/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.7122485]

What are you opinions on math education in America? Should the system be reformed?

[Anonymous No.7122521]

The system should be abolished. Most people with high school and college degrees cannot do high school-level math.

The system does not teach people to do math, but it does teach them to hate it.

[Anonymous No.7122532]

>>7122521
What would that solve? It would just make everyone even stupider

[Anonymous No.7122549]

>>7122532
No. Everyone already is stupid. It would save people from having their time wasted.

Meanwhile, people who might be genuinely interested will be free to learn math at their leisure, rather than being traumatized by it and scared away.

[Anonymous No.7122565]

The thing is that people here already loved mathematics and abstract problem solving, and probably did during high school. So their "reforms" would be PUT MORE PROOFS IN THERE MORE RIGOR, but that shit is autistic as fuck and would leave people even more perplexed. It's like saying "Yeah I love Schoenberg and Webern, if I had to reform music classes I'd show those plebs the beauty of truly patrician music", don't you see the autismal aspect of this? people would just think it's a nearly-dead cat mauling. We have to accept that the appreciation for abstract thinking, for proofs, for "beauty" in a mathematics sense is not something you can realistically develop in children.

[Anonymous No.7122568]

>>7122549
That seems to make sense. The average person seems to be able to do nothing more difficult than simple arithmetic anyway.

So why did they waste 12 years of my life teaching me that?

spoiler: Public education is just a babysiting service run by the state.
spoiler: All monopolies, whether government or corporate result in inefficiency and waste.
spoiler: You can hire a private math tutor for a fraction of the cost of going to school, and you will learn more that way.
spoiler: The government spends $20k per student per year on public schools. ($15k if you're black.) Where is all the money going?

[Anonymous No.7122707]

>>7122485

Of course it should be. Schools are going as slow as fucking possible in grades K-8 and cover just a single topic per year. I've seen international schools that manage to cover vector calculus by the 8th grade without overburdening the students, which opens up the opportunity for them to actually study science and technology in high school. Too many people are completely illiterate when it comes to understanding how the modern world works and we need to start educating them on it.

[Anonymous No.7122718]

>>7122549
>will be free to learn math at their leisure

How? Kids need someone to guide them early on in their education.

[Anonymous No.7122730]

>>7122565

Kids become disinterested in math exactly because they don't see the proofs. Only getting hand waving explanations and proof by "it says so in the book" leaves them feeling like they don't fully understand a topic and that math in general is arbitrary and hazy. Eventually this uncertainty leads them to start double guessing everything they know, which causes them to start fucking everything up and feeds into "I just don't get math" mentality...

I'm not saying proofs should replace the existing examples and intuition but they should come after them to the cermet the ideas. If they don't care for them, they can ignore them.

[Anonymous No.7122976]

>>7122485
>What are you opinions on math education in America

There's math education in America? Where

[Anonymous No.7122981]

>>7122485
From what I hear it's better than what it is on Canada (or at least Ontario) for high school. AP courses aren't common in Canadian school and there seems to be way more math electives in the US

[Anonymous No.7122984]

>>7122730
Totally agree with you, but I think you meant to say "cerment the idears".

[Anonymous No.7123037]

The solution

>1st Grade
Addition, Subtraction, Clock Math/Modulo Arithmetic, Compliments, Bases
>2nd Grade
Multiplication, Times Table, Repeated Doubling Multiplication, Fractions, Division, Divisibility Tests, Inequalities
>3rd Grade
Decimals, Powers, Roots, Primes, Infinity of Primes/Euclid's Theorem, Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic, GCD/LCM, Euclid's Algorithm, Proof of the Irrationality of √2
>4th Grade
Algebra of linear equations, Functions and Graphs, Method of Coordinates, Systems of Equations, Matrix Operations
>5th Grade
Logic, Proofs, Sets, Combinatorics, Discrete Probability, Geometry (The first book of Euclid's Elements), Trivial Group Theory
>6th Grade
Algebra of Polynomials, Root Finding, Fundamental Theorem of Algebra and Impossibility of Solving Quintics (without proof), Conic Sections, Trigonometry, Rotation Matrices and Vectors, Exponential, Logarithms, Complex Plane, Euler's Formula, Series, Sequences, Limits
Concepts in Physics & Matter, Earth Science, Astronomy
>7th Grade
Single Variable Calculus with Infinitesimals, Matrix Algebra
Chemistry
>8th Grade
Vector Calculus, ODEs, Complex Variables
Mechanics, Thermodynamics
C++/Lua Programming
>9th Grade
Probability & Statistics, Linear Algebra/Vector Spaces, Set Theory & Mathematical Logic
Electromagnetism, Circuits
Digital Logic, Comp Architecture
>10th Grade
Modern Geometry, Differential Geometry of Curves and Surfaces, Topology
Statistical Mechanics, Optics, Advance Mechanics and Special Relativity
Data Structures, Algorithms, Computability and Complexity Theory
>11th Grade
Real Analysis, Abstract Algebra
Quantum Mechanics, Solid State, Particles and Nuclear Physics
Computer Security, OS Design, Network and Communication Systems, Parallel and Distributed Computing
>12th Grade
PDEs, Fourier Analysis, Numerical Analysis, Special Functions
Electives (Organic Chem, Biology, Astrophysics, GR, Electronics, Robotics, Comp Vision, Comp Graphics, Compilers, etc.)
History of Mathematics and Science

