Questions tagged [hint]
For questions about posts that ask for/give hints.
28 questions
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Old questions with hint-only answers. Can we provide whole answers?
Summary
I'm encouraging users to provide whole answers to sufficiently old questions that have only received hints thus far.
I argue that the reasons to give hint-only answers are no longer (...
- 21.3k
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Is it acceptable to leave hints as answers?
Question: Is it acceptable to leave a hint as an answer?
For the purposes of this question, let me attempt to define a "hint":
A hint is a short, generally terse, comment which does not provide ...
- 30.7k
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Should there be a policy about "hints"?
First, let me say that I completely understand the idea of not posting full solutions, but instead "hints" (or outlines) to let the OP figure out the details by themselves. I tend to do that myself.
...
- 68.1k
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How good is an answer without any explanation? And how far should an explanation go?
Often times I will see hints posted as answers to a question get up voted a lot and sometimes marked as the best answer, but sometimes the answer is not so intuitive, especially to someone ...
- 75.9k
27
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Do hints belong in answers or comments?
If the OP doesn't indicate whether they'd prefer a hint, a sketch, or a full answer, and you'd like to leave just a hint, should it be an answer or a comment? Should one option be encouraged? If so, ...
- 27.3k
27
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Hints: how to give them?
I was wondering what is your method for giving hints. I find it generally harder than posting full answers (but less tedious, as some trivial points may be omitted), but still I have to write a ...
- 37.7k
23
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Is the "hint" approach creating a perverse incentive?
Recently, there has been a crack down on enforcing quality standards for both people asking questions and those answering them. The idea (I think) has been to reduce the rather significant influx of ...
- 6,279
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The Terms of Service currently prevent posting hint answers.
The Terms of Service (http://stackexchange.com/legal) currently prevents posting answers only containing a hint: Section four states that:
Under no circumstances will Subscriber use the Network or ...
- 25.6k
20
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7
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Should we discourage full solutions to questions that explicitly ask for a hint?
I've encountered several posts in the past that explicitly ask for a hint for their stated problem. It's not uncommon for these questions to gather full solutions for their problem, sometimes in their ...
- 53.2k
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Accepting incomplete helpful answer, vs posting my own complete answer
A user answered one of my questions with a very helpful, but incomplete response. With their hints I have completed the problem. Should I:
Accept their answer and leave it?
Accept their answer and ...
- 732
20
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Suggestion for "Hint-Only" Tag
For people who only want guidance in understanding how to approach the problem, as opposed to seeing a fully fleshed out solution.
Would this tag be useful?
Am new to this site, so don't want to ...
- 74.1k
18
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3
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558
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Easy questions: answers or clues?
I am quite new in the community, but I have noticed two different behaviours when someone asks an "easy" question:
Either the question is answered, which may be good since the explanation will help ...
- 600
14
votes
1
answer
1k
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Answering questions with a hint
Scenario: someone asks: "Let such-and-such. How do I prove X?". I answer "Hint: because blah, blah, blah, all you have to prove is Y". Their response is to ask a new question: "Let such-and-such. How ...
- 50.3k
9
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1
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How Should I ask Questions that I just need Hints on?
So I'm starting to work through a real analysis textbook, but I'm not great at math so I expect I'll get suck working through some of the proofs/problems. Sometimes I need a hint. The book has a few, ...
- 971
9
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2
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518
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What to do when I get no feedback on an answer to my own question?
I asked this question sometime ago and had no idea how to solve it. Later, I got a hint(the first answer there) and used it to reach a conclusion, which I then wrote in the comments. The person who ...
- 1,467
6
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3
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Making duplicates for only hints
Should we close questions asking for hints as duplicates?
This above discussion is old, and is what I want to rediscuss in light of my question here: $\Bbb F_p$ where $p$ is an odd prime has exactly ...
- 814
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Is it okay to ask for a hint to a problem that had already been solved here?
I am trying to prove a certain proposition on my own, and I got stuck.
I have the proof somewhere in my lecture notes, and the proposition had been proved here in some question on this site, but I ...
user258700
2
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1
answer
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If the selected answer is a hint, should the person asking edit the OP with the full answer?
Sometimes, a hint is all it takes to answer a question. So if the person asking selects that question and no full answer was provided, should the "asker" edit the original post with a full solution?
...
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How to avoid hint answers
I know some people like to give hints because they're concerned that they'll be doing some students homework for them or they're genuinely trying to help teach the matter at hand by offering a hint ...
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Should questions asking only for hints be closed?
I've seen a number of questions recently where the OP explicitly asks for a hint only. In some cases, these questions are closed (or have gotten some votes for closure) because the OP didn't provide ...
- 22.6k
-1
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How to deal with "hint" answers
I notice that many people put "hints" as answers. For example, let's say I ask the question, how would I solve $\sum_{i=0}^\infty \frac{1}{n(n+1)}$, and someone answers with, "HINT: It ...
- 2,703
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Asking hint for a problem
This is my first meta post. I want to ask about one of my deleted post. In that post, I asked for a hint to some problem and gave reasons(brief) why I wasn’t able to solve that problem. To avoid ...
- 4,508
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Should I edit a hint to a complete answer; if, the author does not complain?
In this post I edited @fouriertransform's HINT to a complete answer. Am I allowed to do this?
user312097
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Just a hint please. [duplicate]
I have seen some posts which mentioned they want only a hint. They want to think about their problem and solve it themselves. Nevertheless some people give an answer, good or poor, even Op insist to ...
- 30.4k
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Drawback of answers written by some high reputation users
Drawback of answers written by some high reputation users
This is my personal view: some high reputation users don't write their answers in detail.
I think they should write their answers in detail so ...
- 14.8k
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Are hint answers allowed? [duplicate]
I seem to recall reading on some help page that an answer must in fact answer the question posed. Yet I often see Hint answers, and sometimes want to answer with hints as well. So are Hint answers "...
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Hints as answers
Often I see threads with an "accepted answer" that contains a hint and nothing else. That's absurd.
Instead, how about:
Supplying a full answer?
There's a reason it is called "an answer"...
...
- 1,084
-14
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1
answer
212
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Why do people give "hints" instead of "answers"? [closed]
Seriously. Everything can be a homework problem if you think about it. Do you see stackoverflow saying "ooh, here's a hint how to run a certain script on Ubuntu reboot"? Their problems are ...
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