Posted on 05/01/2016 11:46:48 AM PDT by JimSEA
Mathematician Edward Frenkel was promoting his New York Times bestseller “Love and Math.”
Social scientist Andrew Hacker, on the other hand, caught my attention immediately after the New York Times published his article arguing for the elimination of algebra from our education system. We don’t need it anymore, he claimed,. It does us far more bad than good.
Hacker is a hit now. His anti-math book, “The Math Myth: And Other STEM Delusions” is holding its own against “Love and Math,” despite Frenkel’s book being translated into more than a dozen languages and Frenkel’s indefatigable popularization of the power, passion, and beauty of math.
Is Hacker a doublethinking Orwellian demonizer, or does have a point?
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One of the biggest problems for math is that very few us get shown the big picture by master mentors when we’re young the way Edward Frenkel was. Demonstrating an innate talent and passion for mathematics early on, Frenkel recounts in his book how world-class mathematician Israel Gelfand took him in. Every Monday night for nearly 50 years on the 14th floor of the Moscow university building Gelfand “would welcome all undergraduates, talented graduate students and brilliant professors… These meetings, which often lasted well into the night, were more like a social event than a traditional seminar, where a speaker would go to a blackboard and talk for an hour. He [Gelfand] would walk the aisles, stop and chat with people, interrupt and ask questions, pull a member of the audience to the blackboard and ask them to repeat what had just been said or to find a mistake in it. His interest was always in the development of the next generation of mathematicians." Not surprisingly, many of Gelfand’s former students and seminar participants are now prominent mathematicians.
(Excerpt) Read more at science20.com ...
It's easy to get pissed about this stuff, and I feel your pain.
But you're being unreasonable.
There are high schools in the US where the average IQ is 85. The AVERAGE.
The system we have created, or allowed to be created, says that every student who is not severely mentally ill or who does not die of homicide or a drug overdose CAN and SHOULD complete 12th grade and receive a high school diploma, and that when the number achieving this is less than 100%, it's because of bad teachers, inadequate resources, or the wrong curriculum.
People with IQs of 80-90 do not fail Algebra II or trigonometry because they feel oppressed. They do not fail because they accuse their teachers of racism.
They fail because their schooling should have ended after fifth or sixth grade. They are bit players in a macabre morality play, scripted by white wannabe saviors who believe that, if only badwhites are stigmatized and goodwhites make up for imaginary "racism", then the five year plan will be fullfilled.
The systematic accusation that blacks are failing because the educational system is racist is correct, after a fashion. Except the racism that the system stinks to high heaven with is the racism of goodwhites who lack understanding, or who are afraid to face, the consequences of the Frankenstein monster that THEY have created.
The students with IQs of 80-90 who go to high school every day and are enrolled in math and science classes where they don't belong and in which they cannot achieve are not the cause of systemic failure - they are the victims of a failing social experiment which, since it cannot be modified is taking all American schools down with it.
I didn't mind calculus. The symbols and terminology were confusing but the basic idea wasn't so bad.
Don't get me started on trigonometry, though. I really hated that.
Not to mention engineering. If you don’t like bridges and buildings falling down, and aircraft falling out of the sky, that sort of thing, maintaining the inviolability of mathematics and right and wrong answers is required. Keep the SJW Leftists out of it, please, thank you very much.
Believe it or not, I witnessed a live performance of that recently. I was with my wife and she asked the worker exactly that question
The answer was... two 8-inchers.
The logic?
Two 8-inchers gives you 12 pieces.
The 16-incher gives you only ten...
I just bit my tongue and said, we'll take the 16-incher.
I think you hit the nail on the head with that!
That is a good one!
LOL, the idea of "a number approaching infinity" stopped me in my tracks. I thought at the time that that made as much sense to me as "a refrigerator approaching the Constitution" or "the color red approaching a trombone." I had zero context in why a number would behave in such an alarming fashion, rather than simply remaining steady in its designated value. Not to mention the zen state my mind went into in trying to imagine ANYTHING "approaching infinity." I didn't learn calculus in that class, but I sure learned a lot about meditation.
That’s so easy I can do it in my head. The answer is the one who pays.
See the guy who pays always gets more pizza unless he opts out and takes instead the last slice.
It’s an economic theorem.
“Who needs grades 6 through 12?”
‘cause they’re still learning to read...
Total flameout! I don't know whether it was the combination of trying to learn the calculus at the same time as computers (or what passed for computers in 1972) or it was just simply beyond my understanding. Functions did not make sense and "imaginary numbers" made the final drawing stroke across my throat.
I'm still pretty good at math and the like, but my "math ego" certainly took a critical hit from calculus.
Yep - see my post 108. A good teacher is CRUCIAL.
Not to mention computer programming.
Or, in the case of a pizza, PiD2/4
And Danica not only looks smashing in that dress, she has written some math help books focused on middle school and high school math. Pre-Algebra: Kiss My Math; Geometry: Girls Get Curves; Algebra: Hot X Exposed; General: How to Survive Year 6 through 9 Math without losing your mind
From Amazon: Best known for her roles on The Wonder Years and The West Wing, Danica McKellar graduated summa cum laude in mathematics from UCLA, went on to co-write a published math theorem, and continues to be an outspoken role model for young women to excel in math.
We have no need for STEM in the ‘hood!
That's understandable. It's why there are entire math books containing just integration formulas.
Surprisingly, though, even simple differentiation/integration can be quite useful. Specially in coordinate geometry, which for simple engineering and surveying are all over the place.
pie r squared?
No, corn bread r squared. Pie r round.
That is about it now a days in school with common core.
Algebra is the basis for all math since it starts with basic add/subtract, layers in multiply/divide, fractions then gets fancy with these to teach powers, parentheses, equations and such.
Trigonometry, geometry and calculus all use algebraic functions but carry it into different concepts and utilities.
I can't imagine any education omitting algebra. That is equivalent to omitting learning to read.
Algebraic methods are key to electrical engineering equations....
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I would argue:
Algebraic methods are key to everything.
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