Certainly you can. Probably in less than 5 seconds, or you wouldn't be reading this blog.
But... one-fourth of incoming University of California San Diego freshmen taking a placement exam last year failed to solve for the x.
And... 3/5 of them failed to round 374,518 to the nearest hundred.
"... it is so jarring to read a lengthy new report from UCSD’s Senate-Administration Working Group on Admissions that says many students can’t answer simple math questions. “Between 2020 and 2025, the number of students whose math skills fall below middle-school level increased nearly 30-fold, reaching roughly one in eight members of the entering cohort,” it stated.Some 25% of students in need of remedial math training couldn’t figure out the answer to this equation — 7 + 2 = blank + 6 — the sort of problem that California first-graders are expected to master. And 61% were unable to round the number 374,518 to the nearest hundred — a basic task third-graders are drilled on..."
But the last cause on that list — high school grade inflation — is something that UCSD can’t fix. It is part of a far-reaching educational crisis that demands a much broader response.The report said even the students admitted in 2024 who were most in need of remedial support had high school math grade point averages of better than 3.6 — and the difference in such GPAs between the least and most prepared entering students was very small.
If you're interested, here is one Math Placement Exam from UCSD, which you can take at home privately and for free. It seems to start easy and get harder as you go along. I didn't see these particular questions on this particular placement exam.
Related: Over the years I have hired a number of bright young neighborhood high schoolers to help me with yard and garden chores, and I sometimes challenge them with math and geometry puzzles from the mathematics category of this blog to ponder while they walk in diminishing circles behind a mower, or to take home to work out. Last year I messaged a new puzzle to a high-school junior. The correct answer came back in a few hours. I told him I was impressed. He said he and his friends couldn't figure it out, so they plugged it into ChatGPT...
2020-2025, that's the COVID generation.
ReplyDeleteAll of them have HUGE gaps in their background. Tragic, but easy to understand.
Online education is terrible. Students hate it. Even for a single class.
The key to education is personal interaction. Nothing else. If it weren't, everybody would stop going to college and start learning through MOOCs.
*Facepalm* -- I'm a UCSD professor.
ReplyDeleteIn my experience, the students usually like online education UNTIL they actually get to a point in their education when they need to be able to DO something. Then they're quite engaged.
Does this mean King Triton is actually underwater?
ReplyDelete???
DeleteI regularly watch the math videos by Presh Talwakar on https://www.youtube.com/@MindYourDecisions/videos Problems and solutions, galore!
ReplyDeleteNice. Bookmarked. Thanks, anon.
DeleteI ran a University dorm-based library when I was working on my MLS degree, and had several work study students manning the checkout/in desk. Across the 8 who worked for me, only one knew how to calculate late fees (5 cents a day) and even how to make change. They were completely befuddled, so I had to make a cheat sheet for them for both calculating and carryout out the transaction. They still managed to make a mess of things. And this was way back in 1994.
ReplyDeleteTwo of them eventually were expelled for plagiarism, by the way, while another got was arrested/expelled for stealing CDs from that very library. Sigh.
I manned the checkout/in desk in my dorm''s library back in 1967-68 to earn my spending money for weekends. So sad to hear your story.
DeleteI learned "making change" at my uncle's summer camp store. I thought it was the strangest way of doing subtraction, but it worked.
DeleteIn numerical student stories: When I was a poor undergrad, I made a game out of "guessing" the price of my groceries by quickly adding up the (hopefully correctly memorized) prices while the groceries were on the belt at the cashier. Being more than 2 bucks under counted as a fail. A few bucks over was allowed, because that just meant I missed a sale item. Many bucks over was also a fail.
DeleteWhich is to say: I don't understand how people can not make change.
Seriously. How do you get through life if you miss such a basic skill?
That said, I'm happy that late fees are a thing of the past in our local library system.
The results of placement testing is just as sad for English skills.
ReplyDeleteBut it is not new. The University of California had a test in 1959 (my freshman year) called Subject A. One had to pass the test or the course to take English 1.
I passed it and was amazed how rare that was.
I got to tell that when I first saw the equation I thought I was supposed to find X MULTIPLIED by 6, which I did in my head in about 2 seconds. i was pretty impressed with myself, until I came back the next day and saw the post again, and determined if I had been taking a test I would have gotten the answer wrong, having misread the equation. It reminds me of my struggles with math.
ReplyDeletehttps://srevestories.blogspot.com/2026/05/the-real-world.html
Bulletholes, you may struggle with math (as per the link), but in this case perhaps it is more of an attention or focus problem rather than math per se.
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