[Anonymous No.7123046]

>>7123037

good idea anon, but add tensors in grade 12

[Anonymous No.7123060]

>>7123037
muh dick...if I only had seen this in grade school. Actually being serious, would this be possible? being that nowadays children struggle with bullshit mathematics and all.

[Anonymous No.7123070]

>>7123037

Add in:

>Year 9
Geography, Music and its History, Pre-modern Art
History of the World and Europe up to 1930s
>Year 10
American Government and Political Science
Drivers Ed, Survival Skills, Military Training
History of Asia and Oceania
>Year 11
Macro & Micro Economics, International Economics
Human Anatomy & Physiology
History of the Americas and the US
>Year 12
Money and Banking Systems, Mathematical Finance
Philosophy, Religious Studies
History of the 20th and 21st Centuries

[Anonymous No.7123079]

>>7123037
>History of Mathematics and Science
Disgusting.
And I am saying that as someone who just watched The Imitation Game and enjoyed it.

[Anonymous No.7123098]

>>7122718
I absolutely agree. I fucking hated math when I was younger. I almost failed out of pre-algebra and algebra 1 early on, then ended taking AP calculus my senior year. I just didn't appreciate math when I was younger, now I love it.

[Anonymous No.7123103]

>>7123070
>this is what /pol/ actually believes

[Anonymous No.7123106]

>>7123037
Fourier Transform etc. are 2nd year physics undergrad questions, so i guess this is doable. Not for your average 100 IQ kid though, at least not with the level of understanding required for this to actually be useful

[Anonymous No.7123119]

>>7123103

What's wrong with it?

[Anonymous No.7123126]

>>7122521
>Let's not teach math at all, that will ensure a better functioning society
Teaching math to everyone is important because it teaches them a little about how numbers can be used to solve problems, even if they only use percentages and simple arithmetic it's helpful. Abolishing it is stupid. Just have advanced and easy classes

[Anonymous No.7123157]

>>7123037

[Anonymous No.7123178]

>>7123037
No... Just no.

Have you had any work in education at all? Working with kids? Teaching?

I'm fairly involved with local math classes for fifth and sixth grade. Sixth graders are still mixed up on their multiplication tables. They frequently misinterpret exponents (3^2=3*2). And word problems are practically a different world.

Unless you have some master plan on teaching that allows students to comprehend material, I don't see this as even remotely possible.

[Anonymous No.7123181]

>>7123178
This..

[Anonymous No.7123189]

>>7123178
What if we let kids use the internet all the time and make them get devices implanted into their brains to enhance memory and make interfacing with computers more efficient?

Actually forget about the kids, just give me one send the kids home to tweet or whatever.

[Anonymous No.7123207]

>>7122485
>What are you opinions on math education in America? Should the system be reformed?
Awful truth is that US has one of the best math education programs in the world but the issue is the students. Majority of students in the US are of low IQ and traditional math education isn't working and no educational reform can change that.

[Anonymous No.7123230]

>>7123037
just no anon. maybe at private schools for children of approved geniuses lol.

[Anonymous No.7123237]

>>7123178
I feel like the problem you bring up is more students that don't understand notation, rather than not understanding concepts. Children at that age can most definitely understand exponents and how they work, but it is reasonable that they could mix up the notation of it.

[Anonymous No.7123244]

>>7122485
Just kill math because those spergbergarites can't even solve shit as simple as:

17 people get on a city bus.
The bus makes 4 stops before it gets to the cemetery.
At all the stops 7 people get on the bus.
At every other stop 1 person gets off the bus.
Now the question I have for you is:
How many people are left on the bus?

