ard
New Member
I came upon an official US Navy website that provides the following ASTB sample questions as preparation material for aspiring officer candidates.
http://www.med.navy.mil/sites/nmotc/nami/Documents/ASTB_SampleQuestions%20JUL%202011.pdf
This link is within the first site that appears after googling "Navy ASTB." If one scrolls down a little and looks at question 1 in the Math Skills Section (page 2 of the PDF), one will find a simple arithmetic problem. However, the answer given for problem 1 on page 15 of the document is -20. This is incorrect; there's a sign issue. I suspect this was precisely one of the critical skills that the test designers were trying to assess.
The error must lie in squaring -2 instead of taking the opposite of 2^2. This is a common mistake made by high school students who do not understand the order of operations. At the college level, we as professors still encounter these problems. However, we must remember that this is an official Navy website which is visited by aspiring officers. Such an error can undermine the confidence these candidates have, either in their mathematical skills or in the accuracy and validity of the ASTB itself.
Can anybody please bring this up to someone responsible for correcting that mistake?
http://www.med.navy.mil/sites/nmotc/nami/Documents/ASTB_SampleQuestions%20JUL%202011.pdf
This link is within the first site that appears after googling "Navy ASTB." If one scrolls down a little and looks at question 1 in the Math Skills Section (page 2 of the PDF), one will find a simple arithmetic problem. However, the answer given for problem 1 on page 15 of the document is -20. This is incorrect; there's a sign issue. I suspect this was precisely one of the critical skills that the test designers were trying to assess.
The error must lie in squaring -2 instead of taking the opposite of 2^2. This is a common mistake made by high school students who do not understand the order of operations. At the college level, we as professors still encounter these problems. However, we must remember that this is an official Navy website which is visited by aspiring officers. Such an error can undermine the confidence these candidates have, either in their mathematical skills or in the accuracy and validity of the ASTB itself.
Can anybody please bring this up to someone responsible for correcting that mistake?
