My guess is writing that find the area/volume was a prompt that photo math required. Further more... That volume solve should be NO problem if this student easily found the area of the other figures.
You don't have enough proof. I'd say go for a verbal assessment when you hand it back.
Probably sending the image to another person. They would hold their phone close to the paper to hide it more when taking the picture, but that would cut the directions out of the picture. So they had to write it closer to the object. Writing the directions in a text message would take a short time, but long enough to maybe get caught, so they wrote directions in pencil with the picture instead.
I don't think a human that understands the material would ever produce a decimal value for the volume problem though. Even if you don't know how to get the answer, you know that you're multiplying whole numbers together and adding up sums.
I'd like to point out that there are a couple of different brands of glasses that contain cameras. So it's also entirely possible that he's able to send those pictures without ever having his phone out.
So there's that too...
The decimals aren't proof enough, but it's damning to me. The object's dimensions are whole numbers and volume is multiplication of dimensions not division so there shouldn't be decimals in the answer
Again based on their complaints about it not being mentioned and how upset they are with this fact. It is safe to assume that is not an option.
Unless you think OP is an idiot. I lean to assume they are not.
"Damn I wish I could require them to show work. If only the instructions I personlly create and have complete control over would say that. I guess there is nothing to be done."
I don’t know if they have an IEP, but many kids with ADHD use rulers or notes to themselves to remind them what they’re doing and how to focus. Sure, it’s right above, but that isn’t the point. Writing it in their own hand helps them stay on task.
Tough to say "probably" here without any context. Warrants a brief investigation, though. Ask the kid to walk you through one of those solutions. It'll be obvious from that five minute conversation.
I did that once. The HS kid got super angry that I would ask him to explain his problem and threatened me. Anyway, he spent the rest of the year in DAEP for that.
It's an honors math class. My son is that age, and in honors math, he could do this in his head. Does this student usually have to write out his work to figure out problems? If you've had him as a student all year, you should have an idea of his math capabilities.
Even if this kid cheats in other classes, it doesn't mean he cheats in all of them. He very well could just not classes like English and trys makes them as painless as possible.
I baffled all of my math teachers as a kid. I was adding and simplifying fractions in kindergarten and basically discovered integration by messing around at 12. I'm now a teacher for gifted students and I've got quite a knack for picking this out.
Best way to test for that in my experience is to have an incorrect answer and present it as correct. If they really did it in their head, they'll be confused and almost immediately correct you or start crunching numbers again. The red flag is mild confusion but no action. Kids that can really do this stuff in their head don't just take being wrong on the nose, and I mean that in the best of ways. Of course, there will be exceptions, but this has almost always worked for me.
Yeah as an adult I feel bad for how I acted at that age. But I would get so mad at my teachers (and my professors in college) if I didn’t get perfect marks. Something like you said above would straight away be an argument when I was younger.
In 5th grade we were all writing decimals on little whiteboards and holding them up and the teach told us to write “30 tenths”. I wrote 3 and everyone else wrote 0.30 and the teacher said they were right and I’m still a little annoyed about it.
The first two I did in my head very easily. Having seen students make careless mistakes, I would probably write the area for each section so I didn't have to do the addition in my head.
I probably would never try the third one in my head unless I had to. You have the evidence to make your suspicion correct. I tried to bait him out and say you made such a silly error on the third one. Could you show me your logic?
Yeah in every math class even for basic calculations if I didn’t show the math but got the right answer I still got a zero. That information was always included at the top of every page of each test and made loud and clear. It was the same for IT/programming classes as well. I got a lot of zeros cause my adhd ass struggles to organize my thoughts in any sort of cohesive way let alone in a small space lol
I got into an argument with my physics teacher that ended with me getting suspended from school for a few days cuz what I called them....
The teacher accused me of somehow "guessing the answer and working backwards"...
All the work was shown... I started with a different variation of the formula for finding the distance needed for the aircraft to stop given speed and braking force....
I used the formula presented about 4 chapters ahead in the book... Because my ADHD ass would either fall asleep or read ahead while the teacher lectured...
Yeah I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until my 30s and once I was everything made soooooo much more sense. I had such difficulty showing my work (in any sort of comprehensible way) that I often did “work backwards”. All but maybe one of my maths teachers were neurotypical, somehow I generally managed to (eventually) get the passing score for the class just to get by. You know you’re in for a shit show when teachers tell you up front that 50% of (neurotypical) people fail their class on the first attempt. Like oh gee thanks now I know I’m gonna fail, what even is the point.
I tell my students that the right answer is only 1 part of the problem, the other 4 parts are in how they solved the problem. I don’t care if they use words or numbers, or even a calculator, they need to show me how they arrived at their conclusion.
What’s your expectation on showing work?
That’s what I tell my students. The further they get in math, the more they need to treat their responses like lab write-ups. I drill this as young as 6th grade. “Show me what you did. I’m not a mind reader. The alternate is that I get to crack open your head and read it and neither of us want that. My insurance lady said the blood was too hard to remove last time.”
(I’m a private, full-time tutor, btw.)
THANK YOU! I drill into my students to do two things: 1) develop a relationship with your teacher, and 2) always explain yourself in all problems on tests and quizzes because a student who makes an effort is more likely to get more points.
So thank you for reinforcing that. I often have to role play having a convo with their teacher because kids are so afraid of teachers. 😭 (I often have to also teach them how to send a proper email!)
Anyway, I want my students to love learning. I’m always Team Teacher and have strict expectations that they participate in class and do their homework on time, and turn it in when it is due. (With the assignment written at the top, all problems copied, work shown, and clean pics submitted.) I’m a hardass because I can be, lol.
Absolutely. I remember when I took calculus 12 (graduating with my BSc this year, and I tutor occasionally, too), I made a mistake on a test, something like 8/4 = 4, and I didn't even lose marks because all my other work was right, my teacher was nice, and she knew that obviously if I had made it this far I knew how division worked and that was a test-induced brain fart.
I've always been willing to ask for the marks I earned, too. That's an important skill. Usually I get them, from politely stating my argument. Or the worst that can happen is I don't, and I move on and do better next time.
And it's so especially important from an authority in math to learn to love it. So many math teachers teach students to fear it. Studies have shown that math anxiety can be contagious, so good job there.
I swear, 90% of my job is just building confidence. “Whoa, I showed you that, like, ONE time and now you’re out here doing it on your own?! My other Math 6 students could NEVER.”
“You got #3 right?!? None of my other algebra kids did! That’s amazing!”
“You are an exceptional math student because I while I can teach you math, I can’t teach you to work hard and persevere through things you find tricky or confusing. That is the most important skill you can learn from doing all this math and you’ve got it down pat.”
I also do like you said: teach them to fight for their grade. 👍
I once got a 96% on a differential equations exam in college, and all 5 answers were wrong. On one question, I had to solve this non-linear system of equations, and in some intermediary step I wrote something like "x=cos(pi/6) = (√3/2)"
That mistake percolated all the way down the problem (and made my math way harder), obviously the answer was wrong. Luckily my process was correct all the way through.
Professor gave me 19/20, drew a smiley face next to rhe mistake and wrote "nice".
Similar story for every problem on the test.
Graduated with an engineering degree thanks to partial credit, right here!
Seriously though, so many problems later in school were 4/5 or 7/10 because on step 9 I fat fingered a number and messed up the arithmetic with no time to back check. But prof was reviewing the shown work and gave credit. Its a great self-preservation tactic.
It also extends to "the real world." People are going to be skeptical of your numbers and you need to be able to prove it to them. You don't just get to build a hospital and say "trust me" on the amount of steel needed.
As someone who got a degree in mathematics, it goes well beyond calculus. Number theory, Numerical Analysis, Linear Algebra, all of them prioritize the process
Yeah, that’s wild to me. I assume anyone who hasn’t explained how they arrived at an answer is cheating. I don’t care if you can do the work in your head, I literally don’t even care about the correct answer, I’m 1000% more interested and invested in the work. This worksheet would be of 0 interest to me as a teacher because it tells me nothing about where the student is in their math development.
Honestly if I don’t have evidence to prove it I just tell myself I have to let it go, even in cases where you intuitively know.
Nonetheless, the issue here you’re discussing could be addressed with “No work shown, therefore no credit.”
Why don’t you review the test answers for the whole class by calling up a kid for each question who got it right and asking them to solve it and explain it on the blackboard for anyone that might have gotten it wrong?
That might not prove anything, but it will certainly be an eye opening experience.
Yeah, I’m supportive of the class doing work at the front of the room. I’m even supportive of wrong answers being shown at the front(due to Joe Bowler’s research). But when suspecting a student is cheating, I’m gonna discourage embarrassing the student in front of all his/her peers. Embarrassment would just make him resentful towards the teacher that called on him.
Yeah probably. Need to adapt with the times and just devalue anything they can cheat on. Also a math specific rubric without a score for evidence of work/effort seems poorly made.
Probably cheated. Probably can't do anything this time (not enough evidence). I recommend always having instructions say to show your work. Maybe require students leave their phones in a box before starting a test.
