4/ Let's try it again. Tell me the total volume of these carboard boxes. While each is ABOUT 12" x 12" x 12" (a) none of those dimensions is precise (b) each differs a tad from the next (c) when loaded the boxes distend by < 1/64" in the center and...
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15/ Another dumb response is 'but the kid's answer was BETTER'. No, it wasn't. Utility in the real world is not measured on a single scale. Time, effort, correctness all matter, and the exact balance depends on the situation.
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16/ An alternate version: 'the kid's answer was more PRECISE'. Yes. And? Precision in excess of constraints is actually an error. If I give you a thermometer and tell you that it's accurate to +/- 2 degrees, then ask for the average of three readings, 91.0912854 is WRONG
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17/ I got told by one or two people that there is ONE CORRECT WAY to estimate, and that is to round numbers in a certain way. This is hilarious. Who taught you that there's ONE CORRECT way? God? There are dozens if not hundreds of equally valid approaches.
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18/ Many people wanted to argue "but I could choose a better example than the numbers the teacher chose". Sure. Me too. So what? That has zero bearing on the point.
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19/ "Herp, Derp, Common Core, Vaccines, Gay Frogs, Obama" was bandied about. FOCUS PEOPLE None of that matters. The topic was "is the teacher a retard for giving -1 points?". No, she's not.
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20/ One response was "the teachers are teaching the children to do math intentionally incorrect, and that's because they hate Truth, and Jesus is coming for them". As far as I can tell, this was serious.
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21/ I'm not sure what to say about this. ...but I imagine that every single Cathedral and church that has ever been built to glorify Jesus had 20 or 30 contractors using estimation to figure out how many tons of steel or ox carts of bricks were required.
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22/ As far as I can tell, Jesus has no precision on the accuracy with which floating point math should be done. The machine elves might, but Jesus doesn't.
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23/ Another response I got several times was "the question asked 'is this a reasonable answer' and the kid answered 'yes', so he got the question right !!" The question was two parts: boolean, then 'explain'. The kid used the wrong method in part 2.
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24/ There were multiple people who said "I can't imagine a single reason why XYZ" This is argument from ignorance. The fact that you can not imagine it is not proof of anything aside from your limited imagination. Pro tip: if you ever are tempted to say that, ask instead >>>
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26/ Then, of course, there was the person who got upset when I said that it was an argument by ignorance by being offended that I was calling him ignorance. (a) it's a phrase ("by" is not as common as "from", but is still common) (b) even if it wasn't, it was truthful
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27/ I challenged several folks who said "it doesn't say estimate" to tell me what the instructions at the top of the page were. All responded "I can't see the top, so I'm going on what I can see". This ... ah... Look, if you're saying the teacher is an idiot, then >
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28/ You're implicitly arguing "there is NO context in which the teacher's mark down is valid". In which case, saying "I can't see the context" is not a defense of your position. In that case you have to somehow enumerate every single possible context and disprove them all.
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29/ Several people called me dumb or derp. Which is ... surprising. If my argument has a flaw, point to the flaw in the argument. If you can't see a flaw, ad hominems do not seem useful.
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30/ Anyway,
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31/ damnit, @kaijubushi , yes, that's the one that I added and then deleted, then added, then deleted https://twitter.com/kaijubushi/status/1128996584048529409 …
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32/ OF COURSE I'M TOO INVESTED ! https://twitter.com/NonPlayerCaoCao/status/1128996169793908737 …
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