Timeline for "What have you tried?"...
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
24 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 20, 2022 at 18:18 | comment | added | Brian Tung | Ehh, it's not a big deal @Shaun. I'd have made the edit myself if I had noticed (and am somewhat chagrined I didn't). | |
| Mar 20, 2022 at 17:59 | comment | added | amWhy | You don't have to, Shaun, not when it is more disruptive than useful. Feel free to go back a few weeks to "correct others grammar", but your edit is highly questionable, for years after it was posted. | |
| Mar 20, 2022 at 17:56 | comment | added | Shaun Mod | I contend that it is not superficial, @amWhy; I often copy & paste the questions listed above when asked what counts as context in some cases. I'm sick of having to edit in the "you". | |
| Mar 20, 2022 at 17:55 | comment | added | amWhy | @Shaun Please do not make a superficial edit to a post asked four years ago, in order to bump it! You already know such edits, adding three letters, serves no purpose other than in order to bump a post. | |
| Mar 19, 2022 at 23:11 | history | edited | ShaunMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Apr 4, 2018 at 17:32 | comment | added | Simply Beautiful Art | Related: new comment template | |
| Mar 31, 2018 at 0:17 | comment | added | Ethan Bolker | I sometimes suggest the OP work out a simpler analogous problem.or a special case. This is often appropriate for combinatorial questions. | |
| Mar 22, 2018 at 14:49 | comment | added | Narasimham | A possible context guess or short hint could help the OP more than a dry WHYT greeting. | |
| Mar 22, 2018 at 1:22 | comment | added | Paramanand Singh Mod | +1 for the points you have raised. For the few questions I have asked here I have actually not shown my work, but rather added context as given in your points 2,3,4. | |
| Mar 21, 2018 at 21:44 | comment | added | Lord_Farin | In line with this answer, I would suggest to use something along the lines of "How did this question arise? Were you able to make any progress on it?" (Note how it is totally natural to reply to the second question that one did not manage to make any progress despite $x$ time units spent.) | |
| Mar 21, 2018 at 21:21 | comment | added | Brian Tung | @user21820: Of course. I don't have much sympathy (if any) for such questions. I'm convinced that such people exist, but I'm also convinced that they've always existed. What I'm not convinced of (in either direction, yea or nay) is whether what we see is indicative of a general decline in mathematical thinking. Most students still do not know of Math SE. It's still pretty self-selecting. | |
| Mar 21, 2018 at 16:11 | comment | added | user21820 | Oh and when I was doing my undergraduate I personally witnessed many classmates outsource their homework to Yahoo Answers. This simply wasn't possible in the days before the internet. | |
| Mar 21, 2018 at 16:09 | comment | added | user21820 | @BrianTung: I personally don't use "what have you tried". However, I have completely no sympathy for serious cases of super-'entitled' askers like this. As for convincing, I'm convinced because I've been on Math SE for a long time. I don't expect to convince others, but anyone is free to dig up the data and perform a statistical analysis. | |
| Mar 21, 2018 at 15:47 | history | edited | Brian Tung | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Mar 21, 2018 at 15:46 | comment | added | Brian Tung | @user21820: That's plausible, and certainly tempting to believe, but for that very reason I distrust it; it has a bit too much of the "kids these days" feel. It's almost impossible to demonstrate in any really convincing way, I think. Are we even sure that it's rarer, or is it just that we're confronted more day after day by people who lack it? ¶ In any case, we can only deal with the situation in front of us. I think WHYT is designed to elicit that sort of mathematical thinking; the challenge with it is often that it simply doesn't provide enough of a nudge in the right direction. | |
| Mar 21, 2018 at 14:39 | comment | added | user21820 | @hardmath: Have you not yet realized that the rarity of mathematical thinking nowadays is precisely because mathematics students can easily cheat by outsourcing their homework and getting full solutions? | |
| Mar 21, 2018 at 13:49 | comment | added | David C. Ullrich | @AloizioMacedo ' For some reason I can't quite articulate, "what have you tried?" seems to me appropriate only for straightforward questions': Whether or not you can articulate the reason, that's an excellent articulation of what I was trying to say. In extreme cases the reason seems clear - if I have no idea what one might try then asking the OP what he or she has tried seems obviously inappropriate. | |
| Mar 21, 2018 at 13:46 | comment | added | David C. Ullrich | Actually addressing the point I was trying to make, instead of replying as though I'd been insisting that every question should be given a complete and detailed answer regardless of "quality of question" issues - wow. | |
| Mar 21, 2018 at 13:30 | vote | accept | David C. Ullrich | ||
| Mar 21, 2018 at 13:19 | comment | added | MaximusFastidiousIrreverence | And consider also just helping them. Spending too much time trying to get context you disregard the value of the question at face value. | |
| Mar 20, 2018 at 22:38 | comment | added | Aloizio Macedo Mod | Furthermore, they circumvent the issue that David points out: which is that "there is such a thing as working on a question without being able to produce evidence to that effect" (which I agree with). "What have you tried" seems to ask for effort, which sometimes is just noise and is arguably mostly an ethical requirement, whereas your suggestions seem to ask for context, which is what most of us can agree is the most important, I believe. | |
| Mar 20, 2018 at 22:34 | comment | added | Aloizio Macedo Mod | These are good alternatives. For some reason I can't quite articulate, "what have you tried?" seems to me appropriate only for straightforward questions or something similar to that (this impression seems to be shared by some of the community, from what I could gather from the comments). Your suggestions are more broadly appropriate (some more than others, of course). | |
| Mar 20, 2018 at 22:14 | comment | added | hardmath | Right, the goal is not to humiliate the user who is generally confused about how to proceed, nor to drive them from the field, but to develop a rapport sufficient to achieve mathesis (now rare). | |
| Mar 20, 2018 at 21:38 | history | answered | Brian Tung | CC BY-SA 3.0 |