"The more things you do, the more things you can do" - Lucille Ball
What is the purpose of education? Social and emotional growth are important, however, this month's book discusses "limited learning on college campuses" and offers reforms to improve outcomes. One way to boost scores and knowledge is developing study habits and a love of learning. This month's video and FAQ topic is fuzzy errors -- mistakes that are due to a lack of focus rather than a lack of comprehension.
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Authors Arum and Roksa, sociologists at NYU and Virginia, surveyed college students about their study habits and administered the College Learning Assessment that measures critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing. They found that most students did not show any significant growth during their first two years of college as students spend too few hours studying and too many hours socializing. The CLA and the survey measure only reading and writing -- it would be great if they considered problem sets and exam prep in future surveys. Reform ideas include "instilling a love of learning, an ability to think critically and communicate effectively and a willingness to embrace and assume adult responsibilities."
In mid-September, the New York Times published an Op-Ed piece by E.D. Hirsch How to Stop the Drop in Verbal Scores that had some great ideas about early childhood education. So why would a Math Lady be writing about Verbal scores?
This is an excerpt from Math Confidence's response as a letter in the New York Times: "My verbal score increased over 200 points from high school - partly from living a few more decades but mostly from cracking the books. Jack LaLanne got us to exercise our bodies; now it is time to exercise our minds."
Upon retaking the SAT in 2009, I had to study verbal for the first time in decades -- I used the The Official SAT Study Guide along with SAT Skills Insight for Reading, Math and Writing on the College Board web site. In 2005, the Writing section of the SAT was added making the total possible score 2400 -- 800 for each section. This has skewed The SAT Question of the Day as there are now two verbal questions for every Math question.
People often get the incorrect answer due to a lack of focus rather than a lack of understanding. Some common topics that illustrate this idea are: Area vs Perimeter, Exponent Rules, the word "NOT"
and the ubiquitous minus sign mistake.
One excellent way to reduce fuzzy errors is to study multiple choice items that have tempting good wrong answers."Is that your final answer?" is a way to help raise awareness and critical thinking -- it would be great if "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" had an Algebra version!
Authors Arum and Roksa, sociologists at NYU and Virginia, surveyed college students about their study habits and administered the College Learning Assessment that measures critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing. They found that most students did not show any significant growth during their first two years of college as students spend too few hours studying and too many hours socializing. The CLA and the survey measure only reading and writing -- it would be great if they considered problem sets and exam prep in future surveys. 
