In early education this was by far my most common source of error, so much that my parents rewarded me (with books :)) based on the number of math papers I turned in without any “careless errors” rather than based on anything involving good grades, absolute scores on math papers, effort, etc. Incorrect reasoning was fine—I was already plenty motivated to fix that. But dropping a minus sign? What did I care, I got the underlying reasoning right! ;)
I don’t have any explicit techniques now. Apparently then, “most of your careless errors were in math, so I had you solve each problem and then re-work each backward.” was the only technique my mom remembers. That clearly doesn’t scale to timed situations.
In early education this was by far my most common source of error, so much that my parents rewarded me (with books :)) based on the number of math papers I turned in without any “careless errors” rather than based on anything involving good grades, absolute scores on math papers, effort, etc. Incorrect reasoning was fine—I was already plenty motivated to fix that. But dropping a minus sign? What did I care, I got the underlying reasoning right! ;)
What techniques do you have for reducing careless errors? How do these scale in stressful/timed situations?
I don’t have any explicit techniques now. Apparently then, “most of your careless errors were in math, so I had you solve each problem and then re-work each backward.” was the only technique my mom remembers. That clearly doesn’t scale to timed situations.