[Animats]

The scatter plots don't show that strong a correlation.

From the test questions, this isn't an "algebra test". It's a word problem decoding test. That's appropriate to programming, where you have to go from an informal specification of the problem to a formal one.

[TheCoelacanth]

It's only the middling scores that aren't very predictive. Scores >=80% and <=60% are strongly predictive. Only 4/17 that scored 80% or higher scored lower than a 3 on programming ability. Only 1/13 that scored 60% or lower scored a 3 or higher on programming ability.

[xivzgrev]

Yes it is algebra. Take second problem for instance.

X + (x + 1) + (x+ 2) = 69. Solve for x.

[ludoo]

Or just recognize that three consecutive numbers mean you divide by three and get the median of the three numbers. So 69/3-1, 69/3, 69/3+1, giving 22, 23, 24. No algebra involved, you just need to interpret the problem and build a tiny model in your head. Exactly like (some kinds of) programming.

[analog31]

Amusingly, I taught a college math class many years ago. A question on one exam was:

x^3 = 27

One student solved it in the following way:

1^3 = 1

2^3 = 8

3^3 = 27

ans = 3

There was a meeting for the teachers to discuss grading standards, and I brought up my student's answer. I got a number of responses:

"That's not algebra." "The student obviously doesn't understand the problem."

And so forth. Being somewhat of a punk, I asked if any of them had, in their years of teaching, actually taught their students to recognize when an answer is "algebra" or how a right answer of 3 differs from a wrong answer of 3. It wasn't a pleasant discussion. This was a university with a prestigious math department, and I was just some guy off the street. I chatted with my students the next day. None of them had ever been told what it means to "show your work," or any of the other important trappings of school math. They either did it or they didn't.

Thinking about it more, I would have sidestepped the issue completely, by changing the problem to:

x^3 = 26

[fragmede]

That's still algebra, using the equation (X-1) + (X) + (X+1) = 69 instead.

[rudolf0]

That's exactly how I solved it. I'd consider myself a pretty decent programmer, but I did poorly in algebra and calculus at middle, high school, and university level.

Give me "x + (x + 1) + (x + 2) = 69" and I wouldn't know where to start. I could probably turn that word problem into that equation, but I would have no idea how to actually solve the equation algebraically.

But given the word problem alone I knew to divide by 3 and add the neighboring numbers. Now, actually dividing by 3 I'd need to use a calculator or spend a lot of time with a pencil and paper, but at least I knew the steps to solve it.

I'm awful at rote math and mental math, which is why I'm thankful I can make the computer do it for me.

[rverghes]

Are you saying that if the word problem was "2 consecutive numbers and a third number that was five higher than the second number" you'd be unable to solve it?

"Tricks" work for simple cases. Algebra works for all cases.

[lostcolony]

Yeah, I would be unable to solve it, given that I'm pretty sure there is no solution if we assume that "consecutive" implies integers (and I'd be curious what 'consecutive' means if we don't).

If instead we made it "2 consecutive numbers and a third number that was five higher than the second number add up to 70" (i.e., 21 + 22 + 27), that's easily solved using 'tricks'. Really, the trick mention (which is what I did in my head, too) is just a rephrasing of the algebra. That is, I would subtract 4 off of the thing that is 5 higher (so that it's now 1 higher; the problem is now the same, get 3 consecutive integers), subtract 4 off of the number I'm trying to get (so 66), so the problem is now 3 consecutive integers that equal 66, and solve the same way (66/3 = 22, so -> 21, 22, 23), and then just add the four back in to the highest (21, 22, 27).

[rverghes]

You're right, my mistake. That "five higher" should have been "four higher".

The thing is that your solution is the algebraic solution. You're simplifying an equation by balancing both sides, when you subtract four. Just from our perspective, you simplify to a still difficult state, instead of the easiest possible state.

Algebra is just a way of formally stating what you did, and then offering some simplifications that speed up the process. Or offering more powerful methods that making solving more difficult problems easier.

[Natsu]

> Give me "x + (x + 1) + (x + 2) = 69" and I wouldn't know where to start.

You memorize a few rules about what things you're allowed to do, then you apply the rules to simplify the problem in front of you. Sometimes, the hard part is that you don't know one of the rules you need to know. Other times, it's figuring out which of the rules you need to know that you should use. By practicing lots of problems, you get a good intuition for which direction to go, but it's not uncommon with more difficult problems to take the wrong way and end up confused.

First, we're allowed to drop the parentheses with addition (the "associative" rule for addition), so

x + x + 1 + x + 2 = 69

Now we put the similar terms together:

x + x + x + 1 + 2 = 69

How many Xs do we have? Three. Another way of writing that is 3x. So replace that part. Also, 1+2=3, so we'll replace that as well. "Apply rule and replace" is pretty much the most fundamental mathematical operation.

3x + 3 = 69

Let's get rid of the 3 by subtracting it from both sides to keep the equation balanced. On the left side the 3 cancels out (that's why we did this). On the right, we get 69-3, which is 66.

3x = 66

At this point, we just divide by 3 and simplify.

x = 66/3 x = 22

Our numbers are x (22), x+1 (23) and x+2 (24) according to how we listed them in the original problem.

[agumonkey]

Found that approach creative and well structured. Point free mathematics :)

[the_af]

It seems like you're doing algebra :)

[erroneousfunk]

I had a little bit of a problem with that question as well. A clever student might just divide 69 by three and take that number, as well as the numbers on either side, as the answer.

Is that algebra? Is that not algebra? Is that some sort of more nebulous skill that's also correlated with programming? If they actually wanted to correlate ALGEBRA algebra with programming, I also thought they'd have more straight-forward questions. Using word problems brings all sorts of other issues into the picture.

[relaytheurgency]

I would say that it requires algebraic thoughts. You are assigning a placeholder for "x" as "that number that would fit in the middle here". To me, that seems algebraic. Especially at this very, very basic level of algebra we are discussing.

[crazypyro]

Except you are also testing one's ability to set up that problem which is a major key to problem solving ability in the first place? I might agree with you if the problems were already formatted and it was simply plug and chugging algebra and not deciphering word problems.