Posted on 10/24/2018 5:13:51 AM PDT by reaganaut1
. . . in fact, my reference to Strawberry Roan is a sort of poetic reference to how we like to think we are good at something - e.g., math - and then can be taught that there is more of a challenge in it than we like to think.
Bump for later.
My college career started poorly. I had to take a foreign language (I stupidly didn’t take Spanish 4 in high school) and when I got to the language desk I was told “Chinese is still open, but Russian has a short waiting list.” If I knew then what I know now about both Russian and Mandarin I would have picked Chinese. But I stupidly got on the short waiting list for Russian.
Everyone with any sense dropped Russian and so I got in. Four days a week at 8 AM. There were two Russian teachers—an American and a Russian. The American’s attitude was, “I was able to learn Russian, so by God, you will be able to learn it too.” The Russian’s attitude (Russians were pretty thin on the ground in the 60s) was “I know how difficult it was for me to learn English, so I know how hard Russian must be for you. Naturally, I took the course from the American and got a D. But you had to take two semesters to satisfy the language requirement, so I took the second course—couldn’t get into the Russian’s class and so again I got a D. But D is passing and so I satisfied the language requirement—but just barely.
central_va wrote: “My 400 level “signals” class prof, a class which is really 90% statistical analysis, said look at the person to your left and look at the person to your right by the end of the semester only one of you will still be here.”
The pass rate for “Big Daddy”, Earl Lafon’s math 201 class was 10%. The only real way to pass, was to arrange your schedule where you could take the class multiple times, keep enrolling in the 0900 class. That gave you a fifty percent chance of getting a different professor than “Big Daddy”.
That was only a problem for Aero’s and EEs. We had to have a “C” in 201 to take “202”, Complex Variable. All other engineers and scientists only had to make a D.
I was fortunate and got ABC Bernhart on my second enrollment. He actually did give 40/40/20 ABC. Once he had a class where the final was 100% of the grade. There were 10 students. He had each student put a problem they thought appropriate on the black board. He looked at the problems and told the class those ten problems would be the final.
At the final, Bernhart told the class that he knew each student had a ‘crib copy’ of the exam that they intended to turn in in lieu of anything they produced at the final. He said they could turn that ‘crib copy’ in then and they could all leave. Ten students turned in ten identical solutions. Bernhart gave 4 A’s, 4 B’s, and 2 C’s.
I would sign up for this course in a heartbeat. I have read many of these works as part of my own liberal arts education including Pascal, Racine and Baudelaire in their original French. I have also suffered through classes in differential equations, physical chemistry and java scripting, but would find this class a joy in comparison.
Ditto on Organic Chemistry.
Tentative Bill plus one
We called it Stat
Want something hard? Play a Dark Souls video game. LOL
How fun! what a great course to take.
I would love it.
Reacquaint myself with old friends and buckle down and read those I missed last time around.
Wouldn’t be fun without a group to seminar with.
In many cases, blame it on the teachers. But you have to wonder "so many of us" complain the Dems are irrational.
Some of the smartest people are “liberals.” And also some of the most uninformed.
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