Would you...

...buy a solutions manual to a math text (or any other text for that matter) just to get an A?

I have...and most likely I'll do it again. Honestly though, would I feel cheated out of my education? Not really. Some will bash me for cheating, but 90% of those bashers would do the same if they were a math major. Don't get me wrong, the answers are here only to see what mistakes I made, they won't help me on an exam and such, but as far as homework grades go, they'll put me at the top of the class.

I'll still study the material hard and such, but what surprised me was that in my Statistics 400 class, half the class had answers to the textbook. It's normally extremely hard to get answers (much less complete answers) to texts, but I guess some kid stole the answer book and just gave it out to everyone. The professors never caught on, and I'll probably take Statistics 401 next semester...and they'll probably never catch on until I've gotten an A in the class.

I'm not advocating anyone buying an answer book, but like I said, these answers don't prepare you for exams. Anyone copying answers might get 100% on the homework, but fail exams completely (exams are worht 70% of the grade anyways). Luckily for me, I did well on my exams...but eh I got a B on them...but the 100% homework grade pushed me to an A. :)

I don't think you're doing anything wrong, I'd probably do the same thing. Well, like you said, you just check your answers to see if you're doing them right. No use in failing without even knowing it until there's a big fat F on your paper. Plus, our text books always have the odd numbered answers. My friend has a website with all the answers to our Pre-Calculus assignments, but you have to have a password and pay monthly. Apparently he got it for free, checks his answers, and pretty much gets A's on all the tests, and has an A in the class. But of course you can't necessarily trust everyone with the answers, because chances is are they'll use them for the wrong reasons. :)

Most universities will (rightly) expel you for this. Aside from the outright dishonesty of cheating, it's stupid to take that risk. There's also the fact that doing work helps you actually learn. Getting A's on exams isn't the point of college. When you graduate, people will expect you to know things, and use them while you work. You can always lie at work too, perhaps, but it'll be much harder. There are usually no "answers manuals" in real life.

There's a good chance you can lie and cheat at quite a few things in life and not get caught, but most people aren't happy being liars. If you have no conscience though, I guess you're set.

On time in high school we had a dumb substitute teacher, and someone stole the answers to a quiz and gave them out to everyone. I failed the quiz on purpose.

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Originally Posted by Dr Unne

Most universities will (rightly) expel you for this. Aside from the outright dishonesty of cheating, it's stupid to take that risk. There's also the fact that doing work helps you actually learn. Getting A's on exams isn't the point of college. When you graduate, people will expect you to know things, and use them while you work. You can always lie at work too, perhaps, but it'll be much harder. There are usually no "answers manuals" in real life.

There's a good chance you can lie and cheat at quite a few things in life and not get caught, but most people aren't happy being liars. If you have no conscience though, I guess you're set.

On time in high school we had a dumb substitute teacher, and someone stole the answers to a quiz and gave them out to everyone. I failed the quiz on purpose.

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Honestly, do you know what percentage of people actually use much of what they learned in college in their careers? That percentage is in the single digits. I'm going to be a high school math teacher, none of what I learn will be taught to the students. Actuaries have to learn a lot of math in college, but even they won't use "Theorem of Large Numbers" and Central Limit Theorems or the Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic.

And you're being a complete cynic Unne. I never said these answers would get me an A or that I would never learn anything from these classes. Even if I had the answers I would still take just as much time to learn the material than if I didn't have the answers. The answers are more like an insurance policy that I'll hopefully never need, but if it's there it's there. I do have a conscience, and I'm sure you've cheated in your life as well. I may not be the priest that you are, but I'm not such an habitual cheater that I would risk a greater chance of expulsion. If everyone in the world who cheated at least once in college had their degrees rescinded, we'd lose more than half the working population.

If you believe that there is some power out there that believes you should be this noble entity that never commits a crime, then so be it. But there's a big difference than being given an "A" in a class without doing any work as opposed to earning that "A". Just because you're given answers doesn't mean you don't work hard in a class.

