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 ...
I question the IQ assigned to a fair number of the people in the sort of schools you’re talking about. I was born, raised and worked in a dominantly Mexican American mining town. The kids I went to school with knew they had a relatively well paying job if they kept their nose clean and suffered through high school. Now in a mine there are strong back, weak mind jobs. Then there are a lot of mining and craft skills that require brains along with brawn. You can imagine the need for engineers, skilled operators and mechanical designers. A lot of the people what worked themselves into positions requiring math, etc acquired their skills as “smokestack engineers”.
The same kid who presented himself as a moron in high school came forth when it was in their interest. That said, they did benefit from math, painfully taught to them. Basic literacy so so.
You are correct. Same experience. As for algebra, I’m no math whiz, but the most important thing I learned from that subject was when you are having trouble solving a problem...math or otherwise...try inverting. I do that at least once a week. Thank you, Jacobi.
I had long division in third grade because we had a combined grades 3 and 4 class. We had an excellent teacher who encouraged us. It never occurred to us that it was too hard to try. I’d like to trade the cultivation of snowflakes for high expectations.
Why didn’t someone have that great idea in 1963?
You’re a genius....
Most programming is pushing data around in and out of persistent storage. Creating a variable is algebra. Every program starts with creating data structures which is algebra.
Math major in college, do software professionally.
I think that a good 80% of the population will basically never internalize the abstractions that are required from algebra on. Some of them may learn it by rote but it won’t stick. Some of them will never learn it.
50 years ago being able to “solve for x” probably mattered a lot when doing every day practical problems. Nowadays “there’s probably an app for that” more than likely.
Given that the vast majority of kids are never really going to get farther than mere rote learning and given that there really isn’t a practical need for those skills any more I would advocate that mandatory math be dropped in favor of basic coding and computer problem solving. Spreadsheet computations or programming embedded devices like thermostats is to today’s world as algebra was to the world of the 50’s and 60’s.
Sure, let the 20% of students who like, enjoy and are good at abstract math have as much of it as they can handle. But for the mandatory - everyone must do this - I think kids would be better off learning basic coding, algorithms, spreadsheets, device programming, and simple procedural programming.
Today if you stopped the average adult on the street and gave them some classic problem like 2 trains are approaching each other, they start off 40 miles apart, both speeds are given and ask them to calculate where the trains meet, very few could begin to solve the problem. As society becomes even more “computerized” this trend is only going to become more pronounced.
So accept it and move on - solving for x just isn’t as important in today’s world. Using a spreadsheet to compute total cost of ownership of a car bought on interest is.
As society becomes even more “computerized” this trend is only going to become more pronounced.
I fear you are correct but it’s exactly the general sort of question an underground development boss would have to understand and calculate. However, our school systems and most industry today are no more demanding than making change, very challenging for mosh HS grads.
It was sarcasm. Sorry.
I have a dual dual BS in Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics degrees.
Using a limit was extremely difficult to conceive. The Greeks and others were doing very well with geometry even 200 BC. The concept of the limit, which is the basis for the calculus, was conceived by Issac Newton in the mid 1600ths. So from the time of the Greeks to Isaac Newton it took around 800 years to conceive of the limit. That is why it is hard to comprehend at first. Even the greatest mathematical minds for many many generations could not conceive of this thing called the limit.
What finally helped me understand the limit is reading about trigonometric and geometric applications of the concept, as well as engineering applications. Also, there’s a number of mathematical discussions about it in various places. I guess it just finally sunk in, because one day it just seemed obvious as it’s own “thing” and I found I’d accepted it. So yeah, you’re right, for me at least it was just a paradoxically simple concept that I could not wrap my brain pan around no matter how I tried, except finally from sheer familiarity over time. That was the first time I ever faced such a conceptual difficulty, and it threw me for a very long time. In contrast, imaginary numbers were SO impossible to imagine I just accepted them as defined and never struggled with them. So maybe it boiled down to my belief I could somehow actually imagine infinity, and that was what I kept trying and failing to do.
We had a joke back in Detroit:
You have 3 6th graders: A White Kid, A Black Kid, and a Hispanic Kid. Who’s tallest?
The 18 year old.
That formula is very familiar, but I just realized I haven’t seen it since about 1989. I know I’ve used it in the past. Would you mind reminding me of what it is?
I should probably look it up for myself, but I’m just taking a short break before I get back to trying to figure out why we’re having some problems with TLS v1.2 in our secure ftp (sftp) servers.
I loved math and physics (especially solving statics and dynamics problems) back in school.
Mark
There’s a chain of convenience stores called “Quik Trip,” and I think that the first thing they teach their new employees is that they MUST keep the bathrooms clean. And the second is how to make change by counting it back to the customer.
