<p>being absent-minded does not mean you deserve a bad grade. I've done really stupid things like that once or twice - you understand the concepts perfectly (and that's what matters... right? or maybe I am living in an idealistic dreamland) yet you have 1 mode set incorrectly or something. I mean people take literally 100 tests in their high school career - you would be really lucky to not make a dumb mistake in all 100 of them, and if you happen to make that dumb mistake on an important test...</p>
<p>I understand, but the thing is that the dumb mistake is so easily detectable (hey, sin47 can't be -.829953!) that there's really no excuse for not catching. However, it is the concept that matters, and in the real world, there'll be people to catch your stupid mistakes for you. If you're an engineer designing a building, I'm assuming that enough people will review it to correct someone writing that the construction of a certain catenary arch will require -.0049 kg of steel.</p>
<p>I almost forgot to change from radians to degrees on the Geometry EOC (End of course) this summer. </p>
<p>I was like "None of these answers are on the test!"</p>
<p>I bet your friend will never ever make that mistake again. Valuable lesson? I would think so.</p>
<p>omg that happened to me too.. but i didnt finish it so i stayed after to finish it with the teacher.. and she was grading it and was like you have the whole process right but your answers are wrong.. and i was like well i'm typing it in right and then she took my calculator.. and problem solved and my grade went up from a 52 to a 98.. yeahh i was happy she was a very nice teacher</p>
<p>Yeah theres really nothing he can do... it's a stupid mistake and one that unfortunately is very easy to make..
same thing happened to a girl in my physics class.. she got an F on her test and started crying but the teacher basically just said "too bad".</p>
<p>That sucks. That's why its always important to make sure your caculator is set right BEFORE you even start the test. When I take tests that have multiple choice, I use process of elimination to mark out one of the wrong answers. You can look at the problem and tell which one of the choices are wrong, unless if it's trigonometry or calculus. </p>
<p>I'm in my sophomore year of high school, and I'm taking IPC(intergrated Physics and Chemistry) and I'm planning on taking IB Physics next year.</p>
<p>I wish your friend the best of luck.</p>
<p>:]</p>
<p>I'm surprised the teacher wasn't more sympathetic.</p>
<p>I'm so sorry...if it makes you feel any better, my teacher lets us use 10 m/s for g on tests, but 9.8 on hw (which is really annoying) and I used 9.8 on a test and got nearly everything wrong (a 67 to be exact). Then, the next test, lo and behold, I did it again (48 this time).</p>
<p>I still don't know why I'm in AP Physics.</p>
<p>^Really? I don't know that I'd stand for that. My teacher has us use 9.81, and I thought that was generous. You could just store them in your graphing calculator as T and H, and use the correct one that way.</p>
<p>When I did this, I knew that my answers weren't making sense, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was wrong. If a situation like that ever happens to you, I recommend going and talking to the teacher before the test is over and they can help you figure something out.</p>