/sci/ - Science & Math

>>7100928
I'd say that's a higher level than the math I had when I was 15. However I've never been a top student in math so I never got to the hardest stuff.

I'm in Sweden, and the general opinion is that school here is too easy. I don't really have an opinion on the matter.

Plug and chug.

>>7100928

I believe I would have handled it at 15, since that is like 2nd year of high school and we already went over functions in that time and used them in physics. Although I believe 90% of my classmates who didn't care about math would have failed horribly.

>>7101168
Not my education by the way, I'm talking about your brother's.

We do a lot of systems of equations here at 15, some are genuinely awful and took several minutes to solve.

We also did Riemann sums, the curve was based off of the most accurate approximation from the previous semester, in my case that was awful because some sperg always got within three decimal points.

>>7100928

Seems like it would take a couple of minutes to get if you are familiar with the material, and a couple minutes more to read up on the material and solve. I noticed the 'higher level' at the bottom, is your brother taking an accelerated program? If that's the case you can't really compare it to public math education of a country. I took the International Baccalaureate program in Canada and the topics we studied were far more than the average student, despite the fact that I was studying in the best educated province.

>>7100928
>US Common Core

>Preschool
Counting
>1st Grade
Basic addition
>2nd Grade
Basic subtraction
>3rd Grade
Negative numbers, zero
>4th grade
Times tables/fractions, inequalities
>5th Grade
Division, powers, decimals
>6th Grade
Roots, primes, factors
>7th Grade
Pre-algebra
>8th Grade
Algebra I (single variable linear equations)
>9th Grade
"Geometry" aka Pythagorean theorem, similar triangles, and a few basic geometric definitions
>10th Grade
Algebra II: Quadratics, conics, matrices, polynomials (no solving cubics or quartics)
>11th Grade
Trigonometry: definition of (co)sin, (co)tan, (co)sec, sin^2+cos^2=1 (no other trig identities), (1+x/n)^n definition of exp(x), logarithms
>12th Grade
Calculus up to disk and shell methods

Absolutely disgusting really

>>7101224
This minus definition of e and exp(x)
And plus properties of curves (things like continuity, extrema etc.) without rigorous definition.
For example,
>continuity="It's when you can draw the graph without lifting your pen"

German math education btw. I think it's on average even worse than the USA's

>>7101211
There's three different 'streams' here, higher level, ordinary level and foundation level. About 40% people do higher level so its kinda standard, about 58-9 do ordinary and about 2-1% do foundation which is like 67x13 while having a calculator beside you.

>>7101224
>no solving...quartics

I still hate that shit. Busywork for the sake of it.

>>7100928
Is that the standard if higher level mathematics in Ireland? Pity

>>7101318
>It's when you can draw the graph without lifting your pen
To be fair, that's a pretty good layman way to say it. Baby analysis stuff should be taught before university though especially since being good at arithmetic is completely useless these days.

>>7101211
sup albertan

12th grade here, and I'm currently taking what you guys would call Calc 2. Also done some algebra (matrix, using them to solve systems of equations, groups, rings, polynomials). Some calc based physics is introduced in 11 and 12th grade (babbys first waves, relativity, nuclear, etc) but many kids aren't really paying attention to those, since if you chose physics as your 3rd subject for the baccalaureate, you get to pick between thermo, optics, mechanics, electricity (you have to chose 2 of them, all non calc based).
In chemistry we are currently doing p-chem after 2 years of orgo, but chemical education is really shit, I went to the olympiads and learnt from based English books, in school they just make you memorise shit.

And that's scientific education in Romania.

>>7100928
US sucks. The coasts are supposed to have good education, but I'm in the West coast and it still is pretty bad.
However, at least kids here have the opportunity to take higher level classes pretty easily.

>>7101530
The problem is without a rigorous definition there is room for interpretation, which leads the teacher to teach something wrong.
For example, our teacher told us that an open interval (a,b) cannot be continues.

>>7102405

Doesn't change the fact you're a filthy gypsy. I bet you stole that education

That kind of problem was the harder kind of problems you could realistically be asked to solve in the French's national exam at the end of high school, if you were a math/science "major", 10 years ago. That'd make you 15 or 16.

The hardest we had was if you took math "specialty" in your math/science major, in which case you also had differential equations (like, simple ones, all linear etc). Most students weren't able to solve the problems that involved them though. Maybe some simple exercises which made them straight-up quote their notes or textbook, but that's it. People didn't tend to have any insight on what these things were useful for, and they had no idea about what to do with that knowledge in practice.

I'm pretty sure it's substantially worse now.

>>7102589
And soon he's going to be stealing your job. I've seen several PhD candidates from Eastern Europe and in my experience, all of them were both nice and pretty good. If I'm not the only one with this point of view, I'd imagine that they get recruited quite easily (in the U.S., that is).

>>7102589
Very mature line of thought, and not at all ignorant. Gypsies came here when the Byzantine Empire started to fall apart, they have nothing in common with romanians.

