Lol, in 3rd grade algebra, a teacher called 2 of us in for cheating. She had us take the test again, I got the same exact horribly failing score (a 38%) and the cheater got a better score, so the teacher then knew who the cheater was. He just chose the wrong classmate to cheat of of.
I assume that the cheating student didn't know that he was copying answers from someone who was doing poorly. It was third graders after all; one wouldn't necessarily expect them to be able to pick the best target every time.
Oh. That would have never crossed my mind! So the cheater student was copying from GP who had worse results, and when they both redid it all by themselves the cheater answered correctly, and GP did not.
> Which, in a subject like algebra, is extremely suspicious ("how could both of them get the exact same WRONG answer?").
In Germany, the traditional sharp-tongued answer of pupils to the question "How could both of you get the exact same WRONG answer (in the test)?" is: "Well, we both have the same teacher." :-)
My son is learning algebra in 2nd grade. They don’t call it “algebra” yet nor mention “variables”, but they’re working on questions like solving “4 + ? = 9”.
He just goes to our local public elementary school.
Yeah I guess technically that's algebra but at that age it is based on memorization (you just learn that 4 + 5 = 9) and you're not actually using algebra to solve the problem e.g. "subtract 4 from both sides of the equation."
