Highschool kids should be shown what math is

[Anonymous No.11288238]

I think there's something really wrong about the way they teach you math in highschool in the sense that you don't really know what math actually is until a lot later. Let me elaborate.

>Be younger me at hs
>Decide to go into EE because ive always liked doing electronics projects, physics and had a very pronounced natural inclination for science
>I didnt think much of math, just thought it was a mere tool to be used with no innate interesting qualities
>I was fairly vocal about this and no one ever corrected me
>Fast track to uni
>Doing all my engineering math courses
>Multiple professors personally recommend me on the department for a math specialization
>End up starting the math specialization just because the professors saw something in me and because it seemed interesting
>Taking real analysis now
>Have never studied something so damn fascinating
>Always leave class genuinely happy like a kid and thirsty for more knowledge
>Now I realize I should've studied math to begin with
>At this point I've finished 99% of the EE degree
>If I would've known math is like what im talking in analysis, heck even in some calc courses, ive would've gone into math in the first place

This is literally my highschool teachers fault. They were a bunch of lazy fucks that regurgitated material and never bothered to show us what certain disciplines are like at a higher level.
Don't get me wrong, I like EE, but math is insanely beautiful and fascinating, its literally the pinnacle of human intellect and achievement. The younger generations should know this.
Ask any "normie" what they think of math and they'll say shit like its insanely boring and that its very hard and whatnot.
The publics perception should be changed, specially amongst those that will enroll into college.
What are your thoughts?

[Anonymous No.11288252]

>>11288238
Most normies would have a psychotic break if you told them they had to take real analysis in highschool and were held to the standards that students are expected to meet at good universities even in introductory analysis courses. The exercises are difficult, the exams are brutal, the concepts are not easily understood even after long consideration of the definitions given and examples provided by instructors. Many smart people fuck up in hard math classes, normies would bomb out in droves. You're just experiencing aesthetic pleasure at something abstract that complements your psychological predisposition and allows you to think more carefully than you've become accustomed to. This does not imply that it would be good for most other people. Also, at many good private highschools and in other nations than the United States mathematics based in abstract theory and rigorous proofs is quite common, it also hard filters most people. The Europeans and asians segregate students far earlier than we do based on their aptitude and performance in challenging courses, the reason this isn't done here is a mixture of institutional incompetence and the fact that we have a huge population of borderline retarded people who would be exposed as idiots if this were implemented.

[Anonymous No.11288261]

>>11288252
Im not american.
Im also not advocating for analysis classes in hs.
Im advocating for proper communication of what math and the sciences are to highschool kids such that they actually make an informed decision when choosing majors, opposed to what I did.

[Anonymous No.11288372]

>>11288238
>math is insanely beautiful and fascinating, its literally the pinnacle of human intellect and achievement. The younger generations should know this.
What a faggot. At least you had the sense to go into EE as a kid.

[Anonymous No.11288413]

>>11288238
Try to take at least a topology or abstract algebra course before you graduate and apply to a math masters program.

[Anonymous No.11288449]

>>11288238
>your thoughts
I would introduce experimental and statistical comprehension to highschool kids
People read "doing X doubles the risk of Y" walk away thinking Y is an absolute certainty.
They wont check if their initial chance of Y was 0.01%, or ask questions about test subjects or control groups or sample sizes or reproducability.
They wont look for the study that was quoted by a news outlet that was paraphrased by clickbait sites that was screencapped by a FB post before poking share.
In our age where the internet gives us more information then we could ever process, our education system seems to do nothing to teach us how to qualify it.
Maybe they do this already, i havent been in a classroom for a while.

[Anonymous No.11288473]

>>11288449
So you want people to check their sources and not believe everything they see in the great web? Impossible, just look at web, the amount of links here tell us that half the people in /sci/ uses Wikipedia, the ultimate meme, to learn

[Anonymous No.11288477]

>>11288473
I meant /sci/ instead of the second ‘web’

[Anonymous No.11288487]

I agree

[Anonymous No.11288946]

>>11288413
Im actually going to do just that.
Ill most likely go into an applied math program with a signals and systems specialization

[Anonymous No.11290490]

>>11288238
i just want to say that picture related was a very c00L website

[Anonymous No.11290748]

>>11290490
Where's that from?

[Anonymous No.11290754]

>>11288238
I feel the same but look how triggered everyone is going to be from this image.

[Anonymous No.11290755]

>>11288238
Absolutely agree. School became retarded, creating retarded people.

[Anonymous No.11290762]

well in my math classes we used to argue if math was invented or discovered, since like fifth grade

[Anonymous No.11290792]

>>11288261
>>11288238
I completely agree that teachers should relate their lessons to higher level concepts, even if it only appeals to the few who comprehend their breadth. I'm happy I discovered higher math concepts through youtube and 4chan during my senior year of HS, otherwise I'd never have considered becoming a math major.

