[tierack]

It seems like it would only work for subjects where students have the capacity to figure out errors on their own. It would be disastrous in a foreign language class if you were told the word for "mother" was "banana".

As I've mentioned in another discussion, I once had a math professor who would sneak in impossible problems into the homework (e.g. prove the continuum hypothesis). It worked very well to get us to spend countless hours just trying things out, and eventually to spur us to prove decidability of the problems, all of which made us much better. But I imagine it would get old fast if every class I took did something similar.

[icefox]

When I was learning Norwegian that happened to me. Every weeks lesson had new words, but we were not told what they meant and we were supposed to figure out them on our own. As you would expect I translated and memorized a few wrong every week. This had a snowball effect of making the class harder and harder as I tried to learn new words and unlearn the words/rules I previously memorized incorrectly.

[SlyShy]

It's interesting that you feel that way. I've taken two foreign languages at the university level, and they were both taught in an "immersion" style manner (that is to say, all the instruction was in the native language) and have found it beneficial rather than harmful. But perhaps I reach for a dictionary more often than you did.

[oujheush]

I'm guessing the "figure them out on their own" precluded using a dictionary? Otherwise you're right, a dictionary should solve the problem.

[stonemetal]

>> It would be disastrous in a foreign language class if you were told the word for "mother" was "banana".

How so? 20 min with a bilingual dictionary(which is more than likely in the back of the textbook) would be enough to verify definitions. Though I don't think it would have the desired effect since it doesn't really promote learning just rote fact checking.

[pradocchia]

> How so?

Learning a foreign language is all about internalization. It takes time and is hard to correct. The last thing you want is to inadvertently internalize the wrong thing. Root vocabulary would be relatively easy to fix, but pronunciation and grammar would be very hard.

[stonemetal]

Yeah, pronunciation would suck if the only person who knew how to say it correctly was just fing with you.

[dbz]

As soon as I read that comment I thought the exact same thing; however, I thought about it for math. Not above calculus level math (because the students in those classes should be smart enough to call something fishy out immediately), but high school or elementary school math. A simple lie could destroy a students math career. Especially one a day!

[amalcon]

When I was In a numerical approximations course, one other student in the class and I managed to correct the professor about once a week. He wasn't deliberately lying; actually, it was because he had a very poor textbook to work with and was trusting it too much. We were just in the process of doing this again when he demonstrated that you can legitimately say O(n) when you mean O(n^2).

Come to find out, he was a math prof, and very much not an algorithms guy. There are two versions of big-oh notation: one for algorithmic complexity, and one for accuracy of approximations. They are exact opposites of each other: higher numbers are "better" for approximation accuracy, at least in the sense they were used in the course. He was unaware of the former, but both of us were unaware of the latter.

Not such a great teacher, no. Still, the last mistake was an entirely reasonable one. It's a great example of how even math students need to be on their toes.

[pmiller2]

One thing I'd like to mention is that math and science profs rarely mind being corrected when they're wrong (assuming it's done respectfully). I've seen profs in other disciplines become positively incensed when a student tried to challenge what the professor was saying, but I've never seen a math or science prof do so. Your mileage may vary (and I admit this is really nothing more than anecdotal evidence of anything), but I think it says something about the culture of science vs other disciplines.

[eru]

I can verify this for my math profs. I guess it has something to do with coming closer to `one single truth' in math than every where else.

[dbz]

Oh yes I agree. I personally am a math guy. My algebra two teacher was...well...Let's say that I sat in the back of the class the entire year and just corrected him several times a day. Almost all of the people who left that class struggled to understand concepts of their next math course because they:

1) Didn't have a solid understanding of algebra. and 2) Didn't even learn all of the algebraic concepts.

I was fine (because I could recognize the concepts even though he made a TON of mistakes) and skipped (precalc/) trig (which I learned during..) and went right on to AP calc . But the point is that the fact that the teacher made so many mistakes led to the students not being able to comprehend slightly higher level math. (and him being fired)

[eru]

It's one the big-O notation and the other the small-o notation, or so? There's also the \omikron or \Omega notation (or so) that has to be asymptotically correct (up to a factor) in both directions.

[iterationx]

reminds me of a Monty Python skit

[pmiller2]

No it doesn't.