Posted on 07/18/2022 4:40:26 AM PDT by CaptainK
From a Wall Street Journal story by Ben Cohen headlined “The Secrets of America’s Greatest High School Math Team”:
It was a sticky Thursday afternoon in the middle of summer break when dozens of teenagers walked through the doors of their high school. One of the world’s most dominant teams was about to start math practice.
There was probability in one classroom and pre-algebra next door, code-breaking down the hall and number theory around the corner. And there were few adults to be found anywhere. The students would spend the rest of the day teaching each other.
I had also come here to learn from them. I wanted to understand how this otherwise average public high school in Florida has managed to win 13 of the last 14 national math championships
(Excerpt) Read more at jacklimpert.com ...
An amazing, inspiring story, Happening in Florida. This should have National coverage.
Great post! Thanks
Thanks. I hope more Freepers read it today. It’s still kind of early.
Great story. Sounds like a very smart, talented man.
I had an influential math teacher, and the time I and my friends had with him, playing chess at lunch and after school, was wonderful.
He should be the Secretary of Education in the next Republic administration.
My small high school didn’t do well in math. The main math teacher was autistic, and smelled horrible. Most kids were scarred by his example and avoided math and science.
Andrew’s HS math team in west Texas in the early 70s was best in Slide Rule, Number Sense. No “official” UIL State Championship at that time though. Roosevelt in San Antonio was more well-rounded in those two and much better in Science (my team), but Holmes (also San Antonio TX) had a slight lead in Math as a single event. (My wife’s team).
None of us was this dominant this long though.
Slide rules and pocket protectors: the mark of the science nerd!.................Yeah, I had them!........................
The fact that he retired so young and moved to FL and became a scratch golfer fascinates me. You don’t do that w/out an incredible work ethic.
Then he got bored and figured out that his purpose wasn’t really himself, but rather the kids.
But where is the CRT?
btt
The local state university offers an accelerated math class to all the qualifying children in our county, starting in 7th grade. It is totally free, and all the kids had to do was take an aptitude test given by the university match department. All that was need from the individual middle-schools schools was to adjust the child's schedule to allow the kid to leave early, and keeping records of the courses and grades from the university on the kids' transcripts
Our local middle-school head of admin - a real karen who was also the head of the teacher's union - thought that was too much trouble. She announced they would no longer be advertising or supporting kids to go to the advanced math classes. My kids are out of that school, but I complained like hell to every school admin simp there was.
In 1960, in 7th grade, I started an accelerated math track doing algebra, geometry, trig, logic, calculus etc all in the 7th through 9th grades. While I would have been at the top of the classes in regular math, in this accelerated group I was at the 40th percentile and didn’t realize at the time how far ahead it put me for later studies.
Because of this misperception I ended up avoiding engineering and similar studies I might have done well in but used such fields later on in life as a management executive in construction.
I think taking algebra and logic early is a key to becoming a good problem solver in all sorts of fields.
Agree. Algebra and Geometry (at their basics) have always been common sense to me, and in my previous business used them daily. Trig, Advanced Calculus, 400 Level Stat/Econometric classes - not so much (both on the usage and the understanding).
Let’s see the names ( particularly the family names ) of the Florida Math Team members.
In the 2022 Math Olympiad held in Oslo early this month, the top 3 countries were ( respectively ) :
China, South Korea and yes, the USA. Vietnam was number 4 and Romania number 5.
But one cannot help but notice that the Gold Medalists in the American team ALL had Chinese family names.
I did use the calculus in college level economics classes, I have to say that.
It was everywhere in my last semester Econ and Stat classes. Got through on some understanding coupled with memorization and old exams.
When my wife took an MBA in her forties I remember trying to assist in her Stat classes. The Instructor appeared clueless from her notes and written hand outs as well as home work instruction but the text book was the worst piece of crap that stupid academics could hope for.
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