zlacker

>>jstrie+(OP)
> As a result, solutions using strings are disallowed on problem sets and quizzes until they are taught. However, the few students who have prior Python programming experience may be tempted to find digit length without loops using a variant of the following (for our purposes) invalid solution.

Wow. this is one of the reasons I hated school. No programmatic reason what given for why a string solution couldnt be used, only an arbitrary reason. Here students may have knowledge from self teaching or whatever, but they are unallowed to use that knowledge because "reasons".

To any teacher that thinks its a good idea to punish students for thinking outside the box: shame on you. All youre going to end up doing is crushing enthusiasm and/or creating drones. Please dont.

>>svnpen+Jm
I think this is a communications issue. If you ask them to solve it and then they clearly did, but you then say: “bUt yOu dIDn’T SoLvE iT tHe RiGht wAy”, then it is clearly your fault.

I think if you tell stuff like this upfront it is totally acceptable: “Reduce the number of digits in a given float without converting it to a String”.

Even students with previous knowledge could take this as a challenge where they learn something.