I never said these answers would get me an A or that I would never learn anything from these classes. ~ Dingo

Luckily for me, I did well on my exams...but eh I got a B on them...but the 100% homework grade pushed me to an A. :) ~ Dingo

...but you did say that they got you an A.

It doesn't matter if you never use that math ever again after college. It doesn't matter if everybody else does it, or how hard it is, or any number of a variety of possible excuses. Cheating is wrong. You're not only lying to your professor, but worse, you're cheating yourself.

You may learn from seeing the solutions, but when you hit the real, non-scholastic world, there won't be a solutions manual and you will have to solve problems on your own.

People who don't intend to cheat don't buy the answers. If everyone at the college did it that still wouldn't make it right. It would make a degree from that college worthless, for one thing, which is a huge reason why colleges have such strict policies against cheating.

What about the people who actually do their own work, work really hard but get a B because someone else who was too lazy cheated and got their A instead? A grade is not only a measure of your knowledge, it's a measure of your effort and dedication. And it's a measure of where you stand compared to your classmates.

Everyone who cheated at college deserves to have their degrees revoked, or at least they deserve to fail the class they cheated in. At my college if you're caught cheating, even on a single homework problem on a single assignment, you get an automatic 0 for the class; the WHOLE CLASS that you probably just paid $1500 to take. If you do it again you're expelled.

Can you imagine what would happen if someone working on their doctorate was caught plagiarizing or otherwise being dishonest in the least? They would most certainly have their degree revoked, probably permanently. There's such a thing as academic integrity.

I work in a research setting. I had two whole days worth of classes at work about academic integrity. Any form of dishonesty, even the slightest alteration of data to make your theory work or the slightest indication of passing off an idea as yours that isn't, anything of that sort will rightly destroy your career and reputation. You'd be lucky if you were only fired; depending on the nature of the dishonesty you could face criminal charges, in the kind of work I do. I would expect everyone at college to understand the importance of integrity, but especially a scientist or mathematician. Integrity is such a huge part of what you're supposed to be.

Are you going to teach kids in your classes that if they don't feel like working in your class, they can just cheat and it's OK with you? How could you ever punish someone for cheating after doing so yourself with no regrets?

No, I've never cheated at school or work or anything else that I can think of at the moment. I can't imagine what it takes to look a professor in the eye and lie to his face, in actions if not words. You may as well walk up to someone and spit in their face as lie to them. At least they would be aware of the utter contempt and disrespect you hold for them, instead of being ignorant of it.

BJ buys the answers for his math assignments because it bothers him if he does all that work and doesn't know if he's even doing it right or not. He buys the answers, but doesn't cheat. I mean, it's not like cheating to get an A on the homework that's worth like 10% of his grade is going to do him any good on the 90% of his grade that's exams.

Me, personally? At this stage in my education I would cheat just 'cause I freaking hate math and I really, really am sure that I need very little math to get by for the rest of my life. But I've already finished all my math classes so it don't matter none. :}~

I wouldn't buy/steal a soultions manual. I've gotten no higher than "C's" and "B's" in my math classes since middle school. I rather have an earned "C" than a cheated "A". Besides, laziness was part to blame for those "C's" and "B's", so cheating would only have encouraged my laziness.

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BJ buys the answers for his math assignments because it bothers him if he does all that work and doesn't know if he's even doing it right or not. He buys the answers, but doesn't cheat. I mean, it's not like cheating to get an A on the homework that's worth like 10% of his grade is going to do him any good on the 90% of his grade that's exams.

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Buying answers isn't cheating?

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Originally Posted by Raistlin

Buying answers isn't cheating?

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I think she means that he checks the answers after doing his work to see if he's right or not, which isn't cheating since he actually did the work. :)

I don't think the university, if it finds out, will accept the answer "I just use it for checking my answers!"

