News Stories

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by RRW

this person think we should remove algebra from US education system

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/op...=1&ref=opinion

.... the average person can barely string two pieces of logical thought together and this idiot wants to make it worse???

I call "moron".... ah.... poli-sci professor. How fuzzy...

Frankly, if I were this guy's university I'd be re-assessing my choice. Free speech doesn't mean that I have to keep "stupid" on staff.

[ganbaru]

Originally Posted by GDB

I stopped after the first paragraph. "Millions are failing, so why subject them to it? I think we shouldn't." Wow, okay, so if enough people don't grasp something, or struggle with it at all, we should just get rid of it? Idiocracy, AHOY!

Leveling by the bottom; lowering the standart so them no student fall behind...
as you said; Idiocracy.

[Xellos-_^]

• Thomas Blaney
• Oklahoma City

During the BP oil spill, a university engineer used first video feed made public from the well head to estimate the rate of the oil flow and and announced on National Public Radio that it was over 70,000 barrels per day, while the "official" estimate from BP the government insisted that it was only 5,000 barrels per day.

I decided to try it myself and arrived at nearly the same number as the university engineer. It was obvious to me that the "official" estimate was ridiculously low and that the response efforts were severely inadequate. All it required was being able to calculate the volume of a given length of pipe knowing the diameter and convert some basic units of volume. Of course the "official" estimate kept increasing week by week and it turned out that the university engineer was much closer to the actual spill rate.

Any highschool student should have been able to do the same calculation and it would have made an excellent project in practical math, yet I never heard of any such effort even in college math classes. In fact when I watched an interview on CNN, Anderson Cooper panicked as soon as the number pi was mentioned and could not follow the simple problem. Journalsts in general are notoriously averse to math and contribute to the public 's illiteracy of numbers. If they were better at math, they would have chosen better paying professions.

It is certainly not in the interest of the corporate/government oligarchy to have the public exposing such rampant frauds.

i found this comment form one of the commenter the most telling

[SaintessHeart]

I think the real problem lies in teaching math. Personally, I am not good at math (or rather, reading the damn math problems), but I do believe that math teachers around the world focus more on cramming familiarity rather than spend time explaining the deeper concepts leading up to the calculus we use.

Anyway, why should political science be even a pure subject? Why isn't it a minor module only?

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by RRW

this person think we should remove algebra from US education system

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/op...=1&ref=opinion

While I disagree with it and think that the author seemingly didn't fully think through some of his points (or just didn't communicate them well), it's an interesting proposition.

[Anh_Minh]

I wouldn't have been against greater specialization either. (Which for me would have meant more maths, more physics, and less history or literature or philosophy.)

Though I really don't know why it's always the maths that have to take that kind of shit in the media. Except maybe that, indeed, the journalists and writers tend not to be good at it.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

I wouldn't have been against greater specialization either. (Which for me would have meant more maths, more physics, and less history or literature or philosophy.)

Though I really don't know why it's always the maths that have to take that kind of shit in the media. Except maybe that, indeed, the journalists and writers tend not to be good at it.

Most journalists were in their line bcause they find math too boring; and many engineers find writing a hassle.

Unfortunately, having too many journalists who don't understand math means that we get to read more junk, and having too many engineers who suck at language means we will never be able to understand whatever they build.

[Xellos-_^]

the public just need to know it has electrolytes

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Xellos-_^

the public just need to know it has electrolytes

Everything does, though under different names; it is called branding.

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

I wouldn't have been against greater specialization either. (Which for me would have meant more maths, more physics, and less history or literature or philosophy.)

Though I really don't know why it's always the maths that have to take that kind of shit in the media. Except maybe that, indeed, the journalists and writers tend not to be good at it.

I think it partly has to do with how useful it is. Do most people use math in their daily lives, beyond what they learned in the early years of grade school? Not really. Even if they wanted to, I'm not certain that many people could find opportunities to apply math to. I won't say that all other school subjects are used daily by everyone, but I think there's more opportunity for it.

