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?
********
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 ...
Unlike the social sciences, you cannot BS your way through a math test. You can shout at the paper all you want, call it "racist!" and any other names that come to mind. The paper doesn't care.
You either "get it", or you don't. Your answer is either correct, or it isn't. It makes no allowances for how "oppressed" you feel.
Disagree. If you are not using an algorithm to create a program, or if that algorithm is not based on firm logical principles, you can be the finest algebraist in the world and never get your program to operate correctly.
My BScEE course in the 60’s was a 5-yr program and we had math classes in all 5 years. I sort of feel sorry for those who quit math in high school. It’s like seeing the preview and never getting to see the movie.
Just using different Greek letters for the standard variables in the same equations can drive a student crazy.
CP is 95% bug killing.
Red diaper baby. And red diaper daddy. Not that it matters. In any case, being on the left in the 30s like Andrew's father was meant something a lot different than being on the left now. Still, Hacker's background may have something to do with his current cause.
As long as it’s not German Fraktur, I’m okay.
To quote James Bond: “I’m sure her figures are perfectly rounded...”
(In theory, practice and theory are the same; In practice they aren't.)
If the goal is that 100% of every demographic complete 12th grade without cheating (by the students) or fraud (by the teachers, now very common), then algebra has to go, and many other things as well.
"Beautiful in a 60s, Julie-Christie-esque way, with her shining fall of straight blond hair that gleamed in the spotlights, Mary was sexy as a starlet. "
http://neoneocon.com/2009/09/17/we-will-know-that-she-is-gone-rip-mary-travers/
If the moron needs to ask, no rational response can penetrate the ignorance.
Well duh. Two plus two equals twenty two.
Physics, chemistry and other sciences require mathematics and right and wrong answers. Not the fields liberals should go into.
He does have a point. A high enough IQ is needed to understand algebra and that IQ level is likely 110 or 115 or more. That means that algebra is beyond the reach of the majority of Americans, especially black Americans.
Also...For the high school diploma to have any meaning beyond that of a certificate of attendance a certain percentage of students will not have the IQ needed to meet the requirements to graduate. Again, that means disproportionate numbers of blacks should fail to complete high school due the Bell Curve distribution of their IQ
Same here. As a matter of fact, I felt that I was good enough at math/algebra/trigonometry (etc) that, when I arrived at the Naval Academy, they asked me if I wanted to be in their first class of Calculus with Computers. I was full of enough piss-and-vinegar that I said "Of course".
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.
At the supermarket near my home the cashiers are only allowed to give you the change that the cash register displays. What you did would upset the entire space-time continuum. Those young dummies can’t reason beyond their “training”. Now if you want people that can think and handle change, truck stop waitresses and cashiers have got it down to a science.
See! You need a hundred page owner’s manual to operate the darn thing.
I hope the First lady doesn’t see this post. She’s FReeping on the living room computer...
5.56mm
Do most government teachers need or use calculus or serious Chemistry? No, they don't but it would insure that they are smart enough to be teaching in any classroom and help lessen the phobia now routinely found in the nation's classrooms.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.