no, the Prof was a good man/professor and taught Logic, COBOL, FORTRAN, RPG and Assembly
Posted on 11/04/2011 1:57:53 PM PDT by neverdem
LAST FALL, President Obama threw what was billed as the first White House Science Fair, a photo op in the gilt-mirrored State Dining Room. He tested a steering wheel designed by middle schoolers to detect distracted driving and peeked inside a robot that plays soccer. It was meant as an inspirational moment: children, science is fun; work harder.
Politicians and educators have been wringing their hands for years over test scores showing American students falling behind their counterparts in Slovenia and Singapore. How will the United States stack up against global rivals in innovation? The president and industry groups have called on colleges to...
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The chemistry department gave the lowest grades over all, averaging 2.78 out of 4, followed by mathematics at 2.90. Education, language and English courses had the highest averages, ranging from 3.33 to 3.36...
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“They learn how to work with their hands, how to program the robot and how to work with design constraints,” he says. But he also says it’s inevitable that students will be lost. Some new students do not have a good feel for how deeply technical engineering is. Other bright students may have breezed through high school without developing disciplined habits. By contrast, students in China and India focus relentlessly on math and science from an early age.
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Teachers say they have been surprised by the sophistication of some of the freshmen projects, like a device to harvest kinetic energy that is now being patented. But the main goals are to enable students to work closely with faculty members, build confidence and promote teamwork. Studies have shown that women, in particular, want to see their schoolwork is connected to helping people, and the projects help them feel more comfortable in STEM fields, where men far outnumber women everywhere except in biology...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
That way students would be prepared for calculus sometime in high school and no make-up would be needed for that particular deficiency.
But that's just me ~ and probably Herman Cain as well. I doubt Romney and those other folks got past ACCOUNTING ~ which can be replaced by a spreadsheet program.
Anyway, the real difficulty in the math programs is that the university systems shifted to a First Year program that combined "How to Use a Computer" course with "Refresh your Algebra and Your geometry" course ~ so a student short on computer smarts had to take that course.
Some schools make it a "combined requirement" so you have to pass a test for both, but if you are deficient in one you take just that part. Other schools make it a "combined course" so if you don't pass the test you have to take the whole enchilada.
Lots of pretty bright kids still don't understand how computers work because THEY DON'T CARE until they have to take a make-up course!
The situation is more one of definitions than of causes.
Right!!!!
Exactly the same here, I passed up to Trig and Comp Sci C++ AP in high school, then as a Poly Sci major had to take the normal college math for a course or two.
The college math was like 8th grade math, but I’m not going to lie, I’m glad it was. I had no interest in furthering my on paper math skills. It really just wasn’t something I needed to be successful (and even though I’m a business man, I don’t ever have to do much beyond some complex excel formulas- helpful sure, but I could easily get by without.
Top math and science students are almost always very literate. It’s the mediocre ones who are poor at spelling and writing. But it makes many people feel better to think students are good at only one or the other.
Top math and science students are almost always very literate. It’s the mediocre ones who are poor at spelling and writing. But it makes many people feel better to think students are good at only one or the other.
Amen!
I was GREAT in math, but when it came time to help my own daughter; I couldn't even understand what they were trying to teach!
Except in the USA!
Regardless, we need to push more advanced math at high school, IMHO. They shouldn't be seeing calculus for the first time in their first year of college.
I did; I was a freshman in Drexel Institute of Technology (as it then was) when Sputnik was launched. The local high school reacted quickly, and started teaching math in hs that I wasn't seeing yet in engineering school.Be that as it may, technology provides the answer to the problem of laggard schools; IMHO khanacademy.org pretty much takes care of a math curriculum. Free, and IMHO excellent. From 1+1 to advanced college level calculus and statistics.But let's not give the "liberals" a pass on the thing that is throttling the economy: socialism.
The fundamental objective of socialists is to hog the credit for whatever any engineer accomplishes. That is what it means to "spread the wealth."
I did that once in the remedial math class with a story problem. Within seconds blurted out the answer...the teacher knew I didn’t complete any written work. He is the same one that told me about my dear aunt sally.
____________
I learned it as Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally.
Parenthesis
Exponents
Multiply
Divide
Add
Subtract
This is of course, the order of operations for any math sentance.
and he was right...
Oh, did you go to Stony Brook too? The professor who taught CS-101 that year seems to have been brilliant. His doctorate was from Brown University in numerical methods for solving non-linear equations. But the guy wasn't a good teacher. He was stumped at trying to present the difference between a function and a relation. A simple drawing on the blackboard took care of it for everyone in the class. Though what people who didn't know that in advance were doing in that class escapes me. And they were gone well before mid-term.
Mark
no, the Prof was a good man/professor and taught Logic, COBOL, FORTRAN, RPG and Assembly
I think you have hit the nail on the head,having 4 very bright children of my own. Seeking high grades really makes kids risk-averse.
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