How to deal with professor who is ignoring my questions? [duplicate]

Question

I am studying data mining in a college in Nepal. In Nepal, students and teachers communicate using Facebook Messenger. Teachers don't share email, and are instead friends with students on Facebook.

I asked my teacher a question forty days ago. He saw the message but didn't respond. Later, I reminded him a week after that. He said "study yourself, find yourself, read books, youtube, google, learn yourself". I told him that I had googled that question, already read books, asked in Quora, Stack Exchange, Reddit, and found no where. Then he responded "Ok I will send the answer".

Then one month went by and he still hadn't sent the answer. Then today, I again reminded him "if he had forgotten about it" (after one month), he saw the message but didn't respond.

What kind of behaviour is this? What should I do in this case? I am considering asking my parents to talk with this professor. Is that right thing to do? What should I do?

This teacher holds a good chunk of internal marks this semester, almost 125 marks. Should I not tell anything to him due to these internal marks, or should I ask my parents to talk to him? Due to covid, face to face interaction is not possible currently.

Professor not replying to my email

This doesn't answer my question because he recommends to go to teacher physically, it is not possible at the moment due to covid.

Answer 1

There are a number of reasons a professor might not answer a question:

1. He is extremely busy with class loads or research and can't take the time to give detailed answers to every student's questions
2. He is suspicious of the question, thinking it borders on something he doesn't want to teach or that can be used in problematic ways
3. It runs too close to his own current research, and he doesn't wish to discuss something he is about to publish
4. He thinks the question is too basic — something that a competent student should be able to figure out — and doesn't want to waste time on students he thinks are incompetent
5. He thinks the question is too complex, and doesn't want to waste time on something students probably won't get to until graduate or doctoral work
6. (Always a possibility) He's lazy, absent-minded, preoccupied, or otherwise generally disinclined to answer student's questions, period

I don't know the question you've asked, so I can't make any guesses about what this professor is thinking. If this question is pertinent to your course material then I suggest you ask a TA or a fellow student about it; if it's a matter of personal interest you'll probably have to look elsewhere. The only way you might get a different response from this professor at this point is if you meet with him in person, where he will feel obliged to make better excuses, and won't be forced to commit an answer to written text (which is an annoying process with a permanent trail).