Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Symbols for correct / incorrect

In Japan it is exam season. End of year exams, entrance exams. These entrance exams are IMPORTANT. So much so that in a recent meeting, the dean felt compelled to spell out just what the three cornerstones of a Japanese university were. The gateway is the entrance exam. The campus is the curriculum. Placing students in a job is the exit.

Everything else, research, learning about life…. Never mind. These are back seat luxuries. This is the real world. Get good students, give lots of hours of tuition, make sure they get a job. I have no objection to these as goals, just the emphasis placed on those three. Reminds me of Ronald Reagan insisting that all briefs on political crises being simplified so they fit on one A4 sheet of paper.

Today’s comment is a comparison of English and Japanese marking systems.

And if that is not confusing to a westerner trying to relearn the correct symbols, how about this:

Look the same? Aha, but 0 (J) does NOT = 0 (J). 0 (correct J) begins from the bottom of the circle and goes clockwise. 0 (zero J) begins from the top of the circle and is traced anticlockwise. The devil is in the details.

So you learn to mark as follows:


So 0 = 2 ?

No wonder we have the impression that Japanese products are sometimes beautifully engineered but at the expense of the overall big picture.

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