Re:To show or not to show work
by HarryHirsch on Tuesday October 01, 2019 @12:45PM
(#21127548)
Yes, heuristics is important and underrated in math education, especially in the US, where they place excessive faith in rote learning.
Proofs are sometimes a little unsatisfactory, the theorem is proved satisfactorily, but all the traces how you got to the proof are covered.
if you're asking a proof question, it will be something of the form "prove that there are as many solutions as the degree for all polynomials" rather than a specific polynomial.
if you skip writing down each step in the proof, aka your work, you haven't completed the proof.
For instance, for a polynomial I might show that my answer solves the equation, and that I have as many solutions as the degree.
Maybe that goes for "show your work" too? As I didn't study in the US, I don't know what a teacher would expect when saying that particular phrase.