[Anonymous No.7123247]

>>7123178
The plan for the 99% would be to copy whatever Finland is doing right. For gifted students, the standard math curriculum is pretty awful: too much time is spent on arithmetic and basic algebra, exercises are simple and repetitive, and there's little if any use of proofs.

>>7123037
would be respectably difficult mode, but we'd like to have had the opportunity.

[Anonymous No.7123251]

>>7123244
Acceptable answers:
You don't bury survivors.
The german owns the fish.
42.
The volume of the ocean in quarter teaspoons.

[Anonymous No.7123252]

>>7123178
>still mixed up on their multiplication tables. They frequently misinterpret exponents (3^2=3*2)

"Making sure kids master one topic before moving on to the next" is straight up sophistry used by teachers as a slogan to avoid having to teach more. On the surface it sounds like you should agree with it but that isn't how learning works in any domain. In real life you learn by grasping the material and moving on, and the mastery comes from practicing it as the material reappears in other contexts. Still making mistakes on earlier material is normal, unavoidable, and part of the learning process.

Many physics majors still fuck up basic algebra in Intro Physics but that doesn't mean they should be thrown out of their calculus&physics courses and be put into college algebra to do more of the same. Most of them master algebra from the practice they get in the wild with naturally arisen algebra problems from their later courses. Then they'll move on to fucking up basic calculus instead of algebra in Intermediate Quantum only to master it by the time they get to grad school.

Refusing to move on to the next topic until absolute perfection in the last topic is utterly absurd and doesn't work in real life. Kids haven't become better at multiplication because we now spend three or more years on it. In fact, they seem to have gotten <span class="math">worse[/spoiler] at it than when it was done much faster. What polishes kids' skills is moving on and using them while doing more advanced material.

A non-mathematical example would be foreign language learners. Everyone knows that after the first year of classes, learners will absolutely still fuck up basic 1st year grammar but none of them react to this by mindlessly repeating their 1st year courses. They move on to new material in the 2nd year courses while practicing the 1st year content when it comes up. By the third years they will fuck up 2nd year material but 1st year fuck ups become much rarer. That's just how it's done.

[Anonymous No.7123253]

>>7123251
see? that's why math and real life clash.
everyone knows when a bus gets to it's final destination everyone has to get off except the driver.

[Anonymous No.7123261]

>>7123230
>jelly detected

[Anonymous No.7123267]

>>7123253
no.. just because the bus also stops at the end doesnt make the end a stop. the end remains the end and stops remain stops.

[Anonymous No.7123276]

>>7123267
the.answer.is.1.

[Anonymous No.7123278]

>>7123037
this is absolutely the most retarded thing i have ever seen on this board.

[Anonymous No.7123279]

>>7123276
uhm no. what do you mean by cemetery? As in the bus gets crashed there? or is it just an end stop for a bus that it reaches every day?

Because where I live, people can also drive to the end stop and then leave the bus with the bus driver, therefore the answer can be 42 aswell

[Anonymous No.7123282]

>>7123279
>>7123276
or actually 48. there are 4 stops BEFORE the cemetery and a fifth stop when it reached the cemetery itself. but THAT wouldnt make sense because people dont get into a bus at end stops, but thats what the question asked..

I mean theres a chance those 6 people entering at the cemetery are stupid and confused, and the bus driver tells them to get out again once they were in the bus for a moment. that way it could be 48 still

[Anonymous No.7123284]

>>7123278
>If I can't do it, no one can

[Anonymous No.7123285]

yeeps....everyone has to get off even if they're making a return trip. they have to re-enter the bus and pay another fare.

[Anonymous No.7123286]

17 + 4(7) - 4/2
= 43, not 42 because the driver didn't get on the bus because the driver has to drive to stops, and the driver has to be on first, if he is included it's 42.

44 or 43 people are on the bus, assuming all the current passengers leave, there is one remaining plus 6 or 7 depending on whether the one person leaving leaves on the odd or even.

7±1

[Anonymous No.7123287]

>>7123285
is for
>>7123279

[Anonymous No.7123289]

>>7123284
this has nothing to do with whether i can do it, and everything to do with whether the vast majority of people can do it. you think your average 100 IQ person is going to be able to follow that sequence of courses in the small amount of time allotted in your average high school? you think high schools are going to hire and pay that many >muh Ph.D math niggers to teach and fail 95+% of students failing the courses?

that course sequence is valid for an individualized education and is not at all applicable to the average person. do you think niggers in chicago public schools have the mental faculties to be doing calculus in 7th grade?

