[mikester]

Math is not human but humans are. Simple errors are just that - and they are forgivable.

I recently finished a Calculus class and believe it or not - the tests were open book. The instructor said bring any books or notes you want. Just don't cheat off someone elses exam of course.

The test was still quite hard.

His perspective; and he teaches at a lot of local universities and tutors students regularly was that memorizing formulas was useless for a test as you would always be able to look them up if you needed them.

The test was still hard, in fact it was harder than most closed book tests I have had.

Then I took the same instructor for statistics - I don't even want to tell you how hard that one was and he still let us use the book on the tests. I got an A in both but I surely worked for both. Had I not taken good notes, paid attention in class and understood the subject the book would have been useless in both cases. I am sure of one person who failed the calc class and about 20% failed the stats class.

Just remember; math is not human but humans are. Plenty of mathmeticians have made plenty of mistakes in plenty of published theories. So your little test issue there is rather small.

The instructor related some AP calc test a student of his had to take. IT was 90 questions with 2 hours to do it and these were not easy problems or short ones. So the only real answer was to memorize the test. Well - what does that really learn you?