Fifteen puzzle solvability, Numworks Python

[toml_12953]

(04-26-2020 07:46 PM)rprosperi Wrote:  

(04-26-2020 05:23 PM)Don Shepherd Wrote:  Back when I was a teacher, I would do what Sam Loyd did many years ago, present a puzzle with only two numbers switched and see if any of my students could solve it. Of course, after a few minutes of failures they would cheat by physically removing a piece from the board and inserting it where it belonged!

In addition to being a puzzle, seems this was a bit of an integrity checker as well...

If the rules didn't prohibit removing pieces then it's not cheating. It depends on how the problem was worded. If the problem statement only said, "arrange the tiles in order." then the students who removed pieces reached the objective. I would give them full credit for their out-of-the-box thinking and word my future problems more carefully. I tried to prepare my students for the real world where no one cares to see your work; they only want results. In the real world you're free to use all sorts of sources for help in solving a problem so I only gave open book tests. I made sure to give problems that couldn't just be looked up, however. If a student could get a good grade on my tests then (s)he really understood the material. I didn't need to see the steps.