[Anonymous No.11291215]

>>11290754
>>11290755
>>11290792
Im glad there's people that have the same take as me.
Now, how would we go about actually showing the younglings what the math and sciences are at a higher level in such a way that they actually get excited about this topics and not just scarred for life from failing a hard analysis class in hs?

[Anonymous No.11291296]

One problem is, people with the training and understanding of high level math often want to be paid more than teacher's salaries. Perhaps this is different in different countries.
I agree that it would be helpful, but reading your post you seem like you're still in a honeymoon state with math. Give it another semester or so and focus on where you are, not on where you were.

[Anonymous No.11291301]

>>11291215
3blue1brown is a good youtube channel, and you can always tell students "if we get work done early we can watch a video". Similarly, numberphile and mathologer are good (but 3b1b is good for, say, an early calculus class).
You can always talk about why pretty things like fractals work they way they do, you can talk about basic ideas of topology and how we think about deforming one object to another, you can talk about gauss curvature and give an intuition for why it is intrinsic, etc

[Anonymous No.11291392]

>>11291301
This could actually work i think.
His linear algebra videos are perfectly digestible for highschool kids.

[Anonymous No.11291424]

> say shit like its insanely boring and that its very hard

I really blame the shitty high school books used for this. I had a book in high school that was standard across nation but almost had no explanation in it or examples on how to actually solve the problems the book gave. Luckily the internet was just emerging and there were a lot of help guides online for it so I could toss the shitty book aside. If you had a shit math teacher you were just fucked using that book, you wouldn't learn it and would just fail the test since for each chapter there would be not even 1 A4 explaining everything and maybe 1 example of a very easy problem at best.

Now imagine doing calc 1 and 2 with a book that's like that. Because in my country in highschool they already have you do that (uni lasts only 3 yrs here with 0.5 yr of that being minor space, you have different levels of education in high school already). It was not a lot of fun at all. You also have no clue why you're really doing it or what you can even do with it at all. At uni I found that the entire point of math was that you could do very cool things with it, but that's complete opposite of HS.

>>11288449
This is probably more important than calculus as you probably will employ these statistical methods in any degree, not just STEM. Also without actually knowing those methods you can not read a lot of scientific articles since most will include some level of statistical analysis.

[Anonymous No.11291516]

>>11291301
Hm, it's worth a test imho. I disagree with including numberphile though.

[Anonymous No.11291706]

>>11288238
>I have a plan to overhaul the math curriculum so that 80iq retards (including teachers) can see the beauty of yoneda's lemma the way I do
New Math was a failure. If you want normies and darkies to think like math autists, the answer is unironically pic related

[Anonymous No.11291733]

~15% of the US population has an IQ below 90. You think they will appreciate more difficult math classes? I've worked with these people, there is a hard limit on their pace of understanding. You have to take a long time with each concept, and time is the limiting factor. More difficult material will take even more time. Furthermore, there's barely enough time to cover what's already covered in math classes today.
>>11290754
This image does not take this into account. You'd have to cut half of the material to have enough time to cover it. Do you believe someone with an IQ of 90 will have enough time to grasp real analysis, abstract algebra, quantum mechanics, solid state, particle and nuclear physics, computer security, OS design, network and communication systems, and parallel and distributed computing in 1 year? Really? Real Analysis on its own is pushing it.

[Anonymous No.11291755]

>>11288261
People self select into higher fit environments as they age, you find yourself attracted to math in your 20’s because it suits your personality and abilities, this doesn’t always hold but its a common experience for many people. “Figured myself out in my 20’s” because the genetic components of your cognitive phenotype became more strongly dominant over your behavior as neural plasticity and the downward pressure of parental influence abated. What needs to happen is that people need to be put onto vocational tracks early, around 13-14 if they display low competence in technically demanding subjects. Europeans for once have this over us, we really need to stop asking 80 iq minorities to do calculus and we really need to allow highschool students to receive specialized training for jobs they would enjoy as soon as possible so they can avoid wasting 4 years of their potential earnings drinking and accumulating debt.

[Anonymous No.11291935]

>>11291733
>Do you think they'd appreciate more difficult math classes
I explicitly said im not advocating for highschool analysis classes or something like that.
Read >>11288261

What Im shooting for is something more akin to >>11291301

I dont want to torture hs kids with hard analysis classes at a point in their lives where they dont understand what mathematics are.

I want to find a feseable way to show the kids that math and the sciences can be fascinating, rewarding and fun.

Ffs we live in a world that when I tell people Im about to get my EE major 99% of the times their immediate reaction is "wow so you're like crazy or something" and where higher math/science knowledge is viewed as incredibly arcane and esoteric. This needs to stop imo.