Is "checking your answers" cheating, too? I haven't taken a college math course (AP scores = love), so I wouldn't know. But if buying an answer book is wrong, then I can only assume that you're not supposed to have the answers at all.

Some textbooks have the solutions in the back. They're there for a reason. Others don't. They're not there for a reason. I believe there is a difference between checking your answers in the book that everyone has in class, where the teacher knows there are answers in the back, than buying a solutions manual most people don't have and not telling the teacher about it.

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Originally Posted by Yamaneko

Some textbooks have the solutions in the back. They're there for a reason. Others don't. They're not there for a reason. I believe there is a difference between checking your answers in the book that everyone has in class, where the teacher knows there are answers in the back, than buying a solutions manual most people don't have and not telling the teacher about it.

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:up:

I don't know how I feel about this. Our campus bookstore has the solutions manual right next to the textbooks in most cases, sometimes saying required on the little card under it. I understand that just copying the answers out of the answer guide is wrong, especially for a grade, but, OTOH, I think they are more useful than that. For example, my orgo professor never gives solutions to problems, so without the manual, I could work all the problems in the text and still not know if I got any right, which would be unhelpful.

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Originally Posted by bennator

I don't know how I feel about this. Our campus bookstore has the solutions manual right next to the textbooks in most cases, sometimes saying required on the little card under it. I understand that just copying the answers out of the answer guide is wrong, especially for a grade, but, OTOH, I think they are more useful than that. For example, my orgo professor never gives solutions to problems, so without the manual, I could work all the problems in the text and still not know if I got any right, which would be unhelpful.

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Originally Posted by Yams

I believe there is a difference between checking your answers in the book that everyone has in class, where the teacher knows there are answers in the back [or in another book that the teacher knows about and agrees to], than buying a solutions manual most people don't have and not telling the teacher about it.

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:)

I bought a Math solutions manual.

I still got a "D".

I agree with Unne in pretty much everything he's saying. Doing questions for review and checking your answers is one thing, but if you're being graded on it, even if you've done the work, and then check your answers after before passing it in, you've cheated, and don't deserve a grade other than 0 on the assignment. Every text I've ever had that had answers in the back of the book, didn't have answers to all the questions specifically so that profs can use them for homework assignments. Cheating is cheating, there's no way around it, and no exceptions, and unless your answer solutions come from a legitimate source (ie: text, answer keys sold in the book store, etc.), you're in the wrong.

I also disagree with this argument that you're never going to use this stuff in the future. Even if it's true for you, your school has decided what you need to get your degree, and even if you don't use it later, you need to learn to use it now. If you can't pass a course on your own merits, you don't deserve your degree and the merits it brings, since you didn't pass the course based on your own intelligence and hard work. And besides, you never know for certain if you'll use the stuff you're being tought later on in life. Maybe you'll someday decide to go into a field where you do use what you're learning.

As for the number of people who use what they learn in University being in the single digits, unless you've got some scientific research backing it up, I don't believe it for a second. A lot of what they would teach in engineering and computer science courses, I would imagine many graduates would see again depending on what they go into. Also, being a business student who plans on going into accounting, has worked with an accounting firm, and who's father is an accountant, I can say that the majority of what you learn in financial accounting courses, you will see again if you go on to work with a financial accounting firm. You'll also see a lot of this stuff if you go on to work as an accountant in a company.

And finally, I'm not looking to be rude or tear into you, since you're entitled to your opinion, but you say you want to be a high school math teacher, but if I were a parent I wouldn't want someone who had your attitude about this teaching my kids.

In my accounting class I'm losing my mind....literally. Sure, if I went looking for an answer guide I could probably find one but I honestly wouldn't know the stuff any better than I did before I bought and used it? So what's the point? Now what I do is I hit up to my accounting teacher to help me out. It takes longer and I'm using up his time but at the end of the day I know accounting better than before. Plus, that's what he's paid for right?