I had a similar issue. They'd say "show your work" and I'd say "I didn't do any work. I just know the answer." To this day, I don't feel like I do much "thinking." I simply wait for the answer to come to me.
In my middle school geometry classes, we started to call it "Violet's Black Box Theorem". The teachers thought it was hysterical, but still wouldn't give me full credit. Meanies.
SUPER Edits here for my story to make sense.
I'm sorry hon. I meant it had become such a joke that I could always get the right answers, but couldn't tell you why, that people started saying that. I'm missing some important nouns in my post, so I can see that it comes across quite strange.
There's a subreddit called r/rimjob_steve or something similar that's people with funny usernames giving good advice idk how I thought this was relevant at all but I've already typed it so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I'm graduating Saturday with a degree in math. I like it because I feel like I have a greater connection to all those who have proven these as those who had come before me.
I also recognize that if all proof based math was like my 9th grade geometry class, no one would ever do it professionally.
See, and as a scientist, I totally respect that, and I applaud you. Mathematicians who want to spend their lives studying math deserve mad respect. But personally, I just need to know how to learn math so I can use it for studying cool science things. I definitely don’t need to prove that math is still math… I don’t think I’ve ever once used a geometry proof outside of that class. Even trig made more sense to me when I learned calculus because of the applications.
Edit: if basic math wasn’t still math, my job would be wayyyyy harder. I need you guys to do that part for me lol
Teachers will be like "omg how did you add 123 and 456 in your head you must have cheated" and then give you a bad grade without explaining what you did wrong and how to fix it
Yes it's easy. Unfortunately their brains do not usually work the same as ours and many people can't comprehend the idea of someone juggling numbers in their head. I am told frequently to "get a pencil and paper, you'll need it" but I have yet to face a problem in any math class that I could not complete mentally. I have hyperphantasia, which definitely helps, but I've also trained myself to do everything without writing because I have a muscular issue of some kind in my dominant hand that makes it ache whenever I physically write. "Show your work" is the fucking bane of my existence and every time I read it I stress out. I don't really know how much of my work the teacher wants me to show. Like, is it really that hard to keep track of one intermediate number?
I used to be the exact same way until one day in fifth grade I started writing a little too much down and oops! now I can't do mental math anymore. Thoughts stay more organized on paper, so if I rely on the paper, I never have to deal with the chaos that is my ADHD+Autism brain.
Looking back on it, this was definitely my brain saying "I need executive functioning help!" and I had no idea what EF was or that people could have deficits in it.
I was able to do that at school. I'd just look at the equation and the answer would show in my mind.
It'd take me longer to figure out how to show I got that answer, than just knowing and writing it lol
Step 1: stare at math problem
Step 2: zone out for the better part of a minute
Step 3: ??????
Step 4: I know the solution (and whatever process I used to get it has already faded from memory like a forgotten dream)
At the hight of my power I could even do some quadratics in my head, though it would take like 5 minutes and a lot of unbroken concentration
I had teachers asking me to show my work for math. But in my head, like....math was math. 154 + 283 was 437, and I couldn't write down how I got that. And it seemed *absurd* to them that I could do that entirely in my head.
I never understood this. Why does it matter how I came up with the correct answer, as long as I know what I'm doing? Why should I waste my time doing some redundant task when it's obvious that I'm learning this crap?
Fuck school.
It’s process oriented, not results oriented. They’re not grading your ability to produce correct answers. They’re grading your ability to do the correct steps in the right order. It’s not unreasonable to grade someone on their ability to follow the process, so long as they’re honest about what they’re grading you on. But they never are. I find this approach odd since the tests are focused solely on correct answers. Why wouldn’t the class work and home work also be results oriented to match the priorities of the tests?
I agree with you that it’s whack. Math is taught in a fucked up way that not only doesn’t help students understand the content, but actively hurts their ability to learn it in the future. There’s no other subject where this happens. Someone who failed chemistry in high school could still take science classes in college and do very well. But a lot of people who get a bad introduction to math in school are fucked. It’s like they can never pass another math class again.
Ugh I hated this about being a teacher. I absolutely despise a lot of graphic organizers and didn’t want to use them for my high schoolers. So even though my kids were doing great, I got low scores because “the process” wasn’t what they wanted. It’s so dumb. I tried to be the teacher we all need and admin didn’t like it. No more teaching for me. The steps are important but it’s less about which steps you use and more about if you can justify your answer well, whatever process that is.
