Posted on 10/07/2023 3:40:59 AM PDT by george76
After a year of remote algebra, Diego Fonseca struggled with advanced algebra. Despite a week at George Mason University's Math Boot Camp, the would-be computer science major failed the math placement test to qualify for calculus four times. He didn't know the basics.
Across the country, more students are placing into pre-college math, reports AP's Collin Binkley. "At many universities, engineering and biology majors are struggling to grasp fractions and exponents."
At George Mason in Northern Virginia, fewer would-be STEM majors are getting into calculus and more are failing, he writes.
“We’re talking about college-level pre-calculus and calculus classes, and students cannot even add one-half and one-third,” said Maria Emelianenko, chair of George Mason’s math department.
At Temple, the number of students placed into intermediate algebra, the equivalent of ninth-grade math, has nearly doubled, writes Binkley. It's the lowest option for STEM majors.
In a softball quiz at the start of last year's fall semester, students were asked to subtract eight from negative six, recalls Jessica Babcock. “I graded a whole bunch of papers in a row. No two papers had the same answer, and none of them were correct.”
“It’s not just that they’re unprepared, they’re almost damaged,” said Brian Rider, Temple’s math chair. “I hate to use that term, but they’re so behind.”
Professors tried "expanded office hours, a new tutoring center, pared-down lessons focused on the essentials," writes Binkley. "But students didn’t come for help, and they kept getting D’s and F’s."
This year, Babcock hopes redesigning the algebra class to focus on "active learning" will help. "Class will be more of a group discussion, with lots of problems worked in-class."
George Mason also is offering active learning, and the option to take a slower-paced math class that takes two terms instead of one.
Fonseca failed the placement test four times, again placing in pre-calculus. He'd need at least one extra semester to catch up on math. He decided to start at community college instead. Using what he'd learned in boot camp, he placed into calculus.
It's five-sixths....
This guy didn’t attend a “math boot camp”; rather, it was a recruitment center for Democrat/Communist Party political candidates, the perfect Democrat/Communist Party candidate being a person who cannot think, who without question does precisely what they’re told to do, and who does not interfere with the Democrat/Communist Party’s primary objective to “fundamentally transform the United States of America” as publicly proclaimed by the mulatto-marxist-muslim in 2008.
Bingo. I taught financial accounting for 35 years. Over that time, students lost the ability to estimate the result of a calculation and compare that to the result they read on their calculators. A large percentage of students have no concept of scale. 1,000 and 1,000,000 are the same number in their minds.
I'm from the end of the slide rule generation. That device gives you two or three significant digits but no decimal. You have to figure that out by estimating the result in your own brain. That habit has served me well.
Fractions are simply out of the question for the calculator generation and percents are a mystery to many of them. Calculators should not be allowed in math until fractions and percents are mastered.
I always started the first day of college accounting principles with a short quiz.
1. What is 38 percent of 100?
2. True or False? Adam Smith must have written a book or something.
3. What direction is it to California?
The results were appalling.
Since math is racist, this actually demonstrates progress on the part of American K-12 education.
We can always import STEM grads if we need them. As long as they’re nonwhite and promise to vote democrat.
“I’m from the end of the slide rule generation. That device gives you two or three significant digits but no decimal. You have to figure that out by estimating the result in your own brain. That habit has served me well.”
I too am from that generation, and agree that being taught how to use a slide rule forces you to understand orders of magnitude, as well as logs. It also provides a sense of whether or not your answer is “in the ball park”.
equals 5/6
That’s how Mrs Baker taught us in elementary school.
My feeble mind this am says 5/6 but not sure with the new math if that is right.
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If memory serves me in my dotage, 1/2 + 1/3 is not even high school level math. Maybe 6th. grade level?
“Take away the calculators. They are programmed from a very young age to reach for the device reflexively. Later in life it’s the phone, cash register, whatever.”
My kids NEVER used a calculator for learning math...simply because I wouldn’t let them. Calculator skills are best taught in a Programming class, right next to computer skills, they DO NOT belong in math class because they have nothing to do with learning math.
As an aside, just because a student is slower doesn’t mean that he or she is less mathematically inclined.
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My son came home from school one day, I believe he was in second grade, he was talking about they had taken that day, he had told me he had done well on the test but his good friend Jimmy had failed it.
I said, is Jimmy kind of “slow”? He said, no dad, he’s fast, he’s always the first one done, he just gets them all wrong.
Still have mine at 82 - and remember how to use it! It’s a Sun - Hemmi I bought in Hong Kong for like $3. Has Chemical scales on it (Atomic weights, pressure and temperature conversions).
It is the same as 5 divided by 6, or 5 out of 6. Your solution of .83333 is correct. 5 is 83.3% of 6.
You’ve clearly not been poisoned by ‘common core’, FRiend.
;-)
Yeah, I remember those days in school, slavin’ over a hot Pickett :-)
You are correct.
On the calculator that is built into every hand held computer (smart Phone) there are no fractions. Calculators use decimals.
Fractions are obsolete
His other good friend, half Korean and female, can't stop the phone from ringing for job interviews. Another STEM graduate. Soft STEM majors, some sort of sciences.
THAT is what they want in STEM.
Come on man, everybody knows 1/2 +1/3= 11/23
The calculator on my iPad can do fractions. I imagine the one on my phone probably can as well. I’ve never looked.
“Fractions are obsolete”
That is 1/2 true.
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