The root of the problem
While hiring programmers for my start-up, I asked a girl the approximate value of square root of 0.5 in her interview. Now pause for a moment and think of the answer before you read ahead.
This girl had just completed her B.E. Computers. She had decent academic record with above 80% is her Xth and XIIth standard exams. The answer she came up with was 0.25 and though this was wrong, it was not an uncommon response. So I asked her to square 0.25 so that she would realize that this was wrong. When she multiplied 0.25 x 0.25 her answer was 13.75 !! And she did not feel that she had solved it wrongly. Also, the interview was not a stress interview and she was quite relaxed.
Her answer made me think (again) of the quality of our education system. Students learn arithmetic in primary school, algebra in secondary school and calculus in college. And after all this an engineering graduate is not able to multiple two numbers with decimals.
Who is to blame….?
The student for not studying hard, not paying attention in class, passing the exams based on knowledge learnt by rote.
The educational institutions for not having faculty which ignites the interest of students, for treating students as customers and fees as revenues and commercializing education to sell degrees.
Parents who pamper children and demand degrees in return for the fees.
The Government, University, which fail to maintain the required standards, who have relaxed the exam standards to appeal to the masses.
The IT industry which has created world class training infrastructures in each company rather than collaborating with the Government and colleges to strengthen the overall education system.
Anyway, that brings us to what would be a quick way to solve the math problem. One way is to think of 0.5 as close to 0.49 so the approximate square root is 0.7. One student had answered it innovatively as square root of 0.5 is square root of ½ which is 1/1.414 which is about 1/1.5 leading to 0.67 which is quite close.
It's time to change the Education system in India.
Excellent logic though shown by the last candidate..
Intriguing example. Maybe we should only test for basics in interviews rather than asking questions on past experience that the interviewee is prepared for.
Well the problem is of quantity over quality. They have a syllabus which will focus on teaching them "joint families" and "nuclear families" in std 2 when the focus should have been only on reading, writing and arithmetic. Ensuring kids understand the concepts is not the objective of our school system of education. If they understand they are good and if they don't parents are required to put in extra efforts to make them understand. Schools will only test them and grade them. Time we changed this system.