Uncovering Answers in FOXTROT: A Teen's Search for Math Solutions

[HallsofIvy]

I just have to put this in here! In a comic strip titled "FOXTROT" drawn by Bill Amend, today (I'm reading it in the Washington Post), we have a teenage girl writing on a homework paper:
"First, I looked in the back of the book, but it wasn't an odd numbered problem.
Then I asked my little brother, but he wanted me to pay him $5.
Finally, I found it on the internet with Google."

Why is she writing that? As she tells her little brother:
"My math teacher wants us to show how we get our answers."!

 

[Jeff Ford]

Brilliant! I had other students in my calc class get angry this week because the homework problems weren't odd.

 

[Mattara]

off-?forum BAN! ;P

Yeah i find people who give up too easy annoying too.

Being Swedish i have to ask; homework problems weren't odd?

Does it mean that people outside Sweden only have answers to every other question in their mathbook? Or does "odd" mean difficult and strange so there is a more deveoped answer in the answer pages?

 

[George Jones]

http://www.ucomics.com/foxtrot/2006/02/10/" is the cartoon.

Being Swedish i have to ask; homework problems weren't odd?

Yes, often an english physics or math text gives, at the back of the book, final answers (but not solutions) to many odd-numbered exercises.

Regards,
George

 

[Moo Of Doom]

off-?forum BAN! ;P

Yeah i find people who give up too easy annoying too.

Being Swedish i have to ask; homework problems weren't odd?

Does it mean that people outside Sweden only have answers to every other question in their mathbook? Or does "odd" mean difficult and strange so there is a more deveoped answer in the answer pages?

It is true that many (non-Swedish, apparently) math textbooks only have the answer to the odd numbered problems and not the even ones. It gives the teacher the option of letting the students check their work or preventing them from "cheating." Both my old Calculus book had that, and my Chem book as well... don't remember if any other books had that... oh well. Apparently it's common enough that people generally get the comic strip.

 

[Mattara]

omg!

How do you know if you have gotten the odd-numbered questions right?

 

[Moo Of Doom]

When the teachers hand back your homework, I guess...

 

[Mattara]

well, i mean in general class when you are working on questions, not when you have homework. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[quasar987]

odd numbers are: 1,3,5,7,9,...

even are:-2,0,2,4,6,...

Is that what you didn't know? I remember reading about odd numbers and even numbers on this forum b4 I knew what they were and thinking they were some very profound properties of numbers studied at the doctorate level or something.

 

[HallsofIvy]

omg!

How do you know if you have gotten the odd-numbered questions right?

By understanding what you are doing? It is generally far easier to check that your solution is correct than to solve the original problem.