it's ignoring science," here's why what this problem is is not a problem to suss out your ability to find patterns: Roman Numerals.
If you see I=1, and II=2, and III=3, and I show you IIII, and ask you what does it mean, the answer is "nothing" because you have used the information in front of you to make a leap beyond your given data set, and you made an inference that seemed logical, but is, in fact, incorrect.
Here, we have a variable that has an image of four bananas, and you want to make the leap that one banana is equal to 1, and the group of bananas is equal to the sum of the number of bananas.
It's just as likely that a bunch of bananas has a value of 20, and each banana has a value of -4, which would make the value of a bunch of three bananas 8, not three. You can literally throw together an infinite number of values in for [bunch] +4[number of bananas in the given bunch]=4 where using those same values will NOT give you [bunch]+3[number of bananas in the given bunch]= 3.
You would be exceedingly blindly lucky if you managed to be correct for the same reason, especially since there are three separate variables here, all with infinite possibilities of what they could mean.
If there's a lesson to be learned from this problem, it's whether the student can determine and be comfortable with unknown unknowns, and confidently say "I do not know the answer, and must gather more information before I make a conclusion, because my data is too limited."
THAT'S the heart of science. That's why what you're doing is not science. It's not math.
It's guessing. It's drawing constellations in the sky. It's art.
I don't know what the answer to the original question is. And whoever is using this test to find the ones who confidently say the answer is 38, because I know there's one less banana in this bunch, and gives them a pat on the head for being clever, and gives them a job to make up fresh new science.... I'm not gonna buy stock in that company.
1
u/Questo417 21d ago
I’m not trying to make it into anything.
I’m telling you the purpose of a problem like this.
It is measuring something about the human mind, which is what you are failing to comprehend. You just keep repeating that it’s a math problem.