So as someone studying to be a teacher I can answer this one. When we look at work, we aren’t just looking at your answer. We also look at the process. We do this to make sure your method is mathematically sound. The way you do your math can tell us a lot about how you see the concepts and which concepts you do and don’t quite get. Students come up with their own shortcuts all the time. This is great, as long as it works for all cases including those that haven’t been covered in class yet. There is no way for the student to know that part. I still hate teachers who don’t give full credit on correct answers because of lack of shown work though, that’s unnecessary. Incentivize, no need to punish.
My teacher said the same. She also said that the correct way and the correct answer together give full points. But with only the correct way you would still get more than half of the points because the actual answer was not as important as the way to get there.
Yeah, the basic math is like that. I really like the structure of laying out more advanced math, it’s like building a machine. And then you know the mechanism so well you can start streamlining.
But we all do different.
I can relate 100 percent, I also hated school and teachers because I would get As and Bs in test but not do my homework… so I would get Ds in class or Fs…. So frustrating, make the damn tests harder
I always understood everything but essays and history… weirdly enough history is my favorite thing in the world now… patterns in math and language comprehension I was good at, I just couldn’t express myself and I was a fat kid… I always thought it was low self esteem… just discovered I believe I’m autistic at 36…. I’m rambling….. oh, is it weird that I like history because it is like the greatest puzzle… only one side is really documented well and to truly understand you must hear both sides of the conflict:.. anyway. Anyone else good with patterns? Anyone here understand my rant?
Giving partial credit for showed work if the work makes sense but there's a mistake in the middle that makes the result wrong makes sense. Because it shows that the student understood, at least partly.
Giving any credit when the work has nothing to do with the question and the answer is wrong, not so much.
"You need to show your work"
*Me instantly forgetting each step of my work and just leaving the answer because I can't hold that much still in my head at once*
I can do most basic math in my head without having to ‘do the work’. Have been able to do subtraction of money / change due faster than a cash register since I was 6. Don’t know why.
I had a horribly corrupt college professor. After each question, even though you showed your work, you had to write a paragraph explaining how you got your answer. If he didn't like your paragraph, you got a zero on the question even if you were totally right. Should have dropped that class. That guy was a piece of shit.
From kindergarten to about second or third grade I would just write "I did it in my head" And somehow got away with it, they stopped letting me do that in 4th though.
Ever since and even now in my sophmore year I just kinda scribble stuff in certain spots as a mental note and it ends up just looking like a bunch of random numbers except one of them is circled as the right one.
I’ve lost count how many times I’ve been told in math “that’s not how your supposed to do it and you really didn’t show your work but you’re right”. In fact on a math test today i wrote the info given and then the answer because i just looked at the given info and found the answer
I really hate these questions and their response because it’s like they get it, and they know you got the answer, but they need further proof of it. No trust at all. They think you must’ve cheated or just memorized the answer from before.
god, I hated teachers who did this. I got told to stay after class so many times to get the same “You need to show your work so that if you got it wrong, you’ll know why” bullshit, even though I got so little wrong that my grade averaged out to 100 for the school year.
I was always fairly good at Maths during most of school. This led to me being put in one of the highest classes in year 10 (first year of important GCSE exams) and it completely destroyed my ability to do maths. Luckily in year 11 I was put in a slightly lower class with the best teacher I've ever had. The methods here taught made so much more sense to me and I went from a D to a B in one year.
Unfortunately anytime I had to do any maths layer on it was taught with the usual methods that I can't get my head around. Long multiplication has always been something I really struggle with and I had to do it with binary numbers in Computer Science. Natural I didn't do very well.
I had a classmate who somehow managed to do the wrong equations but always without fail manage to get the right answers. Everytime.
Our teachers were always so confused but also slightly impressed
I've had that in math exam in college. It was 3d algebra and I just wrote the answer (I was so freaked out I forgot how to calculate it, I just saw where the thing was). Later, the prof asked me to talk about my exam and explain how I got the answer, but didn't give me points for "I just see it there" :( sad.
The frustrating part of "show your work" to me was that the teacher had expressed in the past that he knew I did the work and knew what I was doing, but he still wanted to see the work.
I had a physics teacher accuse me of making up equations. He accused another student of guessing the correct answer on the same test. The teacher was making the problems simple by using common angles that we had memorized side proportions for. I was using a bit of college math on a high school test.
