Its time for the rebellion......

Have you ever gotten involved in a situation where your teacher proposed one answer for a math problem while you proposed another, and started a relentless argument over which answer is correct? I had a few of that during my life time and I had never won any of them, mostly because I was actually wrong with my answer. In rare occasions, my teacher would convince me his/her answer was right even though that was not the case. When others students were involved in this sort of situation, I have seen them give up and go with the flow, which is truly saddening in an academic institution. I believe that one of the most important reasons for people to attend school is to question authoritative facts. This is important because it keeps people thinking about what they are learning and prevents them from falling into the trap of blindly memorizing facts to get good grades. I am one of those people who believes that higher education and society's work forces will benefit more from having people who can think critically and creatively.

Regarding the scenario that I just described, I nearly fell into the trap this past week in my tutorial class for the computer science course that I am currently taking. The problem that we were doing was simple. This is the link to the problem:

http://www.cdf.toronto.edu/~heap/165/W13/Tutorials/T1/t1.pdf

The question that I will talk about is 2d, but you have to read question 1d to do 2d (I highly recommend you to read it, because you won't know what I am talking about unless you fully understand what was going on in the problem). No one had trouble drawing the venn diagram for the "True" scenario. However, the trouble came when we had to fill the venn diagram based on the "False" scenario. Most commonly, students falsified the statement into "None of the three python programs fails all three tests". This is a correct "False" statement, and most students saw that if all three python programs passed all three tests then it would easily satisfy this statement.

When it was time to take up this question during that tutorial class, there were several different answers proposed by the students (this was the only question in the entire tutorial where different answers were proposed). Some students proposed to X mark Q, O mark for the intersection, and ? mark for everything else, which is the answer you would get if you solely consider the scenario that all three python programs passes all tests. Then where did the other answers come from? The other proposed solution, where everything on the venn diagram is ? mark, came up because a scenario where all three python tests only partially pass the three tests can also satisfy the "False" statement. Think about it. As long as you don't have a program that fails all three tests, then what's stopping you from only passing only one or two tests? If we solely consider this scenario, then on the venn diagram Q would have an O mark, intersection would be X marked, and everything else is ? marked. However if we consider this scenario and the scenario where all three python programs pass all the tests together, then both Q and the intersection can either be X marked or O marked, which would lead to the conclusion that they should both be ? marked. This actually turned out to be the correct answer, but it was only after a few days that the correct answer was public announced.

I am proud to say now, that I was one of the people who considered both scenarios, but during that tutorial, because the teaching assistant of the tutorial advocated the "all three pass all three" answer, I started having doubts about my own answer. The partner who I worked on the problem with also got the same answer as the TA, which didn't help my case. My TA and I then started an argument of which answer was correct, but in the end I succumbed. You can be asking "how did you lose your argument even though your answer was right?" Well, the course of the argument had less to do with logically arguing our cases but had more to do with which of our "aura" was stronger. The TA, being the TA, looked superior to me in terms of subject expertise. Everything the TA said to me forced me to re-evaluate my argument because there was always the possibility that I missed something in crucial in solving the problem. But the opposite is not true, because being a student, it was likely impossible that I knew something that the TA did not.

Don't get me wrong though, I am not saying that I have a bad TA. Everybody can make mistakes, and my TA just happened to make one during that tutorial. What I am saying is that when it comes to education, there is no such thing as "teacher and student"; status doesn't matter. Although you should respect your teachers for passing down their knowledge to you, you shouldn't stop questioning them for its validity. The next time you encounter a situation similar to mine, don't be afraid. Talk to your teacher, and don't hesitate to point out any flaws in their reasoning. Even if you lose your argument and make yourself look like a dork, the act of courageously questioning the authority and validating what you are learning will make the experience of education totally worth it.