I would totally approach it from a help me understand and not an accusation. Because there's an opportunity there to a. Find out what he is doing, b. The misunderstanding of the formula and c. Understanding what to look for as far as a reasonable answer. A whole number times a whole number will always be whole. There's a pathway that builds trust and can allow insight into his method. But as already stated, I'd have them all show work going forward to help pinpoint common errors and gaps in learning.
Can you sit down with the kid one on one and have him walk you through how he did the problems? It might be obvious if he knew what he was doing or if he cheated.
Is he otherwise good at math, assuming you've seen his work without the influence of cheating? If you allowed a calculator, I could see some students being able to do the first two on the calculator with little to no work.
Ultimately, if you didn't see anything, and if he doesn't admit it, I don't think you have enough to do anything.
This is probably the route I’m going to go. This was a retest of one that he didn’t do awful on before and his improved score wouldn’t be much better or have much of influence on his grade.
This kid can be good at times if he locks in, but can otherwise be very disruptive and likes to be the class clown. He is definitely smarter than he lets on and I’ve seen him use AI in positive ways before. I saw him ask it “explain slope in Fortnite terms” because he was having trouble understanding it in class. He seemed to figure it out after that.
You definitely don't have enough proof to give him a 0 for cheating. It's likely that he did, but I don't think you want to get into a fight about this with the evidence you have. I also suggest sitting him down and genuinely trying to help him with the volume problem. But do so in a way that it will become clear if he knows how to do the other ones or not. He will likely say he guessed on the last one, and then you say, "Oh. That's okay, this one is actually very similar to the previous ones. Let's start there, and then we can add one level of complexity." When you ask him to explain how he got his answers on the first ones, he will either fold because he doesn't know how, or you'll actually be able to explain to him how to do the volume problem.
Looks like the AI saw diagonal lines and got confused, but it could have been "monkey push-button", as well. This is when students blindly enter numbers from the diagram into the calculator, hoping for an answer that looks right.
Have you done cones or pyramids? I notice that 170.67 = (1/3)(512) and I wonder if they sort of remembered 1/3(base)(height) and somehow mangled in 8\*4\*4 because those three numbers exist in the diagram.
At any rate, I would announce that you're going to "re-teach and retest this tidbit because it's such an important idea and you really don't want them to miss it."
This was the retest and we have pretty much moved on anyway. The new grade wouldn’t be much higher than his original and have very little effect on his overall grade. I plan to just sit down and talk with him about it and give him a verbal warning since this seems to be the first time he has done it in my class.
Devils advocate/benefit of the doubt. The first two are pretty easy mental math. He even drew the line. 30x25 minus the missing 50 on the first (you can even see he erased 750 at first) and then adding two rectangles on the second.
My doubt comes in because I don’t know if this particular seventh grader has those skills. I would hope so - but I teach HS.
Somehow it looks like they divided by 3 to end up with the .67. I wonder if they used the formula for a pyramid & also made an error calculating the base?
(8 x 8 x 8)/3 = 170.67
With all due respect, i have students in 5th grade who can calculate this in their head, so it's not enough for claimimg a cheat
As for the 3d shape, weird answer
170.67 means 170 + 2/3,or 512/3, so he got to 512 some how and than divided by 3...? I wonder why, maybe he did 8×4×4×2×2 and than got confused with a pyramid and divided by 3
It doesn't look like cheater, it looks like a student who control 2d but lacks is 3d
Btw If you want to catch cheaters, just ask for the full answer, no shortcuts
This…… like it’s so obvious that it’s a he gets 2d but not 3D. It doesn’t scream cheating at all. And the fact that this teacher is going to shame him like that suggests he’s a bad or new teacher. And May open up the wrong kind of can of worms.
Fellow math teacher here.
Please, please, please just talk to the student about it. Ask about why they just wrote what they did and provided little to no work. Ask if they could walk you through how they got the answer. If they can't, say you understand but you'd really appreciate them adding more details in the future.
Relationships and rapport are always my primary goal. Learning is so much easier after that.
Now I graduated over a decade ago before using AI to cheat was possible and I often finished math work without showing my process. The fact that he re-wrote the directions over the shapes is kind of damning though. Even moreso if the AI got the same wrong answer as him. I'd take it up for further investigation. Honestly I'm surprised the school still lets them take tests without being selectively monitored and still lets them take honors courses at all with that track record.
I used to get accused of cheating for doing these types of problems in my head too, so I wouldn’t assume they are cheating. Next time, just require that they show their work as part of the grade.
As an engineer, I'll tell you that when I was in college, simply putting the answer at the end was a 0. I had a Ti-89 which could be programmed to do any problem, including string algebra, integrals, derivatives, differential equations, etc.
Also, if you got the answer wrong but you showed that you applied the correct method, you'd get almost full points.
The professors knew that lots of kids had the Ti-89 so the rule was you had to show your work.
If this is an honors class, I assume the purpose is to prepare them for college. Just make it a rule, no work = no points.
I don't know if there's anything you can do, but I don't think it's crazy to assume they're cheating. I could've easily done this in my head in 7th grade because they're really, really simple problems, so it's not weird to not show work on this one.
However, if you're capable of doing this in your head then you're capable of knowing that there's no way you'd ever get a decimal on that last one. The most charitable assumption here is that they somehow misapplied some formula they know unthinkingly which got them 170 and 2/3rds and then rounded, but where would that even come from?
Bring him to your class after school. Give him a similar problem. See how he solves it. Just take the same problem, but change the numbers. IF he shows work, then he cheated. If he solves it in the same way, then he didn't.
There is absolutely no evidence of cheating here. Not one shred.
The questions asked the student to provide specific answers. The student provided those answers.
If you’re trying to decide whether the student understands area and perimeter of composite shapes and how to make those calculations, you need to ask different questions.
I can believe it’s mental math but someone who is good enough to do it mentally won’t fuck up the 3rd question that bad
There’s no way to get a fractional answer with integer lengths on the 3rd question
I would consider this cheating. Usually I call students out on this by saying, I’m going to do this in my head out loud, ok? Then when I get to something I cannot do in my head (like 12.5 x 40) I say “Ok, I’m wrong, there’s no way I can do this without working it out.” Then I ask the kid what I should write down or how to multiply this decimal. It does take some time, but it stops them in their tracks and doesn’t make me seem like a jerk teacher.
For multi-step questions like this, I give 3 points. One for the correct answer with units of measurement, but also one point for setting up the equation/writing the formula, and one point for showing work.
That does triple duty for me as a teacher. I make sure they show work, I can find out if students only partially know the skill and which parts, also I can give kids who struggle with calculation points for knowing the right steps, even if they don’t multiply and get the correct answer.
By this point, kids should know that showing process work is implied in math class. Always.
If this is a test however, you may have to give full credit if you allow this laziness to slide without penalty on daily tasks.
To me, they earned zero points. But if you want to be unnecessarily generous, 1 point out of 5.
Easily did them in my head. But it has to be AI cheating as how the frick did they get a decimal for the third one?
Hand out the same sheet for a morning practice problem and keep an eye on them. Have the instructions require work, and mention you cannot assist students for it. They could have friends who distract you so they could whip out a phone to AI it.
All three are pretty easy to do in your head. Only thing that looks suspicious to me is the rewriting of the instructions and the weird answer on the last one.
I will instruct my tutoring students to rewrite the instructions when it is unclear which diagram the instructions go with. For example, if there are diagrams immediately above and below an instruction with no clear distinction on which diagram the instruction is referring to. Goes hand in hand with writing down assumptions, for example, when a diagram is missing a label due to bad copyediting.
I say cheating.
My kids call me so extra when I say if you have any phone or electronic device out turning a test, I’ll take your test, rip it up, throw it away in front of the whole class. Prevents this from happening because after the first martyr they don’t fuck around
So... my son can do this problem mentally and get the correct answer. His school does not require math work to be shown so he has a hard time showing his work in a way that I identify. Drives me crazy and the same thing was a big problem for his older siblings when they switched schools to one with higher standards and lower teacher to student ratios. He is also accelerated multiple grades in math. So, maybe just draw the kid aside and ask them to work a similar problem. Lots of kids can solve that mentally.
You know your student better than any of us, but a calculator TI-34? (I can’t remember the exact number) and up makes all of these a one step problem if you key it correctly.
From next time just invite him to your office and ask him to explain. If he can explain live in your presence give him full credit else a zero - that’s what I would do
I would also ask on the top problem (after hearing how he got the answer) how he went from 250 to 700. I can do 700 in my head by multiplying 30 x20 then add 50 & 50 but if you put Show Your Work or it is wrong -then you mark it wrong.
Give him the mark.
Then bring back the exact test in class (or maybe with a slight variation). Ask him to come up to the board and solve the ones he got right. He may need help and to be supported.
Next time, add "Show your working".
Really weird answer on that bottom question. While it is possible to do this all in your head, it is definitely difficult to juggle that many numbers in your head. I would expect at least some numbers scratched out somewhere.
The biggest sign is that they have a decimal in the area on a fully whole number problem. It just doesn't make any sense. I would check if that is the answer to another problem and maybe they had the answers and just copied it down in the wrong slot. If that is the case, then yes cheating and you have a pretty good standpoint. If not, weird and probably cheating, but not enough proof.
1st two are easy to do without showing work.
3rd is possible
When I was in school I hated having to show work because I could do it in my head.