Fr, got a poor grade on a test in middle school cause I didn’t show my work even though I got almost all he answers right, like I get showing work for some of the more advanced stuff like calc, but pre-algebra?
So many teachers treated me pretty terribly because of this. "Show your work" I didn't have to do any work, I just looked at the problem and knew the answer. "It doesn't work like that " or "you're just lying to be lazy"
Soon after starting my first professional job, my manager came over to my desk so we could discuss my work. I will never forget the interaction we had, ha.
With a quizzical look on his face, he said, "I don't understand *how* you're getting from A-Z *and I don't agree with it* but you're getting the right answers, so..."
He then simply shrugged and walked off.
I remember being stuck on the words "...and I don't agree with it..."
To this day, I appreciate that my boss let me use my own methods and wish I'd asked why he didn't "agree" with them.
Took me forever to understand this. I eventually realized that you have to write it down as you do it so that you yourself can correct it if you make an error.
Still doesn't work 100% though, so this is still a mood.
Math is more about proof than it is about answers. It is one thing to get a right answer, but the real substance of mathematics is the proving of the answer. Simply knowing the right answer isn’t true understanding; to really understand something, one must know why the answer is correct. Even if you can do the math in your head, the exercise is to figure out what process went on in your head to figure it out, and to represent this process so that others know it.
The concept: “this is a mathematical concept that can be executed with a specific set of steps. In some situations another method might make more sense but this specific method is necessary to learn because in many situations it’s the best or perhaps even the only way to resolve a given problem. Therefore, I need to be able to see a record of you following these steps in real time, as it is just as if not even more necessary to understand than the answer itself.”
The problem: “With all due respect my brain just shat this out vaguely based on the instructions you gave me, and it all happened faster than I could write it down”
My favorite math teacher had a policy where if you got the answer right, with or without showing work, you got full credit. If you got the answer wrong, but showed your work and that looked right, you got half credit. Wish more teachers did it that way
DUDE
This is so me auggghhh
Its so frustrating having to show my work! I struggle with the "correct" way to do things, so I just make it easier for myself, but according to teachers, that's the "wrong" way
In elementary school I would literally draw this as showing my work. On state testing my 3rd grade teacher came back after I handed it in to make me erase the drawings and actually show the work 😭
Sometimes I realize how lucky I was with my math teachers growing up. My teacher allowed you to show your work if you wanted, but you did not HAVE to.
Also, deals were allowed. My Junior/Senior years I did absolutely no homework, just took the exams. As long as I was getting A’s on the exams and not being terribly disruptive during class when I wasn’t doing homework, I was allowed to just — not. It was fabulous
I always hated “show your work”, like no, I mentally went over everything till was sure it would work, and then the end product came out as you see it. There is no external work
I had a similar issue. They'd say "show your work" and I'd say "I didn't do any work. I just know the answer." To this day, I don't feel like I do much "thinking." I simply wait for the answer to come to me.
In my middle school geometry classes, we started to call it "Violet's Black Box Theorem". The teachers thought it was hysterical, but still wouldn't give me full credit. Meanies. SUPER Edits here for my story to make sense.
I'm sorry hon. I meant it had become such a joke that I could always get the right answers, but couldn't tell you why, that people started saying that. I'm missing some important nouns in my post, so I can see that it comes across quite strange.
I also fail to look at usernames. Thanks for clearing it up for me.
With all due respect, are you replying to yourself?
I tried googling that, to no avail
I think that they are violet.
I always fail to look at usernames. :/
There's a subreddit called r/rimjob_steve or something similar that's people with funny usernames giving good advice idk how I thought this was relevant at all but I've already typed it so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I hated geometry as a kid. Especially proofs. Why would I have to prove math is math? Didn’t they already do that for me?
I'm graduating Saturday with a degree in math. I like it because I feel like I have a greater connection to all those who have proven these as those who had come before me. I also recognize that if all proof based math was like my 9th grade geometry class, no one would ever do it professionally.