>>7102684

Says the romanian

>>7102661
>Eastern Europe
>Romania

No, Romania is in the Balkans aka the hated perineum of Europe.

>>7102821
Good counterargument. Would use/10

I guess geography isn't thought în that fancy country of yours. The Balkans are south of Romania, here we have the Charpathians.

OP here, question for people, is maths compulsory all through out education? Or at a certain stage can you choose to drop it? Its compulsory here up until college, also there's no 'Trigonometry' classes or 'Algebra' classes its all just maths, which i don't think is the best.

>>7102821
Romania could be in the Balkans or in the Charpathians or whatever, open a fucking map of Europe: they are in the Eastern part of it. It doesn't even matter anyway: the point is, I had a Romanian guy in my lab and two Serbians, and they are great.

>>7103266
In France, the first time to get a choice that really impacts the classes you're going to have (if you follow the "general education" line) is before your 2nd year of high school, where you have a few choices, among which one focuses on French, philosophy, history and foreign languages, one on maths and sciences, and one on economics and social sciences. You have a varying degree in all of them, but in the former, in your last year of high school, you're still only answering questions like "What is 75% of 80%", literally: your math classes are basically going back to what you did in junior high (hard to even call them math classes anymore). I think they have one logics class just because they use it in philosophy too, but it's a very basic level, and it's the only "new" thing they see in math.

ITT: A group of people in there 20's/30's looking at high school math and saying "so easy". This is /sci/. Please kill this board.

>>7103293
Its not doing harm and its about the quality of math education which is what leads to the quality of mathematicians of the future.

>>7103285
Pretty much this in Romania as well. Fun fact: there are "natural sciences" classes and classes that are focused on math and computer science, however most of the guys at physics/chemistry olympiads are from this math classes, not from natural sciences.

>>7103303
If we cared about math education, it would look this.

>>7104397
smells like upper middle class privledge

>>7104397
This could be the accelerated course progression.

>>7101224
To clarify: common core just sets MINIMUM standards. Most decent educational systems go above this. I was in trig when common core was implemented and we went FAR deeper than how you just explained it.

>>7104397
I'm in the top 2% on standardized tests in the US, and I am pretty sure I couldn't have followed this.
On a side note
>math focused
>religious studies
gg.

>>7104461
That's pretty much it for normal trigonometry courses besides law of sine/cosine and angle addition formulas.

What else did you do?

>>7104397

This is literally a bachelors in pure math with a physics/EE/CS minor to be started at 8th grade

>>7102650
I passed my end of highschool exam in France about 5 years ago. That kind of problem is among the simplest possible (though most problems aren't particularly harder than that tbh), it's the kind of shit we did in physics all the time (simple mathematics disguised as physics). No decent student would call it difficult, though most would find it annoying.

Likewise, baby differential equations were common core (but here I mean newborn baby differential equations). The speciality revolved around basic stuff on complex numbers and arithmetic.

Ultimately though it depends highly on which highschool you attended. Some have a good grasp of metric topology before ending highschool, other struggle with y'(t)=a*y(t) where a is constant.

>>7103285

Fun fact: about 30 years ago, when the people who are typically teachers in mid-career now were highschoolers, there were two "literary cursus", one math heavy, the other math-light (both were less math-heavy than the science cursus). The math-light literary cursus (so the less mathematical of all HS paths) covered material up to derivatives of products and quotients.

Nothing of that is extraordinary, but it's rather saddening when you consider that the brightest students in literary cursus nowadays basically study midschool material, when the dimmest literary students 30 years ago studied derivatives.

>>7101224
Is this real? They had us learning trig in 8th grade. Not like that's much better, but still.

>>7100928
That's just plug and chug. You're golden if you know what a variable and a constant are. I'm pretty sure the average 13 year old in the US is doing this.

>>7104397
This would work if you completely ignore developmental levels and choose not to educate everyone.

>>7101224
Common Core math is actually more robust than that.
http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Practice/

>image related
My best friend for the past 14 years

>>7104608
>I'm pretty sure the average 13 year old in the US is doing this.
how little you know. The majority of people in my school (in US) didn't know about the concept of exponentials until high school.

>>7104610
I was doing that stuff when I was 12, but I was advanced track. That put me a year ahead, so that should be what 13 year olds were doing.

I'm 32 now.

FYI, common core standards now place this at the high school level.

>>7104608
>developmental levels

Piaget is a retard and his theory of child development is utter crap.

>>7104623
Common Core is the <span class="math">minimum[/spoiler] standard. Sadly, it's an improvement from before.

>>7104608
>Common Core math is actually more robust than that.

No, it's not. They just do a good job of hyping up and exaggerating what they do for each grade.

>>7104626
Oh? Enlighten me, senpai.

