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Convince me. When I grade exams, I am trying to determine whether or not you understand particular concepts or methods. Your job is to demonstrate how well you understand these concepts or methods. Essentially, your job is to convince me that you "get it." You do this by showing me all of your work in a legible and organized way.
None of this is about the answers. The point of taking an exam is not to provide me with answers. I already know the answers to the questions I'm asking. Somehow, some students have been conditioned to think that "getting the right answer" is all that matters in math. Multiple choice (multiple guess) exams only reinforce this myth. The truth is that you are not supposed to be focusing on answers right now; you are supposed to be focusing on the methods that will provide answers. The answers are actually the least important part of anything we do in courses like this.
I grade your work. The credit you receive on exams will be determined based on the work that you provide. What you need to do is show me this work in a legible and well-organized manner. If your work is missing, illegible, disorganized, or does not obviously justify your answer, you will not receive any credit (even if your answer is correct!) Your work should be methodical, step by step, and should clearly justify how you got your answers.
Earn more points! Let me be clear about this: Showing all your work can add points to your scores. I believe in giving partial credit in cases where some or most of your work is correct, but a computational error has caused you to get the wrong answer. As long as I can follow your work, you will get credit for anything that is correct about it. This means that having a wrong answer may not necessarily indicate that you won't be receiving any credit for a problem.
Practice this, too. It is in your best interest to practice showing legible and organized work when you are taking notes and doing homework exercises. If you do, it will be second nature when you take an exam; one less thing to think about when you've got the exam in front of you. In addition to being the basis of your exams scores, organization and neatness actually assist in your understanding of the material. And, after all, isn't that the goal of the course in the first place?
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