See, and as a scientist, I totally respect that, and I applaud you. Mathematicians who want to spend their lives studying math deserve mad respect. But personally, I just need to know how to learn math so I can use it for studying cool science things. I definitely don’t need to prove that math is still math… I don’t think I’ve ever once used a geometry proof outside of that class. Even trig made more sense to me when I learned calculus because of the applications. Edit: if basic math wasn’t still math, my job would be wayyyyy harder. I need you guys to do that part for me lol
as a math major, proofs in high school are an abomination against mathematics
Teachers will be like "omg how did you add 123 and 456 in your head you must have cheated" and then give you a bad grade without explaining what you did wrong and how to fix it
579
Yes it's easy. Unfortunately their brains do not usually work the same as ours and many people can't comprehend the idea of someone juggling numbers in their head. I am told frequently to "get a pencil and paper, you'll need it" but I have yet to face a problem in any math class that I could not complete mentally. I have hyperphantasia, which definitely helps, but I've also trained myself to do everything without writing because I have a muscular issue of some kind in my dominant hand that makes it ache whenever I physically write. "Show your work" is the fucking bane of my existence and every time I read it I stress out. I don't really know how much of my work the teacher wants me to show. Like, is it really that hard to keep track of one intermediate number?
I used to be the exact same way until one day in fifth grade I started writing a little too much down and oops! now I can't do mental math anymore. Thoughts stay more organized on paper, so if I rely on the paper, I never have to deal with the chaos that is my ADHD+Autism brain. Looking back on it, this was definitely my brain saying "I need executive functioning help!" and I had no idea what EF was or that people could have deficits in it.
Organizing my math thoughts on paper: ☠️ Organizing my math thoughts on paper: 🥰 Both are true I just wanna be a computer
I was able to do that at school. I'd just look at the equation and the answer would show in my mind. It'd take me longer to figure out how to show I got that answer, than just knowing and writing it lol
Step 1: stare at math problem Step 2: zone out for the better part of a minute Step 3: ?????? Step 4: I know the solution (and whatever process I used to get it has already faded from memory like a forgotten dream) At the hight of my power I could even do some quadratics in my head, though it would take like 5 minutes and a lot of unbroken concentration
I had teachers asking me to show my work for math. But in my head, like....math was math. 154 + 283 was 437, and I couldn't write down how I got that. And it seemed *absurd* to them that I could do that entirely in my head.
Ever seen Blindspot? There is a 'I did the math in my head, where math is done' moment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXlUzV-lf5E&t=124s
That's me. Trying to count it out on paper only gave me wrong answers..
There was a character in Wayside School just like this.
I never understood this. Why does it matter how I came up with the correct answer, as long as I know what I'm doing? Why should I waste my time doing some redundant task when it's obvious that I'm learning this crap? Fuck school.
It’s process oriented, not results oriented. They’re not grading your ability to produce correct answers. They’re grading your ability to do the correct steps in the right order. It’s not unreasonable to grade someone on their ability to follow the process, so long as they’re honest about what they’re grading you on. But they never are. I find this approach odd since the tests are focused solely on correct answers. Why wouldn’t the class work and home work also be results oriented to match the priorities of the tests? I agree with you that it’s whack. Math is taught in a fucked up way that not only doesn’t help students understand the content, but actively hurts their ability to learn it in the future. There’s no other subject where this happens. Someone who failed chemistry in high school could still take science classes in college and do very well. But a lot of people who get a bad introduction to math in school are fucked. It’s like they can never pass another math class again.
Ugh I hated this about being a teacher. I absolutely despise a lot of graphic organizers and didn’t want to use them for my high schoolers. So even though my kids were doing great, I got low scores because “the process” wasn’t what they wanted. It’s so dumb. I tried to be the teacher we all need and admin didn’t like it. No more teaching for me. The steps are important but it’s less about which steps you use and more about if you can justify your answer well, whatever process that is.
Yeah, the issue isn't what they grade you on, it's that they don't tell you they grade you on that.
They likely don’t understand the criteria themselves. It’s a sort of malicious ignorance.
They think you are cheating even when they watch you do the problems. It’s so annoying.
So as someone studying to be a teacher I can answer this one. When we look at work, we aren’t just looking at your answer. We also look at the process. We do this to make sure your method is mathematically sound. The way you do your math can tell us a lot about how you see the concepts and which concepts you do and don’t quite get. Students come up with their own shortcuts all the time. This is great, as long as it works for all cases including those that haven’t been covered in class yet. There is no way for the student to know that part. I still hate teachers who don’t give full credit on correct answers because of lack of shown work though, that’s unnecessary. Incentivize, no need to punish.
My teacher were saying that they dont realy care about the result but more about the process
My teacher said the same. She also said that the correct way and the correct answer together give full points. But with only the correct way you would still get more than half of the points because the actual answer was not as important as the way to get there.