>>7104630
It depends on the state. I will say for mathematics it changes things for children that have difficulty with the standard algorithm. I feel its emphasis on understanding concepts rather than plug and chug will help students down the road.

>>7104631
Considering that list has zero as 3rd grade concepts, and Common Core actually covers zero in Kindergarten.... Sounds legit.

>>7104665
>Considering that list has zero as 3rd grade concepts, and Common Core actually covers zero in Kindergarten.... Sounds legit.

And it has "algebra" and "geometry" in all grades.

>>7104674
>implying you ever stop doing algebra
>implying geometry isn't applicable to virtually everything
>implying that if it doesn't include every aspect of a field of study that you can't refer to it by the field it belongs to

>>7104689
>>Teach them about basic shapes
>Wow they now know geometry, how wonderful!

They only list it to obfuscate what meager shit they actually do.

>>7104710
>>>Teach them about basic shapes
>>Wow they now know geometry, how wonderful!
>They only list it to obfuscate what meager shit they actually do.
This is why geometry is listed at more than one grade level.

Do you think it's actually possible to learn all of geometry at once?

>>7104716
And they still don't actual learn any geometry until 9-10 grade.

>>7104721
How do you define geometry? Are you thinking geometry is only trig functions or something? Geometry is kind of a GIGANTIC area of study.

I get your troll and all, but I'm patient.

>>7104716
>Do you think it's actually possible to learn all of geometry at once

That's not what's going on. They are barely teaching anything and are dragging their feet as much as possible. They don't spread the material out because there is a lot of it or iterate it in more depth each time. It's spread out to waste time.

>>7102405
my current professor is romanian and she pronounces Pythagorean in a really funny way

can you vocaroo for us?

>>7104734
So how would you improve it?

i'm talking intro to algebra at community college, how pathetic am I on a scale of 1-10 /sci/?

by the end of the year I should be past college algebra and well into my science classes.

>>7104752
>college algebra
You mean calc?

Seriously, college algebra/pre-calc should just be called, "I fucked up when school was free."

>>7104752
1/5

Everybody starts somewhere. Do your best, anon

>>7104730
>Geometry is kind of a GIGANTIC area of study.

They aren't going through a book of Euclid each year. Every professor of math would agree that public school education in geometry is shit and most students are very weak in it compared to a few decades ago. It's why we get raped in international rankings since the tests are heavily geometric.

If you don't think that is the case try skimming some of Coxeter's books.

>>7104752
A lot of people here might talk shit, but just do you and work at it, man. I started in the same place as you, and I'm doing pretty well in calculus so far. Just study hard, acknowledge your weaknesses, and work to patch them up.

>>7104756
I spent my 20's photographing naked chicks and partying. Now I think math is cool again.

>>7104757
Thanks bro. I really want the prestige associated with being at math and they won't let me take any of the classes I want until I get these done. -_-

>>7104766

Its not that bad. We're just graphing slopes and getting into functions now. Lotta babes that always wanna do problems together too.

I dig it.

>>7104759
I think the big issue is that, at least when I was in school, geometry was broken up so much that students would often forget the earlier material when confronted with geometry again. The surface introductions don't do students well if that's the only time they'll ever see it for a few years.

>>7104748

Put in place grades 1-7 from >>7104397 with non-honors 7th split into 2 years. Grades 8 and up in math are optional.

>>7104759
What grade level would you start the first book at?

Additionally, why would you even care about "international rankings" since you just pointed out that they are weighted differently than our education system? A lot of other places teach emphasize rote memorization rather than developing individual thought. It's one of the reasons that foreign students get called out for plagiarism.

Is the purpose of education to score well on a standardized test?

>>7104781
That's not remotely realistic for general education.

Keep in mind that much of the backlash against common core is that it's too complicated for many parents to figure out (it's not complicated at all).

Additionally, where are you going to find people qualified to teach those subjects on a public educator's salary?

>>7104787
>Additionally, why would you even care about "international rankings" since you just pointed out that they are weighted differently than our education system? A lot of other places teach emphasize rote memorization rather than developing individual thought. It's one of the reasons that foreign students get called out for plagiarism.

I'm taking about Europe, not East Asia.

>>7104744
Sure, sorry for being so late.
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1BHDtz8F2MS

>>7100928
Yay, found another Irish guy on /sci/! We're a rare breed lad...

>>7104558
>common core

FYI, this phrase is not in regular use in English and only appears as the name of a recent mathematics education reform in American primary and secondary schools.

>>7104558
Just read the rest of your post, that is very sad.

>>7100928
>maths education in your country?
← performance of my country versus the other Developed Nations, source http://news.ets.org/blog/from-americas-skills-challenge-millennials-and-the-future

>>7100928
>What is the standard of maths education in your country?

I think it's hating white people, honestly...

or if it isn't, it will be in the very near future.

>>7100928
>y = Ae^(kt) describes how boiled water cools
he's 15 already and doesn't know about partial differential equations?
what kind of shitty school is he going to?