Say Goodbye To X+Y: Should Community Colleges Abolish Algebra?

NPR ^ | July 19, 2017 | Kayla Lattimore and Julie Depenbrock

[C19fan]

Algebra is one of the biggest hurdles to getting a high school or college degree — particularly for students of color and first-generation undergrads.

It is also the single most failed course in community colleges across the country. So if you're not a STEM major (science, technology, engineering, math), why even study algebra?

[Gideon7]

My first computer class a math major student got into an argument with the teacher about how:
a = a + 1;

was impossible. He quit the class.

---

The potential conflation of the assignment operator versus the equality symbol has long been a problem in computer languages and has been fixed in many different ways. Visual Basic punts and uses context. Pascal uses := for assignment. C uses == for equality. Java uses == for identity equality (but not content equality). JavaScript uses == for equivalence after type coercion but requires === for a strict equality test (again excluding content). It can be pretty confusing.

[JTHomes]

I’m not sure if I have trigged an insecurity or what. Maybe your extensive physiological experience can determine that.

But let me try to clear this up for you. There is a lot of research that concludes that intelligence is the only factor that explains proficiency in algebra. That is not a statement of correlation. I never implied that intelligent people are all good at math, or that there aren’t different aptitudes regardless of IQ. Show me someone with a 70 IQ who can do algebra.

This study discusses whether memory or intelligence is more a determining factor in math success, analyzing models that tried to control on whether memory was simply contributing to higher intelligence or was itself causal. But any way you look at it, intelligence is required for mathematic proficiency. You can’t be an idiot and do algebra. But you can be smart and also not do algebra, and that is okay.

http://www.psychologie-aktuell.com/fileadmin/download/PschologyScience/4-2009/psq_4_2009_403-419.pdf

[Nifster]

My daughter initially went to SCAD to become a sequential illustrator. The day her English prof told her she was too smart to be there and she should get out ASAP, her drawing teacher handed out twelve inch wooden rulers. He said we are going to spend the next two weeks learning how to use these.

She decided to go to NGCSU in Dahlonega and become a nurse. She did and she is. She is a very good ICU nurse with other experience in hospice and home care and med surg

[Nifster]

Have you ever had to double or half a recipe

[Ciexyz]

I hated algebra and geometry and agree it should go. I actually loved the practical math courses that they said were for the stupid students, er, underachievers.

[minnesota_bound]

Isn’t algebra symbols just 2 + 2= 4 in shorthand?
If so then why not just show the numbers?

BTW I am no Einstein..... : )

[kosciusko51]

Have you read A Mathematician's Lament, and, if you did, what are your thoughts on it?

Thanks!

[editor-surveyor]

.
Community colleges should not even accept anyone that does not have a minimum of two years of Algebra.

Are they teaching failure?
.

[minnesota_bound]

#16 The Big Bang Theory - Penny - Molecules
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUQVn2d-FBE

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Calculus could be taught with simple rules: d/dx x^n = nx^(n-1)... simple.

But if you never learned LIMITS then you don’t understand WHY this is true. or why d/dx e^x = e^x (weird......!!!)

Calculus could be taught with simple rules . . . as long as you just use a computer program which will do all the work.

. . . the problem then is reduced to making sure you are asking the computer the right question. That is always the issue in the real world. But if you don’t know the lingo, you can’t ask the right question.

[Mr.Unique]

Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, Trigonometry and Calculus were all required before high school graduation.

Where and when on earth were there such requirements for a HS Diploma?

[Mr.Unique]

Higher math courses (like algebra) teach valuable reasoning skills. For example, you cannot solve an algebra problem by "doing your own thing". You must follow the rules in a logical sequence. And there is only one right answer.

+1

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

I took Algebra in HIGH SCHOOL. ..it should be a requirement for HS Diploma.

It was one thing, for me, to take “algebra” in HS - and another to pass Freshman Algebra when I took it in engineering school.

Even beyond that, they changed the math curriculum in my HS after I graduated (and after Sputnik), and my neighbor across the street asked me for help with it. It was stuff that I hadn’t been exposed to even in college, at that point. But, I told her, what you do soon learn in college is how to read the textbook. Wasn’t trivial at the time, but I was able to do it. So I didn’t have to lose face . . .

I guess I’m saying that it depends on what you mean when you say, “algebra.”

[Enlightened1]

Virginia

[Mr.Unique]

When?

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

’a=a+1”

makes no sense as an equation but is perfectly coherent as a procedure instruction to change the value of ‘a” by adding 1 to its current value.

[Enlightened1]

In the 1970s and 1980s.

You mean to tell me they do not teach these math courses in High School anymore?

[Mr.Unique]

I graduated in 1981. Went to high schools in two states. The classes were available, but certainly not required for graduation.

[Mycroft Holmes]

The source of the actual text...

LockhartsLament

Well worth reading.

[TexasTransplant]

My youngest Daughter (when she was about 6th grade)was totally frustrated with Geometry, (tears were involved)
We had just finished playing Monopoly and it was time to do her homework she came to me for help.
I simply explained to her that it is like a game, like Monopoly, once you know the rules it is just basic arithmetic and when you solve the problem you win. I saw the light go on.
Years later she is now a Theoretical Mathematician Grad Student paying her own way with her Minor which was Statistics.