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To: beaver fever

LOL. That's how I felt with Math. As a matter of fact, I feel that way with my oldest daughter when she starts talking string theory and quantum physics and computer geek at me. I just stare at her. Can't figure out where she came from.

My son is having trouble with a high school geometry teacher right now because the way he learned math, using Saxon Math, is different than what she teaches. She actually told him that if he did the problems his way instead of hers, she would mark it wrong even if the answer is right. So one day it was his turn to do a problem at the board, does it his way, and she tries to show the class how this student did it wrong and can't get the right answer using this method....oops. I'm beginning to wonder how much this has to do with his 15 week grade...


2,635 posted on 12/23/2005 9:38:41 PM PST by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.)
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To: metmom
When I took high school geometry it was classic Euclidean.

Bertrand Russel was very hostile to Euclidean geometry after he published Principia Mathematica because Euclid's geometry was incomplete.

After Godel published his incompleteness proof for simple arithmetic Russell kept his mouth shut.

At any rate my approach to geometry was quite simple memorize all the axioms including their names and do all the end of chapter exercises citing every axiom I used in the proof. I ended up with a perfect score on the final.

Oddly enough I had switched to the academic stream the year before and had to catch up. In grade eleven I was finishing 9th grade algebra while doing 10th grade geometry and 11th grade algebra at the same time.

My friends from junior high who thought I was a duffus, couldn't understand why I could switch from a non academic to academic steam in one year, do twice their course load and get a first class average.

The answer simple hard work.
2,641 posted on 12/23/2005 10:22:49 PM PST by beaver fever
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