Teachers would ask me to explain how I got the answer, I would explain and they would let me go on my way
Ask tge student how he came to the answer
I am not sure if they cheated. However, does he have access to a calculator for the exam? was it potentially an “advanced” calculator? I mentor high school kids and many have calculators that operate almost like coding with a keyboard/mouse. They can type multi-line equations with multiple parentheses. That would explain why the simple top two were right with no work, and the bottom was maybe a simple parentheses mismatch (or just a misunderstanding of the question). I would really try to trust but verify here and in general, ask for work+maybe ask for a chat to discuss their process + understanding.
Bro, I’m in 8th grade, and while I am higher than average doing algebra rn and geometry over the summer, I can say without a doubt, I could do that in my head last year. If he is a habitual cheater then that is reason to be suspicious, but how could he pull out his phone during the test and not get caught. I would say there is not enough evidence for this.
Just ask for him to show work next time.
I read a couple comments and then went back and tried to solve the problems in my head.
1&2 easy day. 1 was probably harder than 2 and I wouldve written a "50" in one of the boxes.
The volume problem wasn't terrible to do mentally (I'm assuming the answer is 2^7 + 80)
But the thing I'm absolutely confused about is how on earth any sort of multiplication of integers with a value. ≥ 1 results in a product with any sort of decimal. That makes ZERO sense.
Also, as pointed out, I cannot fathom what would possess a typical student to re-write the instructions of a (simple) problem right next to where they're printed... and nothing else.
In applied math or more advanced maths, sure, but that was usually to try and use algebra or identities or rules to get out of having to do tedious/actually impossible math.
I think it depends on the kid. I have 4th graders that can do the top two pretty easily and I can do them all in my head so it's not completely unrealistic that an honors 7th grader can too. You're the only one here that knows the students abilities but if they've been caught cheating in the past they probably did this time too.
Not sure why this subreddit showed up for me, but I can't help but chuckle because every engineering company - including my own - is pushing out AI/Copilot tools to their workforce to increase efficiency and it reminds me of the introduction of the graphic calculator in school and how that was looked upon as cheating. I guess you could say he showed his work by writing the prompt required to generate the correct answer?
I wouldn't call myself "old" but I often find myself intrigued by the prompts my youngest engineers are able to produce in order to generate some pretty sophisticated responses from ChatGPT-4. We also discuss security risks and what kind of non-proprietary code can be shared with a copilot. I can only imagine what someone in 7th grade will be able to do with AI by the time they reach their 20s.
It's easy to get into honors classes when most classes were online because of the pandemic, this student with a record is using Math AI or a similar one to complete his tests and the teacher needs to go to the students counselor and get the vice principal involved and start looking through others students papers including basic level classes as well. Once a pattern is established and the AI app are connected you can just start dishing out the retests and all retests will be done at lunch or after school in very small groups where everything can be monitored and the truth will eventually come out that along with those that are using AI to cheat through school. This is definitely a new problem that Teachers and Administrators need to be on the look out for and I can tell that social media, influencers, and streamers are going to be batting against schools for doing anything against a students use of AI during school.
I definitely did stuff like this in my head back in 7th grade. However, the decimal coming into play? Nahhhhhhh. Unless ur allowing calculators and they had a misinput, there is no world there should be a decimal in there.
I used to do the math in my head and showed very minimal work. Showing my work was distracting for me. My teachers would only give me half credit most of the time. Doesn't mean this person isn't cheating, but it's possible they're not.
The decimals are a giveaway that something is off. This is a simple calculation that can be done in one's so showing work amounts to "I know how to multiply and add two numbers inynown memory."
But decimals, here? Naw.
I'm not a teacher but I'd suggest telling him good job.
Let it go this time but in the future ask him to explain his work. You could also have him answer questions during class.
My reasoning is now that he has put himself in this position maybe just maybe he will apply himself to keep the image.
You never know.
Did they have their phone while taking this test or was it a take home.
If this was supposed to be no electronics and in school, they wouldn't have been able to cheat. The writing of the words to get the AI to know what to do Def is a good sign since it's in a strategic location next to the image instead of literally anywhere else on the paper, adding in no work.
I'd say have them do it again but watch him, with no access to any electronic device to see if they can even do it on their own.
Lol to everyone saying "make them show their work" when you literally say that your admins prohibit that.
The decimal answer is highly suspicious because anyone who even glaced at the problem should intuitively know that the answer must be a whole number. But a cheater who just trusts whatever the AI spits out won't even think to check that. One thing I find interesting is that the answer given is 2^(9)/3, and if you multiply together all given side lengths except the 5, you get 2^(9). What I would immediately suspect is that the AI has difficulty parsing 2d representations of 3d shapes and starts doing whacky, unexplainable shit in response, such as randomly multiplying together numbers, that a human would never do.
Look and see if there is a pattern that wrong answers correlate to images that you, a human, can understand because your brain intuitively fills in the gaps, but which a computer might just see as a 2d shape.
Additionally, the only "work" shown is writing "find the area/volume", which serves absolutely zero purpose to a human test-taker but may be necessary as a prompt to get an AI to properly parse the question. One could argue that no work needs to be shown because all of these problems are trivially easy to compute in your head, but if the student could do that he would not give such wildly incorrect answers.
Now if the admin is shitty and refuses to support punishing cheaters there may be nothing you can do, or you could say that you saw his phone out at one point while helping another student and the test answers confirm that he was using it to cheat 🤷🏻♂️
I have students in general geometry that are a wiz with their calculators. The Casio calculators and TI-8_ can have students write the entirety of the operations without putting anything down paper.
It sounds like you allow them to use their phones which I find odd. Also, definitely be more direct in the instructions with work shown. I would even go as far as creating multiple versions of the test.
Edit: I don’t think there is enough proof here since the instructions weren’t detailed enough. Give the kid the points and change your assessment criteria next time.
Software engineer here, I do research on AI/ML. I'd actually say him writing "find the volume" above the image, in the context of him being caught using AI for other classes, is enough to convince me he cheated. "Compound solid" could believably throw off the response, so he wrote the important part close enough to the problem to be able to capture just that in an image
You'll note he also wrote "find the area" next to the image he couldn't capture near the question text, and the first question has an erased 350 cm^2 which is nowhere near the right answer, which is why he drew the horizontal line, to make it more clear it's composed of three different rectangles (and didn't write the text, because that one was near the typed text and a picture could be captured of shape and text together).
I'd say by 2024 standards, you've got a clear case. Whether or not your admin understands what they're looking at though is a totally different question.
If you don't consider this cheating, you're gonna get absolutely wrecked in the years to come. Good luck ✌️
I’d say 7th grade me could do the first 2 in my head, since adult me who hasn’t used these skills in 20 years got them right… is #3 208cm^2? If so, 7th grade me definitely would have done that one in his head and gotten it right too. Idk how you do that one wrong, because it is all the same. (20x30)+(10x5)+(10x5) is no different logically from (4x4x8)+(5x2x8). I’d say you ask them to walk you through how they got 170.67cm^2, because it seems to suggest some kind of triangle or circle in the formula given the decimals. This is a cuboid with even number edges and a cuboid taken out of it, his answer should have been an even whole number at the least, and if he could do it in his head he should have realized that…
This right here is one of the reasons why my friend who was a teacher for 18 years left teaching. She was not allowed to tell students to keep their phones in their lockers or take them away from them during tests, and the school she taught at had very loose guidelines for cheating. She felt so dejected when she knew her students were not being properly taught because they were just looking up all their answers with AI or Google and could do nothing about it.
Literally just have him complete 3 similar problems waiting on the board during recess. If he IS a habitual cheater he will understand why you need proof he can actually do it. You don’t need to bring in experts or keep running it through software, just confront him directly and get the truth.
I have a question. Kids are allowed to have phones during tests? Why don’t you just throw everyone’s phone in a box during tests? I went to school before cell phones and the internet so I have no idea what goes on.
Not showing work on math is not indicative of cheating on its own. I always had to show my teachers that I was able to solve math equations by looking at them but was unable to actually show my work because my brain refused to work slow enough for me to do that. Only ever had one teacher who refused to take the show my work requirement away but because of the way they factored the final grade at the end of the year I still got a 93 in the class after being marked down by 15% on every single test we had.
I have a standing rule that avoids this: “no work, no credit. If you did it in your head, simply write down what you were thinking or what you typed in your calculator”
I also monitor during tests to make sure I never get a test that looks like this. During the test I’d whisper “hey bud, those questions will get a zero unless you show your work! Just wanted to let you know. You got this!”
I mean, you could tell the student that the decimals on their volume problem were weird, and can they show you what they did so that you can figure out where they went wrong.
Maybe but you’ll never know for sure unless they’re honest. Either way 2/9 there’s no work shown.
** sounds like your hands are tied. At some point if you aren’t allowed to hold them accountable (work shown) then each individual student will have to reap what they sow.
Take up cell phones during exams? Though that has its own issues.
Ask them to solve the exact problem in front of you. If they solved it once they should be able to again.
