@sellathechemist@mastodon.social
Post #1779067
2026-03-12 07:27 UTC
1/ @HGourlayUCL @martinvermeer You've hit on the head one of the things I puzzled with for a long time. How to devise a practical that had "epistemic doubt/uncertainty" (to be as pompous as possible 😉) built into it. For a long time the response from people was "how will you mark it?" because we assessment looms so large in our thinking these days (KPIs, innit!). It puts the focus on the numerical value of the answer in a perverse and binary way (right vs wrong).
Replies (1)
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@_thegeoff@mastodon.social 2026-03-12 09:03
@sellathechemist @HGourlayUCL @martinvermeer I have senior (~17yo) students help out with my technicianing. I always encourage them to have a rough idea of the result before they calculate. "Dilute this 3.85M acid down to 1.2M. Well, that's basically 4M down to 1M, so we know it should be in the 25% ballpark." Catches so many order of magnitude slips etc. I also tell them that being 10/100/1,000 out is great, there's probably a simple decimal place error. There always is.