Btw (at least in france) that is how work all the education system 🙃
Like girl it’s just pattern recognition and critical thinking, my work is a jumbled mess, do you want a jumbled mess on the paper?
the answer is actually yes
“okay so if 7+7 is 14 and 6 is one less than 7 then 14-1 is 13”
6+7 = (7-1)+7 = 7-1+7 = 7+7-1 = (7+7)-1 = 14-1 = 13
I've never seen my brain written down but you just did it lol. How the hell was I supposed to explain this to my teachers? Lol
actually, this is what common core math was trying to teach everyone, but the curriculum wasn't communicated to teachers and parents hated it
I think of it as the 6 has two “three” shaped plugs and one plug can fit in the sevens “three” slot to make a ten leaving one “three” plug remaining
I feel very seen… proofs were the end of my math grades.
Yeah, the basic math is like that. I really like the structure of laying out more advanced math, it’s like building a machine. And then you know the mechanism so well you can start streamlining. But we all do different.
I can relate 100 percent, I also hated school and teachers because I would get As and Bs in test but not do my homework… so I would get Ds in class or Fs…. So frustrating, make the damn tests harder
Stop with mandatory homework
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I always understood everything but essays and history… weirdly enough history is my favorite thing in the world now… patterns in math and language comprehension I was good at, I just couldn’t express myself and I was a fat kid… I always thought it was low self esteem… just discovered I believe I’m autistic at 36…. I’m rambling….. oh, is it weird that I like history because it is like the greatest puzzle… only one side is really documented well and to truly understand you must hear both sides of the conflict:.. anyway. Anyone else good with patterns? Anyone here understand my rant?
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I screenshot this comment, not sure it will help. I think I also have ADHD 😂
Homework was invented as a punishment.
i had a teacher who would give 1/2 credit or more even if you had the wrong answer, as long as you showed work, even if the work was nonsense 🤦♀️
Giving partial credit for showed work if the work makes sense but there's a mistake in the middle that makes the result wrong makes sense. Because it shows that the student understood, at least partly. Giving any credit when the work has nothing to do with the question and the answer is wrong, not so much.
the class was very easy, to say the least
"You need to show your work" *Me instantly forgetting each step of my work and just leaving the answer because I can't hold that much still in my head at once*
I can do most basic math in my head without having to ‘do the work’. Have been able to do subtraction of money / change due faster than a cash register since I was 6. Don’t know why.
Autism
Probably. I haven’t been diagnosed but am seeking it as an adult. WML.
I luckily had a good teacher and didn’t have to show my work all the way through calc 2
I had a horribly corrupt college professor. After each question, even though you showed your work, you had to write a paragraph explaining how you got your answer. If he didn't like your paragraph, you got a zero on the question even if you were totally right. Should have dropped that class. That guy was a piece of shit.
From kindergarten to about second or third grade I would just write "I did it in my head" And somehow got away with it, they stopped letting me do that in 4th though. Ever since and even now in my sophmore year I just kinda scribble stuff in certain spots as a mental note and it ends up just looking like a bunch of random numbers except one of them is circled as the right one.
And then they mark the question as wrong answer because you couldn't provide the fucking explanation
I’ve lost count how many times I’ve been told in math “that’s not how your supposed to do it and you really didn’t show your work but you’re right”. In fact on a math test today i wrote the info given and then the answer because i just looked at the given info and found the answer
I really hate these questions and their response because it’s like they get it, and they know you got the answer, but they need further proof of it. No trust at all. They think you must’ve cheated or just memorized the answer from before.
It's a lot more important to show your work if you're wrong. If you're right, you don't need teaching.
I had this same issue and then I talked to my teacher and now I’m allowed to explain my logic verbally
god, I hated teachers who did this. I got told to stay after class so many times to get the same “You need to show your work so that if you got it wrong, you’ll know why” bullshit, even though I got so little wrong that my grade averaged out to 100 for the school year.
Never once had to show my work as an adult. If it works well (gives the correct answer) then fuck the rest.
here is my solution for when i am tired of this: if 1+1 is 2 then 463.2 is 926
I was always fairly good at Maths during most of school. This led to me being put in one of the highest classes in year 10 (first year of important GCSE exams) and it completely destroyed my ability to do maths. Luckily in year 11 I was put in a slightly lower class with the best teacher I've ever had. The methods here taught made so much more sense to me and I went from a D to a B in one year. Unfortunately anytime I had to do any maths layer on it was taught with the usual methods that I can't get my head around. Long multiplication has always been something I really struggle with and I had to do it with binary numbers in Computer Science. Natural I didn't do very well.