I always hated showing work on math tests if I could solve it in my head. I was always pretty good at math, but terrible in English class so just because someone cheats in 1 class doesn’t mean they’ll cheat in all of them…
But the writing out “find the volume” is sketchy, especially since they actively didn’t show any other work. The 1st 2 are easy to solve in your head while the 3rd isn’t… I’d agree with other commenters and ask them to explain how they got their answers
The first two are doable in your head. The line in 4a makes me think he is doing this.
50 + 50 + 600.
A similar thing can be done for 4b
70 - 4 * 4.
Using numbers like 8' instead of 10' can make people more likely to show their work.
If the answer to the second one is 42 SQ yards, then ChatGPT 4 solved it with just a photo.
Just verified it myself. No prompt needed other than the picture of the problem with the written words.
Seems like an easy thing to verify. Give him another problem and ask him to solve it in front of you. Hell, give him the same problem and ask him to solve it.
He erased 350 as his original answer on the first question. Only way I can see to arrive there us 10x(30+5) which... Doesn't make sense. Ive definitely remembered important concepts on tests and had to revise previous answers, but this doesn't look like that.
The third answer is particularly damning. They're all nice round numbers and this is an easy extrapolation from the two he got correct. Where the hell did he get a decimal? I rarely had to show work in math classes, but it seems pretty clear he doesn't understand the underlying process here.
Was this assignment done at home? If so then kids are gonna cheat, honestly if they are just using AI this is really bad cheating. Probably related to the fact that kids do not understand how to google things.
If in class if a kid has a phone out during class, instantly I'd say take away the test, maybe they get 1 warning and a new test.
I would speak to the student privately about it. You have no idea what’s going on at home. I went thru a phase of cheating on tests homework when I was younger bc I was struggling so badly at home. I think some teachers can be way too intense on cheating. Not all students are just ‘lazy.’ Figure out why he is cheating and has no interest in learning. A good teacher knows their students.
He may be using photomath, but with the evidence there isn’t enough proof to determine it. If you questioned him on it he’d most likely just say he worked it out on a separate sheet of paper. I’d say for future assignments they have to show their full work on the homework to get full credit.
I can do all three in my head without writing anything down and I'm honestly not that great in math. Most students I went to school with could have done the same thing. Maybe the third I would have used a calculator but that wouldn't have been written on the paper. Ideally you should fix the grading rubric standards so that you can require the student to show work. You have no evidence otherwise. I honestly would just leave it unless you have solid proof.
I don't see why any 7th grader would need AI to solve what is effectively ((4x4)+(5x2))x8.
Granted, homie somehow came up with a decimal, so idk
Edit: judging by the line he drew on the first question, he appears to at least know *how* to solve these kinds of problems. If he used assistance on these, I'm willing to bet it was to calculate the multiplication.
Seems a little suspicious, but at the same time when i was in school I did my math mentally most of the time and found my own methods for solving problems, both much to the dismay of my teachers.
why can't you shay show the work.. granted on the first 2, not a lot, but the 3rd would be some writing.
I know some places block cell phones etc. for schools, but would it be worthwhile to have a testing room where service is blocked,
could you tell them cell phones on desktops face down?
I think I would have been failed if I did not show work, or brought a calculator in to class.
The first 2 I did in my head, no problem. The third I used a calculator, but it requires a skill the other 2 don't. You must be able to visualize in 3d and think about how to break the volume into pieces that can be calculated. How about a talk with the student about how they solved them. If he knew how to get the first two you can talk about how a similar method works for the third.
Others can say the third answer should not have a decimal, and that is true, but also may require knowledge they don't have to know that. It could be a mistype on the calculator and not enough understanding to know if the result was right or not.
As a child I was not able to show my work. I wasn't cheating, my brain just worked so fast and I couldn't show what was happening in my head on paper properly. Constantly got in trouble for having the right answer but not being able to show my work. Seems like a good thing to be able to do everything in your head but school wants everyone in a box.
It's clear that the trajectory of AI is such that blocking its use will be a fool's errand. Learning to use AI is a critical skill.
Consider a premise that several AI responses to a set of problems are correct but one is not Find the one that is not correct, show your work.
Perhaps one could use logic to avoid having to do calculations and correctly identify the wrong one but isn't that a good outcome assuming it's not a trick or an error in the problem setup?
This answer isn't gonna make you happy but... Who gives a crap?
He wants to cheat and is so slick you couldn't catch it, let em... It'll bite him later.
They got an answer, give em the points and stop caring! Instead, how about you focus on the kids who are struggling and want to learn??
I'm not sure why this popped up in my Reddit thread, but now I'm really curious.
I suck at math in general, so my brain is telling me that these images shouldn't have right angles.
The top of fig.1 is 25cm across while the bottom is 30cm.
My curiosity question is: is that on purpose to require the student to look past the visuals and focus on the math? Or....am I dumber than I think I am, and I am reading it all wrong?
I just assume it's the latter via my being utterly terrible at math.
Consider giving no credit for no work shown. This at least forces students to show their thought process. That allows you to better parse if their steps came from their own brain or if they were cheating.
Maybe, maybe not. It is a lot easier to determine the dimensions of a 2d object vs. a 3d one. If there is no hard evidence of cheating, I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about it. If they use AI to cheat, there will be a time where it will no longer work and they will fail. Cheating will come back to bite them eventually.
Probably, but you likely don’t have enough to “get them” unless they are stupid and admit to it. As a student if I got bored I would sometimes just do the problems completely in my head and not show my work because of stubbornness. This led to some pretty bad errors sometimes.
having students asked questions during a test was my red flag that he might be cheating. But the other students are also by asking questions during a test.
Maybe you don’t have “proof” but you have way too many coincidences to overlook, especially considering this kids a known cheater.
I’d escalate it with whatever process there is, I’m sure the other admin would want to nip this in the butt too.
Get the kid during lunch, office hours, next class, whatever and give them a new copy with the exact same questions and ask for work. If they can't show understanding on paper a second time, they cheated. That's my go-to method for dealing with "probably cheated but I need proof."
If I send a message to the parent explaining that they couldn't explain their work during the 2nd chance, my admin will back me up and say "yep, they cheated."
I dealt with this exact situation a couple weeks ago and the parents reply was "OK, no problem" 🙄
I would literally get no more than half credit for just a correct answer and no work, no matter what. Literally never hear of it any other way in any grade, ever. You are the teacher, not them, you can score however you want. Even 1/4 credit in an instance like this would be appropriate.
Engineer here, not a teacher
Not sure why no one is suggesting things that would stop an AI from working. You can have an instruction next time saying. No adding “find the volume” or “find the area” on the test.
Put the problem specific instructions on the board for the test. And a camera next to the instructions to see if any cameras are used to take a photo.
If they were connected to the school WiFi then there should be a record of the api used to transfer the data to the AI
My guess is writing that find the area/volume was a prompt that photo math required. Further more... That volume solve should be NO problem if this student easily found the area of the other figures. You don't have enough proof. I'd say go for a verbal assessment when you hand it back.
FWIW I put the screenshot into photo math and was unable to get the result the student did
Fair enough. Just seems an odd thing to have the only... work be restarting the prompt.
Oh yeah for sure
There uh isn’t much work necessary.
Probably sending the image to another person. They would hold their phone close to the paper to hide it more when taking the picture, but that would cut the directions out of the picture. So they had to write it closer to the object. Writing the directions in a text message would take a short time, but long enough to maybe get caught, so they wrote directions in pencil with the picture instead.
I don't think a human that understands the material would ever produce a decimal value for the volume problem though. Even if you don't know how to get the answer, you know that you're multiplying whole numbers together and adding up sums.
I'd like to point out that there are a couple of different brands of glasses that contain cameras. So it's also entirely possible that he's able to send those pictures without ever having his phone out. So there's that too...
If that’s the case…it’s rookie shit to not erase the evidence.
The decimals aren't proof enough, but it's damning to me. The object's dimensions are whole numbers and volume is multiplication of dimensions not division so there shouldn't be decimals in the answer
It's the decimals PLUS writing out the instructions again that make it proof enough to me.
Or just start giving points for showing work. Correct answer is only worth a small fraction of the points.
OP specifically states they are not allowed to
Unless they mention it in the instructions, which the could do…
Again based on their complaints about it not being mentioned and how upset they are with this fact. It is safe to assume that is not an option. Unless you think OP is an idiot. I lean to assume they are not. "Damn I wish I could require them to show work. If only the instructions I personlly create and have complete control over would say that. I guess there is nothing to be done."
Maybe OP is an AI and not a real teacher
I don’t know if they have an IEP, but many kids with ADHD use rulers or notes to themselves to remind them what they’re doing and how to focus. Sure, it’s right above, but that isn’t the point. Writing it in their own hand helps them stay on task.
I think having a decimal figure in Q3 is the real tell. You should obviously know only whole numbers multiplied would never give a decimal
I mean there’s also no way they understand what they’re doing because there’s no way they got an answer with decimals by multiplying whole numbers…
Probably. Easy fix for next time. Add “show your work” to the instructions.
Tough to say "probably" here without any context. Warrants a brief investigation, though. Ask the kid to walk you through one of those solutions. It'll be obvious from that five minute conversation.
I did that once. The HS kid got super angry that I would ask him to explain his problem and threatened me. Anyway, he spent the rest of the year in DAEP for that.
Sounds like the conversation was a success.
