I get what you're saying but I also disagree with it as a generalization, and say it would depend on the subject. For theoretical subjects, an exam is about the only way to test your understanding. Memorization is not going to help you solve math problems.
I was a physics undergrad who hopped into a few grad classes, and to be honest I was terrible at homework and great at exams (mostly due to some youthful obstinance on putting the time in on homework). At the time I believed that the exams showed who really knew the material and who applied time to solve the problem. With some time past I see that the larger/tougher problem sets were where the real challenge was.
I recall a few unique problem sets from Graduate QM such as
- Derive from first principles the color of the sky.
- Prove that charge must be Quantized if there is one magnetic mono-pole in the universe.
The exam questions were far simpler than the theory questions asked in the problem sets. The work for the first question easily totals > 20 hours of pen and paper time.
> The work for the first question easily totals > 20 hours of pen and paper time.
I guess grad students generally take less coursework than undergrads, but how could a professor expect students to have 20+ hours on hand to solve a single question, given other demands on a student's time?
> Memorization is not going to help you solve math problems.
On the contrary, memorization is the way most people I know got through most of their math classes, at least through calculus and linear algebra. You memorize the steps by rote repetition without really learning why they work, then the test is mostly an exercise in guessing which steps and formulas you should apply to the given problem.
Is that really memorization? Memorizing multiplication tables is one thing. Practicing the techniques over and over isn't memorization imo. In grad level maths, you are solving proofs pretty much, you can't just memorize facts in a textbook to do that.
It's memorization insofar as you can do all of that practice and become proficient at solving math problems without really knowing what they mean or why the steps work. You're regurgitating what you were taught, not making connections and using your understanding.
You used math as an example of a subject where tests are used to check understanding. I disagree, because most people that I know who did well in math did so by being good human computers, not by understanding anything.
I expect that doesn't continue to be true at the grad level, but most people don't get that far.
I’m someone who crammed their way through 4 years of computer engineering exams at a challenging university. It’s possible. It’s hard and the worst few weeks of life before exams, but it’s possible.
Can confirm. There's 0 retention. Maybe if I kept cramming over an extended period of time I could retain it. Typically though I stop after taking the exam so within about a week or two things I thought I understood disappeared.
