Posted on 03/07/2006 10:12:59 AM PST by RBroadfoot
None, according to Richard Cohen of the Washington Post.
EXCERPT: I am haunted by Gabriela Ocampo. ... failing algebra six times in six semesters, trying it a seventh time and finally just despairing over ever getting it.
The L.A. school district now requires all students to pass a year of algebra ...
Here's the thing, Gabriela: You will never need to know algebra. I have never once used it and never once even rued that I could not use it. ...
Gabriela, sooner or later someone's going to tell you that algebra teaches reasoning. This is a lie propagated by, among others, algebra teachers. Writing is the highest form of reasoning. This is a fact. Algebra is not. The proof of this, Gabriela, is all the people in my high school who were whizzes at math but did not know a thing about history and could not write a readable English sentence. ...
Algebra ruined many a day for me. Now it could ruin your life.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
What you want to do, if I understand this right, is express a ratio using whole numbers?
To do this you need to first convert both values to the same unit of measurement. You want the smallest unit of measurement (meaning the largest numerical value). So in this case we want to convert to yards.
So 3.75 miles (times 1760) is 6600 yards. 6600 yards to 1000 yards. We can then drop the extra zeros (divide both by one hundred). 66 to 10.
Write a radio to compare 21/2 yards to 5 feet (3 ft = 1 yard).
Again, pick the smallest unit of measure. That would be feet. 2.5 yards would be (2.5 times 3) 7.5 feet.
7.5 feet to 5 feet. But we don't like decimals or fractions. So multiply by 2. 15 to 10.
SD
Let's do this one again, using the same formula I just used for the others.
Cups is the smaller unit of measurement. So convert 1 pint to 2 cups. Now your ratio is 3/4 cup to 2 cups.
But since we don't want fractions or decimals, we need to multiply by a number to make the 3/4 a whole number.
If we multiply by 4 we turn 3/4 into 3.
You must then, of course, multiply the other half/side of the ratio by 4 as well. 2 times 4 is 8.
So 3 cups to 8 cups.
SD
But you did all of those things. You don't have to do them any more? Great. But, students should learn some algebra. They don't have to keep doing it, but it will be good that they learned it.
LOL, that explains a few things.
LOL, you tell him. :D
How many 16 year old kids know what they need in life?
BS! I've used it in construction all my life!
My knowledge of the business.
Ramp up time to know all that I know would be too time consuming and bothersome to my company especially with some indian who smells like curry. We arent a huge conglomerate that can fire and rehire without missing a beat.
What is odd is what you explained sounds pretty much how I tackle programming issues yet rarely find myself doing any sort of math (recognizable to what I learned in high school at least). Just how one perceives a problem and handles it from there is the difference I suppose.
All of that perhaps is true, but the fact remains, he used both algebra and trig, though he didn't know it by that name.
Likely, he picked up 'rules of thumb' which were essentially the same thing.
My Uncle Jack graduated from the same institution - University of Hard Knocks.
I am green with envy, I have a very good memory but no where near photographic. I trained in math, I really wanted to be a mathmathicain, I was good but, to make it in math you have to be great and great I wasn't. Oh well, I am a great programmer, and I mean really great. It was fun, getting harder and harder to stay current, but I am still a force. LOL, now I need to help a freeper friend do fractions, LOL.
This was and is a great thead, very nice to "talk" to you. Really.
Write a ratio and compare 3.75 miles t0 1000 yards (1760 yds = 1 mile)
Write a radio to compare 21/2 yards to 5 feet (3 ft = 1 yard).
Ok what is going on here is not ratios, the ratios are a piece of cake, but before you can do the ratios you have to convert to the units the question wants. The questions are poorly written but what the hell.
3/4 cup is 3/8 pint. How do I know this? well there are two cubs in a pint so 1/1 cubs = 1/2 pints the conversion factor from cubs to pints is 1/2 so multiply the 3/4 by 1/2 and you get 3/8. The trick here is to determine what units to convert to. In this case cups to pints so multiple by 1/2 since a cup is 1/2 of a pint.
Write a ratio and compare 3.75 miles t0 1000 yards (1760 yds = 1 mile)
This one is better written, here we are asked to to convert miles to yards, piece of cake. 3.75 mile equals 6600 years but the question wants an answer in units of 1000 yards so divide 6600 by 1000 and you get 6.6. Once again the trick is to determine the unit of measure the question requires.
Write a radio to compare 21/2 yards to 5 feet (3 ft = 1 yard).
This question again badly written, but it looks like we need to convert yards to a unit of measure of 5 feet (somebody is smoking crack,but what the heck), first convert 21/2 yards to feet. 3 * 21/2 = 63/3 since there are 3 feet in a yard. Now we have 21 feet but the unit of measure the question wants is 5 feet so divide by 5 ... 21/5 is 4.20 or 4 and 1/5 units of 5 feet.
I am surprised that you are being asked to deal with unit of measure in pre-algebra, now in Physics and chemistry units of measure become very important (and a pain in the butt) but totally unnecessary in pre algebra.
What you need to do with these type of question is determine what unit of measure the final answer should be in. Once you do that the rest is easy, that is the key to these kind of questions, make no assumptions! read the question and first figure out the unit of measure needed for the answer.
How long does it take the average fastball to travel from the pitcher's hand to the catcher's mitt? (To make numbers simple, assume an "average" fastball travels at 90 mph, which is actually kind of slow.)
(Hint: use the relationship in the first problem.)
One thing that really tricks me off and I see it time and time and time again is programmers making problems much more complicated then they need to be. Drives me crazy, but my soap box is not handy, it's late am I'm tried so I'll leave it at that.
You've never figured out how long it was going to take you to drive somewhere?
Where I went to high school, algebra was a leveling mechanism which gave the nerds temporary domain over the jocks, thereby initiating a truce(I was the latter).
I have dyscalculia, and I am ashamed of it. I always wanted to be a scientist when I was younger, but couldn't, because of it.
"For a long time I have time to time felt exasperated with you that you should be so able so completely to insulate your thinking in nonscientific fields from your excellent command of the scientific method in science fields. So far as I have observed you, you would no more think of going off half-cocked, with insufficient and unverified data, with respect to a matter of science than you would stroll down Broadway in your underwear. But when it comes to matters outside your specialities you are brilliantly and consistently stupid. You come out with some of the goddamnest flat-footed opinions with respect to matters which you haven't studied and have had no experience, basing your opinions on casual gossip, newspaper stories, unrelated individual data out of matrix, armchair extrapolation, and plain misinformation - unsuspected because you haven't attempted to verify it."
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