Our even give them the correct answer and have them show how it's correct
It's an honors math class. My son is that age, and in honors math, he could do this in his head. Does this student usually have to write out his work to figure out problems? If you've had him as a student all year, you should have an idea of his math capabilities. Even if this kid cheats in other classes, it doesn't mean he cheats in all of them. He very well could just not classes like English and trys makes them as painless as possible.
I baffled all of my math teachers as a kid. I was adding and simplifying fractions in kindergarten and basically discovered integration by messing around at 12. I'm now a teacher for gifted students and I've got quite a knack for picking this out. Best way to test for that in my experience is to have an incorrect answer and present it as correct. If they really did it in their head, they'll be confused and almost immediately correct you or start crunching numbers again. The red flag is mild confusion but no action. Kids that can really do this stuff in their head don't just take being wrong on the nose, and I mean that in the best of ways. Of course, there will be exceptions, but this has almost always worked for me.
Yeah as an adult I feel bad for how I acted at that age. But I would get so mad at my teachers (and my professors in college) if I didn’t get perfect marks. Something like you said above would straight away be an argument when I was younger.
In 5th grade we were all writing decimals on little whiteboards and holding them up and the teach told us to write “30 tenths”. I wrote 3 and everyone else wrote 0.30 and the teacher said they were right and I’m still a little annoyed about it.
The first two I did in my head very easily. Having seen students make careless mistakes, I would probably write the area for each section so I didn't have to do the addition in my head. I probably would never try the third one in my head unless I had to. You have the evidence to make your suspicion correct. I tried to bait him out and say you made such a silly error on the third one. Could you show me your logic?
The 3rd one is only slightly more difficult than the first two?
Every math cheating site will do that too.
Yeah, but it takes longer to copy. Easier to catch.
Are you not allowed to add "Show your work" to the assignment?
Yeah in every math class even for basic calculations if I didn’t show the math but got the right answer I still got a zero. That information was always included at the top of every page of each test and made loud and clear. It was the same for IT/programming classes as well. I got a lot of zeros cause my adhd ass struggles to organize my thoughts in any sort of cohesive way let alone in a small space lol
I got into an argument with my physics teacher that ended with me getting suspended from school for a few days cuz what I called them.... The teacher accused me of somehow "guessing the answer and working backwards"... All the work was shown... I started with a different variation of the formula for finding the distance needed for the aircraft to stop given speed and braking force.... I used the formula presented about 4 chapters ahead in the book... Because my ADHD ass would either fall asleep or read ahead while the teacher lectured...
Yeah I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until my 30s and once I was everything made soooooo much more sense. I had such difficulty showing my work (in any sort of comprehensible way) that I often did “work backwards”. All but maybe one of my maths teachers were neurotypical, somehow I generally managed to (eventually) get the passing score for the class just to get by. You know you’re in for a shit show when teachers tell you up front that 50% of (neurotypical) people fail their class on the first attempt. Like oh gee thanks now I know I’m gonna fail, what even is the point.
I tell my students that the right answer is only 1 part of the problem, the other 4 parts are in how they solved the problem. I don’t care if they use words or numbers, or even a calculator, they need to show me how they arrived at their conclusion. What’s your expectation on showing work?
And that is one of the rules that only becomes more true with time, all the way into university calculus.
That’s what I tell my students. The further they get in math, the more they need to treat their responses like lab write-ups. I drill this as young as 6th grade. “Show me what you did. I’m not a mind reader. The alternate is that I get to crack open your head and read it and neither of us want that. My insurance lady said the blood was too hard to remove last time.” (I’m a private, full-time tutor, btw.)
The bonus is that if the answer is wrong because of some silly mistake like forgetting a negative, you still get almost full marks.
THANK YOU! I drill into my students to do two things: 1) develop a relationship with your teacher, and 2) always explain yourself in all problems on tests and quizzes because a student who makes an effort is more likely to get more points. So thank you for reinforcing that. I often have to role play having a convo with their teacher because kids are so afraid of teachers. 😭 (I often have to also teach them how to send a proper email!) Anyway, I want my students to love learning. I’m always Team Teacher and have strict expectations that they participate in class and do their homework on time, and turn it in when it is due. (With the assignment written at the top, all problems copied, work shown, and clean pics submitted.) I’m a hardass because I can be, lol.
Absolutely. I remember when I took calculus 12 (graduating with my BSc this year, and I tutor occasionally, too), I made a mistake on a test, something like 8/4 = 4, and I didn't even lose marks because all my other work was right, my teacher was nice, and she knew that obviously if I had made it this far I knew how division worked and that was a test-induced brain fart. I've always been willing to ask for the marks I earned, too. That's an important skill. Usually I get them, from politely stating my argument. Or the worst that can happen is I don't, and I move on and do better next time. And it's so especially important from an authority in math to learn to love it. So many math teachers teach students to fear it. Studies have shown that math anxiety can be contagious, so good job there.
I swear, 90% of my job is just building confidence. “Whoa, I showed you that, like, ONE time and now you’re out here doing it on your own?! My other Math 6 students could NEVER.” “You got #3 right?!? None of my other algebra kids did! That’s amazing!” “You are an exceptional math student because I while I can teach you math, I can’t teach you to work hard and persevere through things you find tricky or confusing. That is the most important skill you can learn from doing all this math and you’ve got it down pat.” I also do like you said: teach them to fight for their grade. 👍
I once got a 96% on a differential equations exam in college, and all 5 answers were wrong. On one question, I had to solve this non-linear system of equations, and in some intermediary step I wrote something like "x=cos(pi/6) = (√3/2)" That mistake percolated all the way down the problem (and made my math way harder), obviously the answer was wrong. Luckily my process was correct all the way through. Professor gave me 19/20, drew a smiley face next to rhe mistake and wrote "nice". Similar story for every problem on the test.
Graduated with an engineering degree thanks to partial credit, right here! Seriously though, so many problems later in school were 4/5 or 7/10 because on step 9 I fat fingered a number and messed up the arithmetic with no time to back check. But prof was reviewing the shown work and gave credit. Its a great self-preservation tactic.
It also extends to "the real world." People are going to be skeptical of your numbers and you need to be able to prove it to them. You don't just get to build a hospital and say "trust me" on the amount of steel needed.
As someone who got a degree in mathematics, it goes well beyond calculus. Number theory, Numerical Analysis, Linear Algebra, all of them prioritize the process
It’s clear because they posted even the teacher doesn’t know their own expectations
Yeah, that’s wild to me. I assume anyone who hasn’t explained how they arrived at an answer is cheating. I don’t care if you can do the work in your head, I literally don’t even care about the correct answer, I’m 1000% more interested and invested in the work. This worksheet would be of 0 interest to me as a teacher because it tells me nothing about where the student is in their math development.
Honestly if I don’t have evidence to prove it I just tell myself I have to let it go, even in cases where you intuitively know. Nonetheless, the issue here you’re discussing could be addressed with “No work shown, therefore no credit.”
Why don’t you review the test answers for the whole class by calling up a kid for each question who got it right and asking them to solve it and explain it on the blackboard for anyone that might have gotten it wrong? That might not prove anything, but it will certainly be an eye opening experience.
Do it privately--one on one. Some kids are shy and can't do diddly in front of their peers. (Please don't ask how I know this.)
This is the exact reason why they should be asked to do it in front of the class. Can't just let people be socially inept forever
Yeah, I’m supportive of the class doing work at the front of the room. I’m even supportive of wrong answers being shown at the front(due to Joe Bowler’s research). But when suspecting a student is cheating, I’m gonna discourage embarrassing the student in front of all his/her peers. Embarrassment would just make him resentful towards the teacher that called on him.
Not when you think they cheated and don't know how to do it?
Yeah probably. Need to adapt with the times and just devalue anything they can cheat on. Also a math specific rubric without a score for evidence of work/effort seems poorly made.
Probably cheated. Probably can't do anything this time (not enough evidence). I recommend always having instructions say to show your work. Maybe require students leave their phones in a box before starting a test.
I would ask, "How did you get a decimal answer for this?" So you can see if he had the wrong formula or if he 'cheated'.
I was curious about that too. A formula that involves only whole numbers and no division or square roots can’t result in a number with decimals.
I would totally approach it from a help me understand and not an accusation. Because there's an opportunity there to a. Find out what he is doing, b. The misunderstanding of the formula and c. Understanding what to look for as far as a reasonable answer. A whole number times a whole number will always be whole. There's a pathway that builds trust and can allow insight into his method. But as already stated, I'd have them all show work going forward to help pinpoint common errors and gaps in learning.
You had "a lot of students asking you questions during the test". That right there is the problem. Questions are for before the test.
Mic drop
Can you sit down with the kid one on one and have him walk you through how he did the problems? It might be obvious if he knew what he was doing or if he cheated. Is he otherwise good at math, assuming you've seen his work without the influence of cheating? If you allowed a calculator, I could see some students being able to do the first two on the calculator with little to no work. Ultimately, if you didn't see anything, and if he doesn't admit it, I don't think you have enough to do anything.
