Profs: Math classes 'inaccessible and oppressive' to students

Campus Reform ^ | October 30, 2017 | Toni Airaksinen

[C19fan]

A group of professors argues in a newly-published book that math teachers must “live out social justice commitments” to fight privilege in the classroom.

The professors made the argument in a new anthology for math teachers, jointly authored by a trio of Mathematics Education professors: Pennsylvania State University’s Andrea McCloskey, Kennesaw State University Professor Brian Lawler, and Ohio State University Professor Theodore Chao.

[Chgogal]

Hey, minorities of all colors, Rabid Liberals are calling you “STUPID”.

[GingisK]

I’m a “deep embedded” guy, where most of my work is in straight C. I kind of prefer zero being true and anything else being false. Compilers need to get out of my way, I’m busy... ;-D

[3boysdad]

I thought math was the universal language? How can anyone be offended? I sure hope Voyager doesn’t piss any mean aliens off!

[LibertarianLiz]

Yeah, I guess the days when STEM classes were not affected by liberal b.s. are over. “Math is hard” Barbie, can now get a degree in a STEM subject because it will have been so watered down any moron will be given a degree in it.

[LibertarianLiz]

You can't teach what you don't know.

What a hater you are.

I remember listening some years ago to some "educator" saying that if you have a teaching degree, you can teach anything. I remember just shaking my head; but, these people believe that.

Personally, I could not teach math (except for the most basic stuff). Math was always a 'no go area' for me, I don't know why, it just is. I took one of those tests that tell you what you are good at. The English/Business/Reading comprehension are things I scored way over in the Superior range. The Math and whatever you call all of those different geometric shapes, I was way over in the other direction, ya know, Moron.

I don't know why my brain operates in that fashion, but that is just the way I'm made.

[Myrddin]

I have to live in both worlds. My embedded stuff is mostly PIC18F6680 programming in C with an CANopen stack. Critical ISR routines are coded in assembler. I run the chip at 4 MHz to save power, yet I can sample 3 analog accelerometer channels 128 times per second each with a running boxcar average to send up the CAN bus. The temperature channels change more slowly, so once per second is sufficient. The limit switches are the slowest of all. Once per second there too. One PIC16 serves as a tachometer and battery voltage monitor. When the bearing generator is generating a net charge on the battery, the 16F boots a PC104 stack running Linux. That sucks up CANopen messages, forwards over the 1XRTT modem to the remote website, consumes GPS serial messages, does 100,000 samples per second on the vertical channel, the applies an FFT to extract the cup, cone, cage and roller frequencies (5 harmonics) and packages that info for the remote database. The post analysis is done at the remote site database to pick up the defect patterns on the bearings.

I had to mothball all of that when Obama took office. My colleague died of cancer in 2010, so the project is on the back burner.

We published a bunch of papers with IEEE/ASME and I had one at the 10th International CANopen Conference in 2005. Much of what we custom built lives on a common cell phone today. There are less expensive ways to sample the data too. The major problem is the high G environment on the railcar. It tears up even the most rugged hardware. The vertical channel accelerometer is +/- 80g @ 100 kHz.

[Aevery_Freeman]

I agree.

Many, if not most, people do not grasp higher mathematics but have no problem with everyday math.

The school system stigmatizes these kids by forcing them to fail.

ARTH!

[GingisK]

Oh, wow! That sounds like a great project! I just love to work on systems like that, it is almost like a narcotic.

Years ago I worked with a guy who had implemented a "Rock and Roll" car with Southern Railroad. It had much the same gear as you have, but minicomputers such as the PDP-11 were used as the backbone. They lost their car coming down Lookout Mountain near Chattanooga in a derailment. (Looking for bad rail, found some.)

[Myrddin]

I had tri-axial accelerometers on both bolsters for ride quality assessment (vertical, lateral, longitudinal). Correlating GPS to "rough ride" data allowed mapping of bad sections of rail. The "geometry" car would be sent out to do the high resolution analysis after a "find". In place of stink bombs to detect overheated bearings, I had thermal sensors on the inboard and outboard bearing adapters. An 802.11b WiFi network with an OLSR mesh provided end to end communications on the moving train. Persistent NDDS messaging send monitoring data to the locomotive display to spot hot bearings in real time.

I added CAN controllers implemented with the PIC18F6680 to control the handbrake, anglecocks and cutlevers. All of those could be remotely controlled. The couplers were automated to connect the air and ECP electrical bus...hands-free. My contractor at Sharma and Associates did the coupler, cut-lever and auto-anglecock mechanics. Timken did the bearing generator. WiTronix did the locomotive display/control. Wilcoxon Reesarch created the high G accelerometers and did the surface mount boards and packaging. Lots of good people working on the project.

[GingisK]

If I didn't want to stay retired, I'd hit you up for a job! ;-D That it a great project; one to wallow in for as long as possible.

I have used many PICs in my projects as well. I also became very fond of the AVR processors. They have a much better instruction set for when one must dip into assembler. Lately I have been using Atmel's ATXMEGA procssors, which have very rich peripherals built in.

It looks like I will be setting up to use CAN for the high school robotics team. The FIRST-compliant motor controllers must use CAN. That looks like a slick interface, much better than slugging it out with 422/485 on a serial port. Just a tad faster, too. It also is time for me to become familiar with ARM-based devices.

On that "Rock and Roll Car" my friend worked on eons ago, their inertial platform were gyroscope based instruments from Sperry. They were originally made for ICBM guidance, making them truly expensive. Gyro devices are very grouchy. It sure is nice to have the MIMS devices of today.

[Myrddin]

One of the useful technologies that we just started to roll out was an energy harvester paired with a transmitter from Nordic. It was tied to a sensor that measured force applied to a brake shoe. I was disappointed that the finances collapsed before we could integrate that new item.

I really like the variety of small controllers on the market today. My ham buddies are making interfaces for DMR and C4FM to internet as a means of networking repeaters worldwide. It's a kick to use my SharkRF openSPOT as a DMR node and the cheap TYT MD-380 to chat with people worldwide. Hawaii, Arizona, Colorado, New York and Israel chatting as if in the same room. 100 mW over the air on 437 MHz between the handheld and hotspot. Rekindling my interest in the hobby. The TCP/IP work I did in 1985 with Phil Karn (KA9Q) morphed into full time work in network protocols, DSP and embedded systems.

My day job is running a shop of 30 software engineers building mission planning systems for fixed wing and rotary wing platforms. We work pretty hard at creating a quality product. That includes ISO 9001:2015 registration this year and prepping for a CMMI SEI 3 audit. Ultimately, we want to be back at SEI level 5. It takes time to put it back together.