Magic formula

Was grading some student work and noticed that when they are supposed to solve for
[tex] \left(\frac{5y}{4}-\frac{1}{2}\right)^2 +\frac{1}{16} = 1[/tex],
10 out of 16 students expanded the above into a quadratic equation and then used the quadratic formula to get a solution. Of course, along the way, a couple of them made some mistakes in the algebra and got the wrong answer.

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2 Responses to Magic formula

  1. John Cook says:

    When I read your blog post in Google Reader, I see TeX source code, not an equation. Visiting your page directly, I see the equation properly rendered.

    I see this all the time when people first use a plug-in to automatically render TeX. It can be fixed, but apparently the default configuration doesn’t work. Unfortunately I can’t tell you how to fix it because I haven’t used the software.

  2. tpc says:

    Thanks John for your comment. My wife – the techie in the house – installed math jax which is rendering with java script. I’m not surprised that it doesn’t render in google reader.

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