1. The answer to the problem is \(\frac{22}{3}\), and the student submitted 7.3 as a response. The homework system automatically told the student to submit the exact value of the answer and not an estimate. The student tried again with a different decimal approximation. Bug report complains that the system keeps rejecting correct answers.

  2. Different problem with thirds in it. I queried the database to get the list of bug reports on the problem from so far this calendar year and sent it to the curriculum team. These young students who can’t wrap their minds around thirds will be the ones to haunt future classes with their assumptions that exponentiation distributes over addition.

  3. From the department of “not my department,” one of the language arts problems tells the students to “adhere” to the guidelines or whatever. A child has submitting a bug report alerting us that this is a typo and should be “ad here.”

  4. This one is novel! I have not seen it before! And since the student did this in two distinct homework submissions and in the text of the bug report, it is not just an isolated typo. Complex numbers. Instead of using the notation i for the imaginary unit, the student is using an exclamation point. Legit, the student says that the answer to the problem is \(4 + 3!\) instead of the standard notation of \(4 + 3i\).