Khan/khan-exercises — Issue #14674: Mean median and mode - Inconsistency in answer requirements
Author: KhanBugz
Created: 2012-02-26 00:54:37+00:00
State: open
Labels: chrome, hard, win7

Reporter: rudytome@gmail.com

When doing the means, mode and media exercises you are not consistent in how you want the answers. It took me trial and error to figure out that if the answer was a whole number, e.g., 6, or a finite decimal, e.g., 5.5, then I had to enter that answer. However, if the answer came out as an infinite decimal, e.g., 11/6=1.833333333, then I had to enter the fraction. But even then I had to enter it in its simplest form, e.g., 23/8 rather than 92/16.

This was primarily a problem when calculating means. Sometimes the answer format was obvious, e.g., 24/6=4 or 31/2=15.5,but often it was not, e.g., 143/13=11.

This meant I had to spend a lot of time dealing with issues and calculations that had nothing to do with the concepts you are trying to teach. I am working on this with my son who struggles with math and this issue added an level of complexity that only increased his frustration. I am sure there are also other struggling math students out there who may feel the same.

If you could go through the problems I missed on this section you would see that almost all of the errors were simply because I entered the answer in the wrong format. At first it was just frustrating but eventually I reached the point where I just didn't care - and I like math.

Please set it up so that the answers are entered in a consistent format. I would suggest a whole number or decimal format so that the student always had to do the division. If the answer will be an infinite decimal, you could, like you do with other sections, instruct the student to round to the nearest hundredth.

Thank you

Larry Ruddell

[mean_median_and_mode.html?seed=160&problem=mode](http://sandcastle.khanacademy.org/media/castles/Khan:master/exercises/mean_median_and_mode.html?seed=160&problem=mode&debug)

[Answer timeline](http://sandcastle.khanacademy.org/media/castles/Khan:master/exercises/mean_median_and_mode.html?seed=160&problem=mode&debug&activity=%5B%5D)

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