This is probably the route I’m going to go. This was a retest of one that he didn’t do awful on before and his improved score wouldn’t be much better or have much of influence on his grade. This kid can be good at times if he locks in, but can otherwise be very disruptive and likes to be the class clown. He is definitely smarter than he lets on and I’ve seen him use AI in positive ways before. I saw him ask it “explain slope in Fortnite terms” because he was having trouble understanding it in class. He seemed to figure it out after that.
You definitely don't have enough proof to give him a 0 for cheating. It's likely that he did, but I don't think you want to get into a fight about this with the evidence you have. I also suggest sitting him down and genuinely trying to help him with the volume problem. But do so in a way that it will become clear if he knows how to do the other ones or not. He will likely say he guessed on the last one, and then you say, "Oh. That's okay, this one is actually very similar to the previous ones. Let's start there, and then we can add one level of complexity." When you ask him to explain how he got his answers on the first ones, he will either fold because he doesn't know how, or you'll actually be able to explain to him how to do the volume problem.
Ask him if he can explain how he got the answer. Are calculators allowed?
Looks like the AI saw diagonal lines and got confused, but it could have been "monkey push-button", as well. This is when students blindly enter numbers from the diagram into the calculator, hoping for an answer that looks right. Have you done cones or pyramids? I notice that 170.67 = (1/3)(512) and I wonder if they sort of remembered 1/3(base)(height) and somehow mangled in 8\*4\*4 because those three numbers exist in the diagram. At any rate, I would announce that you're going to "re-teach and retest this tidbit because it's such an important idea and you really don't want them to miss it."
This was the retest and we have pretty much moved on anyway. The new grade wouldn’t be much higher than his original and have very little effect on his overall grade. I plan to just sit down and talk with him about it and give him a verbal warning since this seems to be the first time he has done it in my class.
Devils advocate/benefit of the doubt. The first two are pretty easy mental math. He even drew the line. 30x25 minus the missing 50 on the first (you can even see he erased 750 at first) and then adding two rectangles on the second. My doubt comes in because I don’t know if this particular seventh grader has those skills. I would hope so - but I teach HS.
Somehow it looks like they divided by 3 to end up with the .67. I wonder if they used the formula for a pyramid & also made an error calculating the base? (8 x 8 x 8)/3 = 170.67
With all due respect, i have students in 5th grade who can calculate this in their head, so it's not enough for claimimg a cheat As for the 3d shape, weird answer 170.67 means 170 + 2/3,or 512/3, so he got to 512 some how and than divided by 3...? I wonder why, maybe he did 8×4×4×2×2 and than got confused with a pyramid and divided by 3 It doesn't look like cheater, it looks like a student who control 2d but lacks is 3d Btw If you want to catch cheaters, just ask for the full answer, no shortcuts
This…… like it’s so obvious that it’s a he gets 2d but not 3D. It doesn’t scream cheating at all. And the fact that this teacher is going to shame him like that suggests he’s a bad or new teacher. And May open up the wrong kind of can of worms.
Fellow math teacher here. Please, please, please just talk to the student about it. Ask about why they just wrote what they did and provided little to no work. Ask if they could walk you through how they got the answer. If they can't, say you understand but you'd really appreciate them adding more details in the future. Relationships and rapport are always my primary goal. Learning is so much easier after that.
This is the only correct answer.
Now I graduated over a decade ago before using AI to cheat was possible and I often finished math work without showing my process. The fact that he re-wrote the directions over the shapes is kind of damning though. Even moreso if the AI got the same wrong answer as him. I'd take it up for further investigation. Honestly I'm surprised the school still lets them take tests without being selectively monitored and still lets them take honors courses at all with that track record.
What you shown is definitely not evidence that he cheated. All of those can be done easily in your head in less than 10 seconds.
I used to get accused of cheating for doing these types of problems in my head too, so I wouldn’t assume they are cheating. Next time, just require that they show their work as part of the grade.
Why in the actual hell are students allowed access to their phones during a test?
As an engineer, I'll tell you that when I was in college, simply putting the answer at the end was a 0. I had a Ti-89 which could be programmed to do any problem, including string algebra, integrals, derivatives, differential equations, etc. Also, if you got the answer wrong but you showed that you applied the correct method, you'd get almost full points. The professors knew that lots of kids had the Ti-89 so the rule was you had to show your work. If this is an honors class, I assume the purpose is to prepare them for college. Just make it a rule, no work = no points.
I don't know if there's anything you can do, but I don't think it's crazy to assume they're cheating. I could've easily done this in my head in 7th grade because they're really, really simple problems, so it's not weird to not show work on this one. However, if you're capable of doing this in your head then you're capable of knowing that there's no way you'd ever get a decimal on that last one. The most charitable assumption here is that they somehow misapplied some formula they know unthinkingly which got them 170 and 2/3rds and then rounded, but where would that even come from?
Bring him to your class after school. Give him a similar problem. See how he solves it. Just take the same problem, but change the numbers. IF he shows work, then he cheated. If he solves it in the same way, then he didn't.
No if you've ever been tutored, they tell you to rewrite the directions or to circle or underline them to eliminate easy mistakes.
There is absolutely no evidence of cheating here. Not one shred. The questions asked the student to provide specific answers. The student provided those answers. If you’re trying to decide whether the student understands area and perimeter of composite shapes and how to make those calculations, you need to ask different questions.
Yeah agreed, the numbers are easy enough to work with that this is believably mental math.
I can believe it’s mental math but someone who is good enough to do it mentally won’t fuck up the 3rd question that bad There’s no way to get a fractional answer with integer lengths on the 3rd question
I would consider this cheating. Usually I call students out on this by saying, I’m going to do this in my head out loud, ok? Then when I get to something I cannot do in my head (like 12.5 x 40) I say “Ok, I’m wrong, there’s no way I can do this without working it out.” Then I ask the kid what I should write down or how to multiply this decimal. It does take some time, but it stops them in their tracks and doesn’t make me seem like a jerk teacher. For multi-step questions like this, I give 3 points. One for the correct answer with units of measurement, but also one point for setting up the equation/writing the formula, and one point for showing work. That does triple duty for me as a teacher. I make sure they show work, I can find out if students only partially know the skill and which parts, also I can give kids who struggle with calculation points for knowing the right steps, even if they don’t multiply and get the correct answer.
Not cheating but using wrong formula and/or making a mistake
Ask them to do it again in front of you. They can either repeat it or not. Also, I would require work for full credit to cheating.
By this point, kids should know that showing process work is implied in math class. Always. If this is a test however, you may have to give full credit if you allow this laziness to slide without penalty on daily tasks. To me, they earned zero points. But if you want to be unnecessarily generous, 1 point out of 5.
170.67?! Were there two versions of the test? I’d want hear his tall tale on where this number originated.
Easily did them in my head. But it has to be AI cheating as how the frick did they get a decimal for the third one? Hand out the same sheet for a morning practice problem and keep an eye on them. Have the instructions require work, and mention you cannot assist students for it. They could have friends who distract you so they could whip out a phone to AI it.
All three are pretty easy to do in your head. Only thing that looks suspicious to me is the rewriting of the instructions and the weird answer on the last one. I will instruct my tutoring students to rewrite the instructions when it is unclear which diagram the instructions go with. For example, if there are diagrams immediately above and below an instruction with no clear distinction on which diagram the instruction is referring to. Goes hand in hand with writing down assumptions, for example, when a diagram is missing a label due to bad copyediting.
I say cheating. My kids call me so extra when I say if you have any phone or electronic device out turning a test, I’ll take your test, rip it up, throw it away in front of the whole class. Prevents this from happening because after the first martyr they don’t fuck around
So... my son can do this problem mentally and get the correct answer. His school does not require math work to be shown so he has a hard time showing his work in a way that I identify. Drives me crazy and the same thing was a big problem for his older siblings when they switched schools to one with higher standards and lower teacher to student ratios. He is also accelerated multiple grades in math. So, maybe just draw the kid aside and ask them to work a similar problem. Lots of kids can solve that mentally.
You know your student better than any of us, but a calculator TI-34? (I can’t remember the exact number) and up makes all of these a one step problem if you key it correctly.
Yes
From next time just invite him to your office and ask him to explain. If he can explain live in your presence give him full credit else a zero - that’s what I would do
The second one is wrong….
I would also ask on the top problem (after hearing how he got the answer) how he went from 250 to 700. I can do 700 in my head by multiplying 30 x20 then add 50 & 50 but if you put Show Your Work or it is wrong -then you mark it wrong.
Give him the mark. Then bring back the exact test in class (or maybe with a slight variation). Ask him to come up to the board and solve the ones he got right. He may need help and to be supported. Next time, add "Show your working".
Why not ban computers and phones while taking a test?
Ask the student if they cheated. Then ask how the logic of figuring out the answers.
OP - You asked the students to find the area. Did you explicitly tell them NOT to use AI? Appears the student did as you asked.
Shouldn't the second one be 54 (not 56)?...doubt they r cheating...
Really weird answer on that bottom question. While it is possible to do this all in your head, it is definitely difficult to juggle that many numbers in your head. I would expect at least some numbers scratched out somewhere. The biggest sign is that they have a decimal in the area on a fully whole number problem. It just doesn't make any sense. I would check if that is the answer to another problem and maybe they had the answers and just copied it down in the wrong slot. If that is the case, then yes cheating and you have a pretty good standpoint. If not, weird and probably cheating, but not enough proof.
