[Superman]

I assisted one of the world's foremost Operations Management and Business Statistics professors in the world. One of my duties was grading tests. This professor was so fastidious that his index of test questions contained statistics comparing students' general class and academic performance with their tendency to get a particular question right or wrong. In other words, some questions inadvertently can act like "trick" questions that good students are nearly as likely to answer incorrectly as poor students. He tested his questions on various measures including this.

This professor gave partial credit. And I agree. The student got a fair amount of credit for writing the correct formula to use to solve the problem. More points were awarded for inserting the correct values for the variables in the formula, and more points were added if the math between that point and the final answer was accurate.

Sure, in the real world, wrong is wrong. But in academics, you are teaching and assessing the student's knowledge. In other words, you are assessing more than the final answer.