That isn't reason enough to start cutting math, though. The reason to cut it gets into the author's point: for what ever reason, math is the academic subject that results in the most people failing and having to spend more time in school or working toward their degree. He seems to be arguing that we're losing out on a lot of productivity over one subject, and a subject with questionable value for most people at that. Additionally, he argues (and gives one example) of how companies hiring in certain areas still train their employees in the particular type of mathematics that those jobs demand.

In theory, there is value in having people held back and challenged by math. The math itself aside, it's a lesson in personal discipline, among other traits. But is it worth the years lost as people repeat coursework, or the potential productivity lost as people grow discouraged and leave school entirely?

I happen to think that it is worth it. I'm not even talking about algebra itself: remove this hurdle, and what stops you from removing the next subject most responsible for students failing? If students never encounter something that they have to struggle over, how well-prepared will they be for the "real world"? I think I can see the author's points, but his priorities differ from mine.

[Ithekro]

Might be due for a review on how the subject is taught. Back at private elementary school, we owned our books and could write in them and do our probles in them. By public middle school and high school, we had several year old school owned books. we could not do anything to them. Our style of learning changed from "it the answer correct" to "show your work".

I'd done some pre-algebra in 6th grade and more or less got it. Switching to public school for 7th grade, they were slightly behind where I had been, so I got bored and hated homework (procratinator). So I started doing poorly in math classes. Not poorly on test per say, but since a large part of our grade was the homework, I was doing poorly there. By the time we got back to algebra, I hated it because I didn't care for thing that are not tangible. By the time we got to geometry, I did perfectly fine. There I had something I could consider real as oppose to a concept of something being "x", now I had an object and specific formula to work with.

I still don't care for algebra and never got a calculus class due to the track I was on. It became more a lack of caring than not understanding. Likely why I needed to go for social sciences in college. Well that and I enjoyed History. I had wanted to do scientific work when I was younger, and the mathamatics involved usually didn't throw me, but my grades did. (I took a few college science courses and did fine with the exception of microbiology...but that was mainly because we switched teachers after two weeks in a six week summer course...the class kind of collapesed after that).

[Bri]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

Most journalists were in their line because they find math too boring; and many engineers find writing a hassle.

Unfortunately, having too many journalists who don't understand math means that we get to read more junk, and having too many engineers who suck at language means we will never be able to understand whatever they build.

So true, it would help cross-discipline discussions if everyone at least has a basic grasp of math and payed some attention to written language.

It's so annoying to deal with people from senior management who can't handle anything more abstract than a pie chart and or when a scientific article is near unreadable due to poor language use.

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

I think it partly has to do with how useful it is. Do most people use math in their daily lives, beyond what they learned in the early years of grade school? Not really. Even if they wanted to, I'm not certain that many people could find opportunities to apply math to. I won't say that all other school subjects are used daily by everyone, but I think there's more opportunity for it.

Like hell. There's nothing useful (day to day) about about literature or philosophy, or, really, any subject taught after middle school. So where are the lobbies to remove those? Where are the sitcom characters complaining about how useless and difficult those subjects are?

[Dhomochevsky]

My speculation is, that math produces that many fails, because it is in the nature of math that results can be clearly marked as right or wrong.
In many other subjects you can get by with almost no work, without understanding much and still pass with good grades. You get better at writing tests eventually, not so much at understanding the subject itself.
Math is the first subject that confronts many pupils with the need to work for their grades.

I don't believe in 'talent' in the way it is described in the article. Talent eventually sets an upper bar wich is hard to pass by even with a lot of work and effort. But this is after you put in real effort. Then talent will get you the little extra distance to reach the very top.
This is way beyond what's happening in schools however. There it's all about motivation.
If you are motivated in a subject, you will do great. School is not that hard. You don't need 'talent' for any of those subjects, not even maths. Did you see the maths they were teaching 100 years ago? That was scary stuff. And still kids managed to do it.

