MATHS, HOW SHOULD WE HELP YOU?

[Mao]

so

after a thought, and a brief discussion in IRC

if the person is asking the question, that person must have some points that he/she does not understand
and so, for this person to learn and understand these points best, the person who answer the question must take in consideration in which way should the answer be constructed to best stimulate learning.

I believe that this is best achieved by hinting, as is already practiced by Neobeo and producing positive results.

so, what do you think?

more so, if you feel you're likely to be asking questions, how would you like them to be answered to help you learn?

ps: this should also extend to Chemistry and physics where maths is involved

[bec]

I think the person asking the question should make it reasonably clear what they don't understand. for example, show the method you have tried to solve the problem. That way, people can point out where you're wrong and not waste time explaining things that are unnecessary, or showing full working where it's not required.
but...usually the reason i put a question up here is because i have no idea how to approach it, in which case a full answer is always nice!
all the help i've ever received from this site has always been 100% clear and exactly what i need to understand the question, so whatever everyone's doing now is good for me...

[Collin Li]

Everyone is different. What does a macroscopic view of the audience of FSN tell us when helping individual students who ask for help? Nothing.

[tia]

worked solutions is just telling you the answer rather than allowing you to find it yourself. I think hints are best (as they help the member to use their skills to deduce the answer) and if they still need more help go from there. But it should be able about helping the member assist themself rather than just doing it for them.

[beezy4eva]

Hints are better. Just giving a person a worked solution does help them understand how to answer the question, but by the time exams come they'll probably have forgotten how to do it because they didn't develop the skills needed to answer that type of question.

[Collin Li]

A worked solution is as good as a hint. It is the student's own downfall if they don't use the worked solutions in a way that benefits them (i.e.: repeat the example, encode and understand the technique).

Also, you won't be getting hints on an exam either, so I don't see how hints are any better than a worked solution. Often what follows the hint is just the algebraic hackwork, which is good for practice, but only good up to a point where the time taken outweighs the diminishing marginal benefit (we can assume that your algebraic skills will reach a plateau).

The 'hint' is the ingenious thinking step, and the students seeking the highest scores will need to be able to do without hints and should ultimately be able to solve problems, known or unknown, by themselves. The algebra is trivial, and showing it just makes it easier for the student to follow through without having to do the algebra.