Geek humor
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I know more math now than I did when I graduated college. Not being afraid of it turned out to be a huge differentiator. Now I get to spend my days on interesting creative problem solving rather than tedious coding. Linear algebra and how matrices work has proven especially important.
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Calculus is so boring. I don't understand why it isn't replaced by more interesting and relevant math topics.
@Klaus said in Geek humor:
Calculus is so boring. I don't understand why it isn't replaced by more interesting and relevant math topics.
It's funny - we did Group Theory at high school, aged 15, but I never touched it again. Differential equations, differential equations, differential equations. They completely ruined Quantum Mechanics for me, too, by making it all about those godawful things.
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@Klaus said in Geek humor:
Calculus is so boring. I don't understand why it isn't replaced by more interesting and relevant math topics.
It's funny - we did Group Theory at high school, aged 15, but I never touched it again. Differential equations, differential equations, differential equations. They completely ruined Quantum Mechanics for me, too, by making it all about those godawful things.
@Doctor-Phibes said in Geek humor:
@Klaus said in Geek humor:
Calculus is so boring. I don't understand why it isn't replaced by more interesting and relevant math topics.
It's funny - we did Group Theory at high school, aged 15, but I never touched it again. Differential equations, differential equations, differential equations. They completely ruined Quantum Mechanics for me, too, by making it all about those godawful things.
Well, I do understand that calculus is important in physics and some branches of engineering, but you could just as well argue that a deeper knowledge of, say, probability or abstract algebra or logic or linear algebra or matrices or complex numbers or category theory or ... is equally relevant.
In my opinion, the main motivation to teach advanced math to the general highschool public is to train a particular way of thinking. This is more relevant than the actual technical content. In that sense, I'd replace calculus by universal (not abstract) algebra, because it is the most direct representation of mathematical thinking we know.
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@Doctor-Phibes said in Geek humor:
@Klaus said in Geek humor:
Calculus is so boring. I don't understand why it isn't replaced by more interesting and relevant math topics.
It's funny - we did Group Theory at high school, aged 15, but I never touched it again. Differential equations, differential equations, differential equations. They completely ruined Quantum Mechanics for me, too, by making it all about those godawful things.
Well, I do understand that calculus is important in physics and some branches of engineering, but you could just as well argue that a deeper knowledge of, say, probability or abstract algebra or logic or linear algebra or matrices or complex numbers or category theory or ... is equally relevant.
In my opinion, the main motivation to teach advanced math to the general highschool public is to train a particular way of thinking. This is more relevant than the actual technical content. In that sense, I'd replace calculus by universal (not abstract) algebra, because it is the most direct representation of mathematical thinking we know.
@Klaus said in Geek humor:
@Doctor-Phibes said in Geek humor:
@Klaus said in Geek humor:
Calculus is so boring. I don't understand why it isn't replaced by more interesting and relevant math topics.
It's funny - we did Group Theory at high school, aged 15, but I never touched it again. Differential equations, differential equations, differential equations. They completely ruined Quantum Mechanics for me, too, by making it all about those godawful things.
Well, I do understand that calculus is important in physics and some branches of engineering, but you could just as well argue that a deeper knowledge of, say, probability or abstract algebra or logic or linear algebra or matrices or complex numbers or category theory or ... is equally relevant.
In my opinion, the main motivation to teach advanced math to the general highschool public is to train a particular way of thinking. This is more relevant than the actual technical content. In that sense, I'd replace calculus by universal (not abstract) algebra, because it is the most direct representation of mathematical thinking we know.
I think making maths more interesting would be a really good idea. I genuinely loved doing maths at highschool, and really enjoyed the university courses that weren't all about solving increasingly unpleasant DE's.
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Math is taught as a collection of short-hand tricks that the students don't understand as anything more than black boxes that happen to work for some strange reason. Learning how to do long-hand multiplication or division is not more educational of math than learning where the Calculator app is in the app store and learning how to push the right buttons.
Education is extremely important.
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Math is taught as a collection of short-hand tricks that the students don't understand as anything more than black boxes that happen to work for some strange reason. Learning how to do long-hand multiplication or division is not more educational of math than learning where the Calculator app is in the app store and learning how to push the right buttons.
@Horace said in Geek humor:
Math is taught as a collection of short-hand tricks that the students don't understand as anything more than black boxes that happen to work for some strange reason. Learning how to do long-hand multiplication or division is not more educational of math than learning where the Calculator app is in the app store and learning how to push the right buttons.
I don't think that's fair. What you really teach when you teach long-hand multiplication is how to execute an algorithm, which is a basic and important skill.
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Math is taught as a collection of short-hand tricks that the students don't understand as anything more than black boxes that happen to work for some strange reason. Learning how to do long-hand multiplication or division is not more educational of math than learning where the Calculator app is in the app store and learning how to push the right buttons.
@Horace said in Geek humor:
Math is taught as a collection of short-hand tricks that the students don't understand as anything more than black boxes that happen to work for some strange reason. Learning how to do long-hand multiplication or division is not more educational of math than learning where the Calculator app is in the app store and learning how to push the right buttons.
That depends on how it's taught. I seem to think when I learned long multiplication, the teacher used it to explain how decimal numbers worked. Admittedly, that might have had no impact on the kids who were less interested, but I remember it making me think quite a bit about it.
What I really disliked was having to memorise multiplication tables. That and the freaking Nicene Creed. They don't do that so much over here.
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Horace - that was true in your day. Common core math and the Singapore method it’s based on really does a good job with creating deeper understanding. That’s why parents complain so much about it.
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Horace - that was true in your day. Common core math and the Singapore method it’s based on really does a good job with creating deeper understanding. That’s why parents complain so much about it.
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The utility of the rote mechanics was that anybody could memorize them, and then everybody "knew math". I wonder if you run up against intellectual ability barriers in attempts to teach the ideas.
Education is extremely important.
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The utility of the rote mechanics was that anybody could memorize them, and then everybody "knew math". I wonder if you run up against intellectual ability barriers in attempts to teach the ideas.
@Horace said in Geek humor:
The utility of the rote mechanics was that anybody could memorize them, and then everybody "knew math".
I once taught a set-7 math class. Forget long-division, half of them could barely use a ruler.
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The utility of the rote mechanics was that anybody could memorize them, and then everybody "knew math". I wonder if you run up against intellectual ability barriers in attempts to teach the ideas.
@Horace said in Geek humor:
The utility of the rote mechanics was that anybody could memorize them, and then everybody "knew math". I wonder if you run up against intellectual ability barriers in attempts to teach the ideas.
I think they very much do. They teach multiple methods to arrive at solutions really admiring the problem in many ways. My son has flourished with it, I’ve always thought it was a special kind of torture for the mathphobic.
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@Copper said in Geek humor:
My rote learning of multiplication tables has served me well over the last 60 years.
So has my memorization of the Nicene Creed.
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Re: “rote learning of multiplication tables”
It’s really just caching for some frequently used information. Some information is more frequently needed than others, so it’s worthwhile to commit them to memory for quick access rather than to recompute or re-lookup every time the information is needed.