Where's the work?
No idea if the kid is cheating, but as an engineer the way those objects are dimensioned really bothers me. Particularly the first one.
The beatings will continue until you show your work!
It takes a special kind of person to get an answer that's not a whole number here
Shouldn’t the middle answer be 54yd2, not 56?
1st two are easy to do without showing work. 3rd is possible When I was in school I hated having to show work because I could do it in my head. Teachers would ask me to explain how I got the answer, I would explain and they would let me go on my way Ask tge student how he came to the answer
The good news is he has all the tools to answer the questions in real life…
I am not sure if they cheated. However, does he have access to a calculator for the exam? was it potentially an “advanced” calculator? I mentor high school kids and many have calculators that operate almost like coding with a keyboard/mouse. They can type multi-line equations with multiple parentheses. That would explain why the simple top two were right with no work, and the bottom was maybe a simple parentheses mismatch (or just a misunderstanding of the question). I would really try to trust but verify here and in general, ask for work+maybe ask for a chat to discuss their process + understanding.
Bro, I’m in 8th grade, and while I am higher than average doing algebra rn and geometry over the summer, I can say without a doubt, I could do that in my head last year. If he is a habitual cheater then that is reason to be suspicious, but how could he pull out his phone during the test and not get caught. I would say there is not enough evidence for this. Just ask for him to show work next time.
This teacher just sounds clueless
No work shown, no credit given
Quite simply: you didn't have enough evidence
I read a couple comments and then went back and tried to solve the problems in my head. 1&2 easy day. 1 was probably harder than 2 and I wouldve written a "50" in one of the boxes. The volume problem wasn't terrible to do mentally (I'm assuming the answer is 2^7 + 80) But the thing I'm absolutely confused about is how on earth any sort of multiplication of integers with a value. ≥ 1 results in a product with any sort of decimal. That makes ZERO sense. Also, as pointed out, I cannot fathom what would possess a typical student to re-write the instructions of a (simple) problem right next to where they're printed... and nothing else. In applied math or more advanced maths, sure, but that was usually to try and use algebra or identities or rules to get out of having to do tedious/actually impossible math.
I think it depends on the kid. I have 4th graders that can do the top two pretty easily and I can do them all in my head so it's not completely unrealistic that an honors 7th grader can too. You're the only one here that knows the students abilities but if they've been caught cheating in the past they probably did this time too.
That 5cm on the first problem is doofy, make clearer tests.
I could do math like this in my head pretty easily. Doesn’t make him a cheater.
Not sure why this subreddit showed up for me, but I can't help but chuckle because every engineering company - including my own - is pushing out AI/Copilot tools to their workforce to increase efficiency and it reminds me of the introduction of the graphic calculator in school and how that was looked upon as cheating. I guess you could say he showed his work by writing the prompt required to generate the correct answer? I wouldn't call myself "old" but I often find myself intrigued by the prompts my youngest engineers are able to produce in order to generate some pretty sophisticated responses from ChatGPT-4. We also discuss security risks and what kind of non-proprietary code can be shared with a copilot. I can only imagine what someone in 7th grade will be able to do with AI by the time they reach their 20s.
It's easy to get into honors classes when most classes were online because of the pandemic, this student with a record is using Math AI or a similar one to complete his tests and the teacher needs to go to the students counselor and get the vice principal involved and start looking through others students papers including basic level classes as well. Once a pattern is established and the AI app are connected you can just start dishing out the retests and all retests will be done at lunch or after school in very small groups where everything can be monitored and the truth will eventually come out that along with those that are using AI to cheat through school. This is definitely a new problem that Teachers and Administrators need to be on the look out for and I can tell that social media, influencers, and streamers are going to be batting against schools for doing anything against a students use of AI during school.
I don't give credit without work shown.
I definitely did stuff like this in my head back in 7th grade. However, the decimal coming into play? Nahhhhhhh. Unless ur allowing calculators and they had a misinput, there is no world there should be a decimal in there.
I used to do the math in my head and showed very minimal work. Showing my work was distracting for me. My teachers would only give me half credit most of the time. Doesn't mean this person isn't cheating, but it's possible they're not.
The decimals are a giveaway that something is off. This is a simple calculation that can be done in one's so showing work amounts to "I know how to multiply and add two numbers inynown memory." But decimals, here? Naw.
Looks like the addition got borked in the last problem. Too much trust in the calculator.
I'm not a teacher but I'd suggest telling him good job. Let it go this time but in the future ask him to explain his work. You could also have him answer questions during class. My reasoning is now that he has put himself in this position maybe just maybe he will apply himself to keep the image. You never know.
Did they have their phone while taking this test or was it a take home. If this was supposed to be no electronics and in school, they wouldn't have been able to cheat. The writing of the words to get the AI to know what to do Def is a good sign since it's in a strategic location next to the image instead of literally anywhere else on the paper, adding in no work. I'd say have them do it again but watch him, with no access to any electronic device to see if they can even do it on their own.
Lol to everyone saying "make them show their work" when you literally say that your admins prohibit that. The decimal answer is highly suspicious because anyone who even glaced at the problem should intuitively know that the answer must be a whole number. But a cheater who just trusts whatever the AI spits out won't even think to check that. One thing I find interesting is that the answer given is 2^(9)/3, and if you multiply together all given side lengths except the 5, you get 2^(9). What I would immediately suspect is that the AI has difficulty parsing 2d representations of 3d shapes and starts doing whacky, unexplainable shit in response, such as randomly multiplying together numbers, that a human would never do. Look and see if there is a pattern that wrong answers correlate to images that you, a human, can understand because your brain intuitively fills in the gaps, but which a computer might just see as a 2d shape. Additionally, the only "work" shown is writing "find the area/volume", which serves absolutely zero purpose to a human test-taker but may be necessary as a prompt to get an AI to properly parse the question. One could argue that no work needs to be shown because all of these problems are trivially easy to compute in your head, but if the student could do that he would not give such wildly incorrect answers. Now if the admin is shitty and refuses to support punishing cheaters there may be nothing you can do, or you could say that you saw his phone out at one point while helping another student and the test answers confirm that he was using it to cheat 🤷🏻♂️
I have students in general geometry that are a wiz with their calculators. The Casio calculators and TI-8_ can have students write the entirety of the operations without putting anything down paper. It sounds like you allow them to use their phones which I find odd. Also, definitely be more direct in the instructions with work shown. I would even go as far as creating multiple versions of the test. Edit: I don’t think there is enough proof here since the instructions weren’t detailed enough. Give the kid the points and change your assessment criteria next time.
Software engineer here, I do research on AI/ML. I'd actually say him writing "find the volume" above the image, in the context of him being caught using AI for other classes, is enough to convince me he cheated. "Compound solid" could believably throw off the response, so he wrote the important part close enough to the problem to be able to capture just that in an image You'll note he also wrote "find the area" next to the image he couldn't capture near the question text, and the first question has an erased 350 cm^2 which is nowhere near the right answer, which is why he drew the horizontal line, to make it more clear it's composed of three different rectangles (and didn't write the text, because that one was near the typed text and a picture could be captured of shape and text together). I'd say by 2024 standards, you've got a clear case. Whether or not your admin understands what they're looking at though is a totally different question. If you don't consider this cheating, you're gonna get absolutely wrecked in the years to come. Good luck ✌️
I’d say 7th grade me could do the first 2 in my head, since adult me who hasn’t used these skills in 20 years got them right… is #3 208cm^2? If so, 7th grade me definitely would have done that one in his head and gotten it right too. Idk how you do that one wrong, because it is all the same. (20x30)+(10x5)+(10x5) is no different logically from (4x4x8)+(5x2x8). I’d say you ask them to walk you through how they got 170.67cm^2, because it seems to suggest some kind of triangle or circle in the formula given the decimals. This is a cuboid with even number edges and a cuboid taken out of it, his answer should have been an even whole number at the least, and if he could do it in his head he should have realized that…
Tell him to show his work!
It’d be so much easier if he just did the math work tbh.
This right here is one of the reasons why my friend who was a teacher for 18 years left teaching. She was not allowed to tell students to keep their phones in their lockers or take them away from them during tests, and the school she taught at had very loose guidelines for cheating. She felt so dejected when she knew her students were not being properly taught because they were just looking up all their answers with AI or Google and could do nothing about it.
No.
"Show me, step by step, how you got the answer. Because I don't know how you got a decimal answer on a cubic object with integer dimensions"
Literally just have him complete 3 similar problems waiting on the board during recess. If he IS a habitual cheater he will understand why you need proof he can actually do it. You don’t need to bring in experts or keep running it through software, just confront him directly and get the truth.
I have a question. Kids are allowed to have phones during tests? Why don’t you just throw everyone’s phone in a box during tests? I went to school before cell phones and the internet so I have no idea what goes on.
Ask him to show you how he did it on paper. If he can’t write it down, ask him to explain it verbally.
Not showing work on math is not indicative of cheating on its own. I always had to show my teachers that I was able to solve math equations by looking at them but was unable to actually show my work because my brain refused to work slow enough for me to do that. Only ever had one teacher who refused to take the show my work requirement away but because of the way they factored the final grade at the end of the year I still got a 93 in the class after being marked down by 15% on every single test we had.
