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 ...
The Super America here automatically kicks out the change from a machine so the cashiers don’t have to do all that hard math.
That plus it shows the amount of change in the window...Now, I agree, they sometimes have a hard time counting out what it says in the little window....
Computer programming is 95% algebra.
Frankel is a Mathematician while Hacker is a Social Scientist.
Hey Hacker, why do our Medical Schools require their students to take and pass 9 hours of Calculus?????
Because it demonstrates their ability to abstract which is the basis for higher order thinking; you sorry schmuck.
Algebra is symbolic logic which generates the Equations for the Differential and Integral Calculus.
Rumor has it that Hacker’s next opus will recommend the elimination of Geometry. Obviously only certified assholes are allowed to publish in the NYT!
I never noticed it before, but Julie Christie looked a lot like Mary Travers.
It’s best to learn a language with a lot of dialects from those in the ‘hood where you are going to live.
Interestingly, I could tell from my classmate’s questions what it was that they needed to know. Only after I also learned that the teacher did not know what the student was missing did I decide that I might try my hand at teaching sometime.
Sadly, most math is taught by people who don’t get it. This leads to the students eventually dropping out, because math is cumulative.
And yes, it is hard to understand why teaching how to do long division makes sense in the age of calculators except for the theory about why it works. This is something that math teachers should understand, but most people don’t need.
Too bad no one encouraged you more, that is the teacher’s fault.
I give his name: Mr. Lewis was my Algebra I teacher. I was a freshman and sluffed off on my homework and so did not get the grades I wanted. I kept hoping, over the summer, that I would get him for geometry, and I did. I took an empty notebook and sat myself right in front of his desk. Entered every axiom, postulate and theorem. Did my homework religiously, whipped through my notebook and came out an A/B student. Great teacher.
And here I was teaching math skills to soldiers. Whodaguessed.
Disciplines like algebra are no different from physical training routines for athletes.
Algebra is exercise for the mind.
And it's one or the other! :)
I agree........Algebra and it's fractions helped me tremendously throughout my life. It was the math beyond such as Geometry that was my downfall and if my mom was still alive today, after punishing me severely for flunking Geo., I would say to her "See mom, I was right, I never needed it........"
Pie R Delicious.
In the fwiw dept, in today’s world it is a good idea to have an understanding of geometry, algebra,and calculus.
And women too...
Although, I keep needing a refresher course now and then.
5.56mm
Responsible parents homeschool or select a school for quality. The rest are fraternizing with the enemy.
Numerical approximation is now easy as everyone has a supercomputer of the 70’s in their hands now.
Better to live in harmony with math...
We need more Social Justice Notation. Like in Venezuela....
Yep. The EEs thought that the mathematicians got into a lot of technicalities that the EEs didn’t need to be concerned with.
It is also useful in careers not normally thought of as being science oriented. When I retired I decided to study art very seriously and am taking those courses needed to prepare for an MFA ( Masters of Fine Art). I use algebra often to determine proportions and percentages.
Sadly many of the students in my classes are math cripples not knowing how to read fractions on a ruler, convert fractions to decimals, understand metric measurements, or add a column of two digit numerals without the aid of a calculator. Recently, I was working on a group project with 3 other students and it was necessary to divide 14 by 3. The students were amazed that I could do this instantly using mental arithmetic.
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