Applying+past+knowledge+to+new+situations

Applying Past Knowledge to New Situations  I've never made a mistake. I've only learned from past experience. -Thomas Edison In this situation, I have followed Thomas Edison and his quote by learning from my mistake of one specific problem, and reapplied this knowledge to answer another question that was quite similar. This mistake I made was on a formative quiz so the grade didn't matter, but I wanted to do the best I can, and of course, learn from my mistakes. In this case, I was answering a question of simple mathematics, using addition and subtraction, however, what I didn't take into account was the significant figures. I forgot that when adding or subtracting, your answer should have the same amount of significant figures after the decimal place as the number with the least amount of decimal places to the right of the decimal place. For this reason, I got half a point off because I didn't find the significant figures of the addition inside the parenthesis, and then use that number to continue on with the equation. This can be seen from the following picture, which demonstrated where I made my simple mistake.

Picture! (I have it on computer, but can't get up on wiki for some reason, this pdf made it up but I cannot get the other picture up)



This exact same question reappeared on my test which was about two weeks after this formative quiz. Luckily, I had learned from my mistake on this quiz, and I knew exactly how to do the problem. I had to reapply my knowledge of my mistake before to solve the same question again, however, this time the write way with the correct number of significant figures. In the following picture, you can see the exact same picture solved the correct way as I remembered to apply the significant figures.

Picture (same reason)

Learning from your mistakes is a very important lesson, one that I still need to conquer. My Dad would always say to me while skiing, "If you're not falling you're not learning." I always thought of that as a great way to learn, because learning from your mistakes is one of the best ways to learn. It is amazing how much you can learn from mistakes in all subjects, and this habit of mind will surely come in handy throughout life. This is a perfect example of me applying past knowledge to new situations, as my past knowledge helped me gain an extra point on my Chemistry test!