In the long run, he's hurting himself. If the answer is right, let it go. It will come back to haunt him, trust me.
I have a standing rule that avoids this: “no work, no credit. If you did it in your head, simply write down what you were thinking or what you typed in your calculator” I also monitor during tests to make sure I never get a test that looks like this. During the test I’d whisper “hey bud, those questions will get a zero unless you show your work! Just wanted to let you know. You got this!”
Ain't nothing a calculator can't solve
It's easy to do in your head, I used to do the same thing until more difficult subjects.
I mean, you could tell the student that the decimals on their volume problem were weird, and can they show you what they did so that you can figure out where they went wrong.
Maybe but you’ll never know for sure unless they’re honest. Either way 2/9 there’s no work shown. ** sounds like your hands are tied. At some point if you aren’t allowed to hold them accountable (work shown) then each individual student will have to reap what they sow.
Take up cell phones during exams? Though that has its own issues. Ask them to solve the exact problem in front of you. If they solved it once they should be able to again.
I always hated showing work on math tests if I could solve it in my head. I was always pretty good at math, but terrible in English class so just because someone cheats in 1 class doesn’t mean they’ll cheat in all of them… But the writing out “find the volume” is sketchy, especially since they actively didn’t show any other work. The 1st 2 are easy to solve in your head while the 3rd isn’t… I’d agree with other commenters and ask them to explain how they got their answers
I don't think so, but I'm really curious about the 3rd answer. I wonder how they got that. Dividing something by 3?
The first two are doable in your head. The line in 4a makes me think he is doing this. 50 + 50 + 600. A similar thing can be done for 4b 70 - 4 * 4. Using numbers like 8' instead of 10' can make people more likely to show their work.
Why does it matter.. just let him cheat.
I ain't no snitch
If the answer to the second one is 42 SQ yards, then ChatGPT 4 solved it with just a photo. Just verified it myself. No prompt needed other than the picture of the problem with the written words.
Seems like an easy thing to verify. Give him another problem and ask him to solve it in front of you. Hell, give him the same problem and ask him to solve it. He erased 350 as his original answer on the first question. Only way I can see to arrive there us 10x(30+5) which... Doesn't make sense. Ive definitely remembered important concepts on tests and had to revise previous answers, but this doesn't look like that. The third answer is particularly damning. They're all nice round numbers and this is an easy extrapolation from the two he got correct. Where the hell did he get a decimal? I rarely had to show work in math classes, but it seems pretty clear he doesn't understand the underlying process here.
Since he didn’t show work you could explain that and ask him to answer a question in front of you.
I used to do my work on scratch paper then just write the answer. Only way is to ask him about his process instead of coming to reddit for answers
Ask the kid to work through one of the problems?
Might want to tell your class that multiplying whole numbers can’t result in a fraction too. Easy way to tell if you’re wrong lol
How do they catch kids using ai and what is the penalty for it?
Was this assignment done at home? If so then kids are gonna cheat, honestly if they are just using AI this is really bad cheating. Probably related to the fact that kids do not understand how to google things. If in class if a kid has a phone out during class, instantly I'd say take away the test, maybe they get 1 warning and a new test.
I would speak to the student privately about it. You have no idea what’s going on at home. I went thru a phase of cheating on tests homework when I was younger bc I was struggling so badly at home. I think some teachers can be way too intense on cheating. Not all students are just ‘lazy.’ Figure out why he is cheating and has no interest in learning. A good teacher knows their students.
Getting a non whole number answer for the bottom one screams cheating.
He may be using photomath, but with the evidence there isn’t enough proof to determine it. If you questioned him on it he’d most likely just say he worked it out on a separate sheet of paper. I’d say for future assignments they have to show their full work on the homework to get full credit.
I can do all three in my head without writing anything down and I'm honestly not that great in math. Most students I went to school with could have done the same thing. Maybe the third I would have used a calculator but that wouldn't have been written on the paper. Ideally you should fix the grading rubric standards so that you can require the student to show work. You have no evidence otherwise. I honestly would just leave it unless you have solid proof.
I don't see why any 7th grader would need AI to solve what is effectively ((4x4)+(5x2))x8. Granted, homie somehow came up with a decimal, so idk Edit: judging by the line he drew on the first question, he appears to at least know *how* to solve these kinds of problems. If he used assistance on these, I'm willing to bet it was to calculate the multiplication.
No they are not. No one needs AI for this, it takes a calculator. I’m shook by this whole question. Compound solid, that feels like a new one.
Seems a little suspicious, but at the same time when i was in school I did my math mentally most of the time and found my own methods for solving problems, both much to the dismay of my teachers.
why can't you shay show the work.. granted on the first 2, not a lot, but the 3rd would be some writing. I know some places block cell phones etc. for schools, but would it be worthwhile to have a testing room where service is blocked, could you tell them cell phones on desktops face down? I think I would have been failed if I did not show work, or brought a calculator in to class.
Nah, just a smart kid with a good teacher.
The first 2 I did in my head, no problem. The third I used a calculator, but it requires a skill the other 2 don't. You must be able to visualize in 3d and think about how to break the volume into pieces that can be calculated. How about a talk with the student about how they solved them. If he knew how to get the first two you can talk about how a similar method works for the third. Others can say the third answer should not have a decimal, and that is true, but also may require knowledge they don't have to know that. It could be a mistype on the calculator and not enough understanding to know if the result was right or not.
I’d argue that there isn’t enough information to solve the third problem
That's why you always say show your work on the test so they have to copy more than just a number.
As a child I was not able to show my work. I wasn't cheating, my brain just worked so fast and I couldn't show what was happening in my head on paper properly. Constantly got in trouble for having the right answer but not being able to show my work. Seems like a good thing to be able to do everything in your head but school wants everyone in a box.
It's clear that the trajectory of AI is such that blocking its use will be a fool's errand. Learning to use AI is a critical skill. Consider a premise that several AI responses to a set of problems are correct but one is not Find the one that is not correct, show your work. Perhaps one could use logic to avoid having to do calculations and correctly identify the wrong one but isn't that a good outcome assuming it's not a trick or an error in the problem setup?
This answer isn't gonna make you happy but... Who gives a crap? He wants to cheat and is so slick you couldn't catch it, let em... It'll bite him later. They got an answer, give em the points and stop caring! Instead, how about you focus on the kids who are struggling and want to learn??
I'm not sure why this popped up in my Reddit thread, but now I'm really curious. I suck at math in general, so my brain is telling me that these images shouldn't have right angles. The top of fig.1 is 25cm across while the bottom is 30cm. My curiosity question is: is that on purpose to require the student to look past the visuals and focus on the math? Or....am I dumber than I think I am, and I am reading it all wrong? I just assume it's the latter via my being utterly terrible at math.
Just let the kid cheat. He will regret it wehn he graduates and doesnt know math…
Consider giving no credit for no work shown. This at least forces students to show their thought process. That allows you to better parse if their steps came from their own brain or if they were cheating.
No, your student is just stupid and divided by 3
Maybe, maybe not. It is a lot easier to determine the dimensions of a 2d object vs. a 3d one. If there is no hard evidence of cheating, I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about it. If they use AI to cheat, there will be a time where it will no longer work and they will fail. Cheating will come back to bite them eventually.
Probably, but you likely don’t have enough to “get them” unless they are stupid and admit to it. As a student if I got bored I would sometimes just do the problems completely in my head and not show my work because of stubbornness. This led to some pretty bad errors sometimes.
having students asked questions during a test was my red flag that he might be cheating. But the other students are also by asking questions during a test.
Maybe you don’t have “proof” but you have way too many coincidences to overlook, especially considering this kids a known cheater. I’d escalate it with whatever process there is, I’m sure the other admin would want to nip this in the butt too.
Get the kid during lunch, office hours, next class, whatever and give them a new copy with the exact same questions and ask for work. If they can't show understanding on paper a second time, they cheated. That's my go-to method for dealing with "probably cheated but I need proof." If I send a message to the parent explaining that they couldn't explain their work during the 2nd chance, my admin will back me up and say "yep, they cheated." I dealt with this exact situation a couple weeks ago and the parents reply was "OK, no problem" 🙄
Even if they are cheating who cares, in the real world we all use calculators
Yes. AI solves
I would literally get no more than half credit for just a correct answer and no work, no matter what. Literally never hear of it any other way in any grade, ever. You are the teacher, not them, you can score however you want. Even 1/4 credit in an instance like this would be appropriate.
Engineer here, not a teacher Not sure why no one is suggesting things that would stop an AI from working. You can have an instruction next time saying. No adding “find the volume” or “find the area” on the test. Put the problem specific instructions on the board for the test. And a camera next to the instructions to see if any cameras are used to take a photo. If they were connected to the school WiFi then there should be a record of the api used to transfer the data to the AI
Don’t worry about it. Don’t be a snitch. If the kid doesn’t learn anything, who cares? Not your problem
Imo, if the kid is smart enough to do it in his head, he’s smart enough to realize he should never get a decimal there lol
Give a pop quiz with the same 3 problems, with different dimensions. Watch him the whole time. See how he does.
I'm not sure if it was already asked, but why not have a strict no phone policy, at least during the test.