Unified Front

[lookagain]

Is this your problem - or you are trying to help somebody-else? If it is somebody-else's problem - > > > it will be useful if that somebody directly contacted us, showing work done up to now. < < <

Please have your son come to the site directly. If you want to follow along, you can look over his shoulder. We have found that trying to explain something through a third party is almost impossible. The way we work is that we give help, > >> not answers, < < < so we need to find out what your son is thinking, where he is blocked, what math facts he already knows, etc.

After only one hour and six minutes from the OP's first post, and the advice given above in the two quote boxes in the interim, the following post got made:

Corresponding angles with parallel lines. Therefore, \(\displaystyle x=3x-70\) so \(\displaystyle x=35\). A is the supplement angle.

Veteran posters should be able to present a united front. I was waiting for the son to directly contact us, and show us his work/attempts.

 

[mmm4444bot]

No need to post that here, lookagain.

"should" this and "should" that doesn't accomplish anything;
however, I'm sure the site owner(s) would "study" your recommendation(s).
My opinion, mais oui.

I moved lookagain's post onto this board. (This is the board where others -- including you -- have started their discussions about other members.)

I'm open to suggestions, if you would like to see this thread somewhere else.

Cheers :cool:

 

[lookagain]

Whoops...by "here" I meant "anywhere at the site"...like, don't post nuttin'
but instead contact the owner(s)...

No, Denis, the truth is the exact opposite of what you stated.
The "Administration Issues" section brings it potentially to
everyone's attention, unlike your idea.

 

[JeffM]

On the issue of how one tutor comments on the comment of another tutor, I have a uniform rule to suggest, namely that such comments should NOT be made part of the student's thread unless the comment involves pointing out a mathematical error relevant to the student's question. The student comes here to learn about a specific topic in mathematics, and it does not help the student to see disputes about pedagogy or inter-tutor protocol. Such issues can, and in my opinion should, be handled either in Odds and Ends or Administration. I'll let the moderators and owner decide which is the more appropriate sub-forum.

Such a rule is admittedly not a bright-line rule because it calls for judgment on what is a relevant mathematical error. If for example I tell a student that P is a property of all differentiable functions and lookagain points out that P is actually a property of all continuous functions and consequently of all differentiable functions, that may or may not be relevant to the specific question asked except in the sense that part of learning mathematics is learning to be conceptually exact. So I'd advocate interpreting my proposed rule liberally when it comes to the relevance of a mathematical error in a tutor's comment.

A different rule I'd like to propose is that a tutor's public comment on another tutor's comment be polite (or clearly intended to be facetious: I don't mind being sent to the corner with denis). We recently lost a tutor over that very issue.

Finally, I think all the current tutors agree that our primary job is to provide help to students, not answers to homework. Again, I do not mean that there is agreement on a bright-line rule. We get people here who are not studying mathematics and who simply need a direct answer; and on rare occasions, an answer may be an appropriate part of the help we give to students with homework. So I am not intending to prohibit giving answers. I am asking for agreement that giving answers to what appears to be homework should be rare and should have good cause. I doubt we can all agree precisely on what "giving an answer" means or on "what appears to be homework" or on what "good cause" is. Consequently, such a rule will not prevent disagreement, but it should reduce it.