Thursday, October 26, 2006

Aggressive Problem Solving

Question: "What shape will the graph of y = |mx + b| always make?"
Answer: "It'll make a fucken V shape."

I suggested to the student that, on future quizzes, he pick a different adjective to describe his graphs.

I don't know where this came from - in all my years, I've never gotten a response like that. At least he was correct, though he needs to work on his spelling.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

He *wrote* that? It's normal to expect a kid to *say* an obscenity, but to put pencil to paper and (mis-)spell it out somehow strikes me as funny.

I thought for a minute that "fucken" (like "fahrfegnugen") was some kind of German word, but a quick Google says otherwise.

Dan Wekselgreene said...

Yeah.. it was strange, because the kid isn't ever rude to me in any way. They were working in groups, and his group tends to get pretty animated. I'm thinking that he answered the question verbally to a friend that way, and then just wrote it down also without thinking. I'm going to ask him about it today. And I don't think he knows any German :)

I thought it was hilarious - and so did everyone else in the staff room. He's lucky - it was so funny that I decided not to give him a referral or anything like that.

Darren said...

At the *very* most, I'd say or write "freakin'".

Dan Wekselgreene said...

When I gave him back his paper, he kind of stared at it in disbelief - he didn't remember writing it. His table partners saw what he wrote, and my response, and they were rolling. His response: "I think I was angry that day."