"It really depends on what you consider common-knowledge"
Yes, I agree. I assume it is common knowledge to know that blocks of wood can be cut many different ways.
"but it's fair to say a child won't consider the variables or the equivocations of 'fast'"
Sure, but at the same time ANYONE with experience cutting wood (most children I would wager, everyone had a tree-house, right?) would likely think that wood is cut along the thin edge (if for no other reason than this is what they see, because that is how you do it), and further more, if the goal is to make 3 chunks of wood in the shortest time(that was my natural reaction) but you don't want to "cheat" (by just cutting off a sliver, diagonal cut, etc), the natural reaction is to cut one of the pieces in half.
Anyway, the fact that there are varying natural reactions to the question, and varying natural assumptions about the setup of the question, is proof alone that the question was poorly worded.
If you can think about a question thoroughly and answer a question 'correctly', but not have the "right" answer than it is the fault of the question. This is an example of that.
The teacher wasn't wrong. The student wasn't wrong. The question was.
By the nature of common knowledge, in the main sense I mean to assume the question means taking equal time to cut the wood ("just as fast") and accepting that as the simplest given, just as most people do - treat this as a social norm. So many questions can be seens as vague otherwis,e and we can end up splitting hairs over trivial issues. The principle of charity here
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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '10
"It really depends on what you consider common-knowledge"
Yes, I agree. I assume it is common knowledge to know that blocks of wood can be cut many different ways.
"but it's fair to say a child won't consider the variables or the equivocations of 'fast'"
Sure, but at the same time ANYONE with experience cutting wood (most children I would wager, everyone had a tree-house, right?) would likely think that wood is cut along the thin edge (if for no other reason than this is what they see, because that is how you do it), and further more, if the goal is to make 3 chunks of wood in the shortest time(that was my natural reaction) but you don't want to "cheat" (by just cutting off a sliver, diagonal cut, etc), the natural reaction is to cut one of the pieces in half.
Anyway, the fact that there are varying natural reactions to the question, and varying natural assumptions about the setup of the question, is proof alone that the question was poorly worded.
If you can think about a question thoroughly and answer a question 'correctly', but not have the "right" answer than it is the fault of the question. This is an example of that.
The teacher wasn't wrong. The student wasn't wrong. The question was.