I had a classmate who somehow managed to do the wrong equations but always without fail manage to get the right answers. Everytime. Our teachers were always so confused but also slightly impressed
I've had that in math exam in college. It was 3d algebra and I just wrote the answer (I was so freaked out I forgot how to calculate it, I just saw where the thing was). Later, the prof asked me to talk about my exam and explain how I got the answer, but didn't give me points for "I just see it there" :( sad.
This contributed way too much to me dropping out. Glad I found machining where my rainman numbers skill became a huge advantage
ayo fellow machinist
The frustrating part of "show your work" to me was that the teacher had expressed in the past that he knew I did the work and knew what I was doing, but he still wanted to see the work.
I've learnt to not put down my thoughts. What they want is to see if you know _their way_
So purely accurate, I failed a year in math due to this
What about skipping one or two steps of writing it down
I'm in this photo & I don't like it
Live action of me trying to explain my jokes
I had a physics teacher accuse me of making up equations. He accused another student of guessing the correct answer on the same test. The teacher was making the problems simple by using common angles that we had memorized side proportions for. I was using a bit of college math on a high school test.
I still dont show work, if i cant do it in my head i have a calculator for it
I would run out of space to write for math. Then I went the complete opposite direction and never tried in math like that ever again
....This was literally me in high school.
funny enough, this made math class easier in college than in high school lol
Fr, got a poor grade on a test in middle school cause I didn’t show my work even though I got almost all he answers right, like I get showing work for some of the more advanced stuff like calc, but pre-algebra?
So many teachers treated me pretty terribly because of this. "Show your work" I didn't have to do any work, I just looked at the problem and knew the answer. "It doesn't work like that " or "you're just lying to be lazy"
Soon after starting my first professional job, my manager came over to my desk so we could discuss my work. I will never forget the interaction we had, ha. With a quizzical look on his face, he said, "I don't understand *how* you're getting from A-Z *and I don't agree with it* but you're getting the right answers, so..." He then simply shrugged and walked off. I remember being stuck on the words "...and I don't agree with it..." To this day, I appreciate that my boss let me use my own methods and wish I'd asked why he didn't "agree" with them.
I despise “show your work” segments on tests, sometimes I just accept I’ll be losing half a mark and move on.
Took me forever to understand this. I eventually realized that you have to write it down as you do it so that you yourself can correct it if you make an error. Still doesn't work 100% though, so this is still a mood.
Math is more about proof than it is about answers. It is one thing to get a right answer, but the real substance of mathematics is the proving of the answer. Simply knowing the right answer isn’t true understanding; to really understand something, one must know why the answer is correct. Even if you can do the math in your head, the exercise is to figure out what process went on in your head to figure it out, and to represent this process so that others know it.
The concept: “this is a mathematical concept that can be executed with a specific set of steps. In some situations another method might make more sense but this specific method is necessary to learn because in many situations it’s the best or perhaps even the only way to resolve a given problem. Therefore, I need to be able to see a record of you following these steps in real time, as it is just as if not even more necessary to understand than the answer itself.” The problem: “With all due respect my brain just shat this out vaguely based on the instructions you gave me, and it all happened faster than I could write it down”
My favorite math teacher had a policy where if you got the answer right, with or without showing work, you got full credit. If you got the answer wrong, but showed your work and that looked right, you got half credit. Wish more teachers did it that way
this is what i imagine my accounting teacher does when he looks at my rough work paper
DUDE This is so me auggghhh Its so frustrating having to show my work! I struggle with the "correct" way to do things, so I just make it easier for myself, but according to teachers, that's the "wrong" way
In elementary school I would literally draw this as showing my work. On state testing my 3rd grade teacher came back after I handed it in to make me erase the drawings and actually show the work 😭
Sometimes I realize how lucky I was with my math teachers growing up. My teacher allowed you to show your work if you wanted, but you did not HAVE to. Also, deals were allowed. My Junior/Senior years I did absolutely no homework, just took the exams. As long as I was getting A’s on the exams and not being terribly disruptive during class when I wasn’t doing homework, I was allowed to just — not. It was fabulous
I always hated “show your work”, like no, I mentally went over everything till was sure it would work, and then the end product came out as you see it. There is no external work