Math is my worst subject, and always has been since I was a kid. It’s not that I’m horrible at it. It’s that every other subject out there is pretty easy in comparison. As a kid and a teen, I thought that if it took a lot of work, it just meant I should give up.
As an adult, I’m fighting that. I’m not just fighting to understand math. I’m fighting to find the joy in beating a difficult problem, and I’m fighting for my kids to value that as well.
So I’m going to keep trying in spite of this:
And this:
And even this. Blarg.
My green checkmarks represent answers I’d previously given. The system affirmed they were right, but when I tried to graph them, it then asserted that the answers were wrong. I’m lost, and I need all the help I can get. So if you can see what I’m doing wrong here, let me know.
Legend of Velda 
I think, and I might be wrong b/c I too am horrible and have long drawn out fights w/ math (woohoo! I actually finally passed my college algebra last semester w/ a B after 3 attempts. lol!)…I think the answers should not be in fraction form. The one thing that helped me the most w/ Course Compass, was using the “view the example” buttons on the side, and I would write it down step-by-step as they walked me through it. Hope that helps. 🙂
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Oops! Ok, don’t forget to put the answers in parentheses… I think it’s (5/7, 0)for x and (0, -5/2)for y. Sorry about the last answer. lol! It was hard to see, so I made the screen a bit larger.
x= 2y+5/7 or 5/7, y=7x-5/2 or -5/2. I hope that helps a little. 🙂
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Thanks! I’ve been through several examples, and oddly, it had told me the numbers I’d entered were correct. Only when I tried to graph them did it say, er, wrong! The ones I drew green checkmarks on had been marked correct, and were even formatted the same way as the example problems.
I -think- I might have done something wrong with my graphing, but I really can’t tell what. 😦
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Hello! It seems to me it’s a problem with the way the website is expecting the results. But it’s true that, as Danara points out, the correct way to specify a point (in this case the y-intercept point) is like (x,0) … so that could be part of the problem. Is there any way to access the same website to try to guess what’s wrong?
In any case, the solutions you’re giving are the same I’m getting.
Good luck, hug!
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Hi Christian! I must start this response with a hug right back at you. It’s been far too long, my friend!
I think I figured it out after banging my head against that big fat imac for a few hours last night. ;-p
The problem was with my graphs. I’d typed in the answer as expected, and it accepted them and marked them as correct, but then it would say I was wrong when I tried to graph them.
The system, coursecompass.com by Pearson, seems to have a little bug. Unfortunately the courses aren’t publicly accessible, but I did notice one trend as I tried to work through these issues:
I would only get them wrong when the graph was built in increments of .5 rather than increments of one. I was using numbers to determine the next point on my line. The system, it would seem, wanted me to count 5 squares up and two squares over to plot my second point. My slopes were correct, but it expected the distance between my initial point and second point to be half what I was plotting. Which is silly, really. And rather than report that, its error handling would report that I had something wrong with one of the variables.
Anyway — I -think- that’s what the problem was. What I ought to do, once I’m properly caught up, is ensure that I can indeed duplicate the problem on those types of questions. And then ask for an A in the class. Alas, if only this were a class in bug-solving rather than what ought to be fairly simple algebra!
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PS: Pearson’s system is also known as MyMathLab.com, which makes me giggle a little because it sounds like MyMethLab :-0
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lol! I always thought that about the name, too. 🙂 I would definitely show your prof. the screen shots and explain what happened. I’m glad you figured it out!
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You are really smart Velda!
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