It’s a pleasure going to a QT, and I’ve never been to one where the bathroom was dirty, and have always had my chance counted back to me.
Mark
I guess I should have added to my post - of course basic arithmetic and simple geometric skills should continue to be taught. But at some point when math becomes sufficiently abstract (algebra, calculus, geometric proofs) is when I think you stop forcing all the square pegs into the round holes.
I knew a math teacher in a post high school Voc/Tech school I went after I got out of the Navy. He was all gun ho he was going to teach everyone advanced math because they could not function without it. The man could not understand how a craftsman could place a ladder on the side of a structure and climb correctly without standing there measuring angles and doing math formulas. I showed him the simple decades old feet and and placement rule that is used. He still couldn't understand it. I said and I don't get advanced math. But I know how to do formulas to obtain the knowledge I need to do a task.
Placing all students in algebra and advanced math classes is a waste of time and taxpayers money. If a persons career and higher education choices call for it then by all means take it.
At SUNY @ Stony Brook in the late 1980s, if you graduated with a BScCS (computer science,) you were 9 hours short of a minor in math. Many who graduated went in that direction.
In fact, my CS101 professor (yes, a REAL professor teaching a first semester CS wash-out course) had his doctorate in "Numeric Solutions to Partial Differential Equations." But he couldn't explain the difference between a function and a relation. Brilliant guy, but he was at Stony Brook for research, and he couldn't teach worth a darn.
Mark
I work as a maintenance mechanic in health care facilities. my primary background was HVAC and electrical. High school grad with 4 years Navy working on Chill Water A/C units and two post Navy time courses one was Industrial Electricity.
One hot afternoon a three phase motor burnt up on a critical air handler at work. My boss was in a panic and called a contractor who said it would be a 48 hour turnaround to get it rewired and that was air shipping it out of town. I told him we have a spare one in the storage room. He said the one that burnt up is a six wire motor and two 45 amp circuit contacts. I looked at the spare and it was 90 amps three wire three phase. I said get me some help to manhandle the old one out and I'll get this one up and running. He said it won't work. I tried to explain but then said I said trust me and give me an hour to identify the phase of the leads and I'll have it up.
We got the motor mounted and I place the leads in a safe place I could work them hot. About a half hour checking and triple checking my measuring the voltages and I had the six wires each paired to the right one. I hooked it up and the contractor pulls up as we were fixing to test it. I told him what I'd done he thought for a second then grinned and said Yeap fire it up.
Common sense often means more than being able to work complex formulas. I was the only man of the six who worked in my shop who knew how to work in a building wired three phase including the house panels for lights.
One day we were putting in GFCI outlets. I took one hall another guy too the other. He came to me after a while and said he was getting shocked. He said I killed the breaker but I'm getting shocked. I said did you kill the one above it and below it as well? He looked at me like what would it matter it's 120 volts. It was in conduit only requiring one neutral for the two hot conductors. He was breaking the neutral and getting bit because the other circuit on the neutral was hot. That building had a 2000 amp system.
I had the aptitude early on even in grade school for working on things including building my own transistor radios. But I can not study books except to obtain what I need to know to do the task. I didn't have the attention span that requires and it is a neurological impairment.
My dad who had a G.E.D. saw my interest in electrical work and encouraged it. He was a TELCO Central Office Switchman. He maintained a mechanical switching office designed for handling long distance dialing. Two floors the size of a small Walmart filled with bays of relays before the electronic switching technology was developed. He trained me in his office to troubleshoot, read diagrams, etc. Most of it hands on.
In the Navy I could stand Top Watch over ten Chill water plants for the 2000 tons of cooling the ship took. I could balance heat loads etc without working it out on paper. Some craftsmen adapt well to not having advanced math. My first F.I.L. was a mechanic on anything from a car to a 671 Detroit diesel. He had an 8th grade education and worked for Ryders as a truck mechanic. Would I want him to balance my checkbook? No LOL. But he was a great mechanic.
When hard times hit I took a job as a clerk in a store. I got the job because I could make change to customers without using the register to tell me. WE had to count from amount due to amount handed us back to the customer. It lessened the chances coming up short because both the customer and myself were counting. When the customer accepted it the money went in the till. There are high school grads who can do algebra but can not tell someone what 8X11= without a calculator. If algebra, geometry, etc had been required I would have been a drop out. I took basic math classes in high school. It's more than sufficed. I have nothing against higher level math courses for those with the aptitude and educational goals for a career requiring it. But a required subject for ones not? No.
Yeah, let’s have more terminally unemployable people. What could possibly go wrong?
He needed a 16" or longer zip tie...
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