That aside, there are so many holes in those arguments in the article, that it's hard to take it serious.
The most glaring things:
- we don't need to teach math, companies will eventually do that for us <- then why don't you make away with school all together? Everyone gets trained on the job, only for the job and is an idiot otherwise. What if I want to start a company myself however? Or work as an independant/contractor? Or change fields later in my life?
- institutes and companies require high maths scores just for the heck of it <- or maybe they actually think it's needed? If you pursuit a higher education and someone hires you because of it, then the expectation is not, that you can do the basic routine job just fine. You are supposed to be someone to solve those problems that come up in addition to that. That's why they pay you extra. Sometimes this may require maths and I'd say the institutes teaching in those fields, and the companies hiring from there would know better.

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by GDB

He/it is not. He's a political science professor. That should explain why he thinks math should be removed.

I was a political science professor, and believe me, Andrew Hacker and I are poles apart on what our supposedly shared discipline should be about, as well as on the role of mathematics in the social sciences. I used to teach the statistics sequence for graduate students, comparative voting behavior, and a little choice theory, so you can guess where I come down on the value of math. You don't get very far in the behavioral wing of political science without a decent background in statistics, and you would find it impossible to contribute to the theoretical literature in game and choice theory without a lot of training in, and a flair for, math.

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by Anh_Minh

Like hell. There's nothing useful (day to day) about about literature or philosophy, or, really, any subject taught after middle school. So where are the lobbies to remove those? Where are the sitcom characters complaining about how useless and difficult those subjects are?

Those subjects deal with communication and analysis of self vs. surroundings and events. I'd say they're involved with day to day things (although I never took philosophy classes in grade school... or in college, for that matter).

But c'mon, I'm a scientist - I don't particularly care to defend those topics

Originally Posted by Dhomochevsky

My speculation is, that math produces that many fails, because it is in the nature of math that results can be clearly marked as right or wrong.
In many other subjects you can get by with almost no work, without understanding much and still pass with good grades. You get better at writing tests eventually, not so much at understanding the subject itself.
Math is the first subject that confronts many pupils with the need to work for their grades.

I find this to be a rather insightful point.

Originally Posted by Dhomochevsky

That aside, there are so many holes in those arguments in the article, that it's hard to take it serious.
The most glaring things:

You left off the one that I found to be most egregious: that engineers and other professions requiring good amounts of math now have high unemployment rates. Thus, we have either trained too many and/or it makes no sense to train more because they won't be able to find jobs.

That was some really short-sighted, one-dimensional reasoning to come up with such an idea. But then, he may be feeding into the latest craze that's hitting America: jobs! Jobs! Jobs! Nobody cares what the jobs are or what the work is done toward, we just want to hear that people are being employed and that jobs are being created.

[Dhomochevsky]

I gave him the benefit of the doubt there, because I don't know enough about the details of employment rates in the U.S. and what differences there are between engineering degrees from different schools.
Maybe some engineers are just not as good as others? Maybe some fluked on their maths?

Were his proposal to be used however, 10% unemployment rates would be the least of their problems. How are engineers coming out of a school system like that supposed to compete internationally? Who would hire any of them? I guess that's where his company training theory kicks in... if only those companies couldn't hire already trained engineers from other countries.

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by Dhomochevsky

Were his proposal to be used however, 10% unemployment rates would be the least of their problems. How are engineers coming out of a school system like that be supposed to compete internationally? Who would hire any of them?

you just remind of some of the recent Dilbert strips.

[DonQuigleone]

To be honest, of all all the divisions of Mathematics, besides Arithmetic, Algebra is by far the most useful. It's fundamental to many things we do, particularly if you do anything remotely technical. It's far more useful then Calculus, Matrices or Geometry. Statistics could probably rival it though.

[Bri]

Originally Posted by Dhomochevsky

My speculation is, that math produces that many fails, because it is in the nature of math that results can be clearly marked as right or wrong.
In many other subjects you can get by with almost no work, without understanding much and still pass with good grades. You get better at writing tests eventually, not so much at understanding the subject itself.
Math is the first subject that confronts many pupils with the need to work for their grades.

I'm not sure about that. I've also seen students with a knack for the sciences struggle with learning foreign languages and the discipline required. For lazy people it's easier to learn to like what they are good at, rather than to learn to be good at what they like.