[Anonymous No.7123290]

>>7123079
>Disgusting.
>And I am saying that as someone who just watched The Imitation Game and enjoyed it.
that was unnecessary to add. Everybody I know that cares about history of math and science hates that movie.

[Anonymous No.7123293]

>>7123289
Niggers can definitely learn calculus

http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2012/03/predominantly_african_american.html

[Anonymous No.7123295]

>>7123293
>cherrypicking
most niggers fail out of the algebra courses they take in 11th and 12th grade. if you think ghetto niggers are capable of learning calculus in 7th grade you're simply delusional.

[Anonymous No.7123296]

>>7123295

Those are ghetto niggers

>Students admitted to De La Salle as freshmen arrive, on average, a year and a half behind academically. They come from schools including Portsmouth, Ockley Green and H.B. Lee middle schools -- high-poverty schools with low test scores.

[Anonymous No.7123298]

>>7123296
once again
>cherry picking

[Anonymous No.7123300]

>>7123293
>http://www.oregonlive.com/education/index.ssf/2012/03/predominantly_african_american.html
LMMFAO
>white teacher
>whites AGAIN caring more about blacks than blacks themselves

[Anonymous No.7123313]

>>7122718

Not that anon but when I was a kid in school I was indifferent to math. I didn't hate it but my level of interest for it was near zero.

Now here's the thing though I was interested in science and history. Through history I read, learned and appreciated math in a way school never bothered to teach me especially in geometry and trigonometry.

I'm not saying everyone is like me or we should have math history classes, but outside basic arithmetic and maybe algebra school was useless in teaching math. And if I could I would rather have had them give me a double helping of science or study hall instead.

[Anonymous No.7123323]

>>7123252
While you bring up an excellent point, I encourage you to look at Khan's TED Talk. He talks about how holes in math knowledge build over time to a point where the student can become completely lost.

I agree it is unrealistic to spend too much of class time to ensure 100% comprehension. However as students are being introduced to math, I don't see them comprehending stuff at this level. Child development says that abstract thinking doesn't really develop until 12 years of age. Granted there are those that say otherwise. You can look into a book written by Elizabeth Green "How to build a better teacher" that focuses a lot on math education (a chapter of it is available on the NY Times). They show a 3rd grade class that is able to write simple proofs about prime numbers that I found incredibly impressive.

[Anonymous No.7123341]

>>7123323
>Child development says that abstract thinking doesn't really develop until 12 years of age

This kind of bullshit logic was propagated by Jean Piaget who did not believe in past works/studies/history, statistics, the scientific method and controlled variables, nor the basic tenant of cause and effect. It is based solely on asking kids vague questions of subjects they haven't learned yet and if they can not answer it, welp they are just physically incapable of learning it and there is no point in teaching it. I shit you not: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw33CBsEmR4 He is as wrong as Freudian psychology is. At least people recognize Freud as BS now.

Using the same exact techniques as Piaget, I can immediately argue and deduce that the low and middle class adults of the 1900s are physically incapable of learning abstractions using observational evidence of them (see examples from here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vpqilhW9uI ). Clearly in the pass 100 years, the lower class filth has been able to grasp abstractions. This hasn't been the result of some massive state eugenics program but rather they have been increasingly exposed to situations that require abstract thought. The same argument immediately applies to children being asked, for the first time, on concepts they've never seen before (volume and equivalence, axiom based deductions). It's highly outrageous and even insulting to conclude that just because they didn't instantly figure out the right answer, that they can not physically understand the concept being demonstrated. Meanwhile every kid that can figure it out is instantly marginalized as an "outliers", ignoring entire countries of children.

[Anonymous No.7123426]

>>7123323
>a chapter of it is available on the NY Times

Some of the comments on that article are worth reading:

>My son, not a genius, is going into 7th grade and knows elementary linear algebra and differential calculus fairly well. His last 2 years in the Pullman schools, some of the best in the state of WA, have been a complete waste of time so I tutor him.
>When he was younger, he spent hours per week learning the basic algorithms of arithmetic until he know that automatically Now he has to explain the whys of how things work. Sometimes he gets it immediately but most of the time it takes days and I don't help him much. We move on to something easier while he's thinking about sines, cosines, vectors and instantaneous velocity.
>The public schools are basically a waste. You have to tutor your kids or hire someone to tutor. Otherwise there is no hope for average kids.

>Outside the US, teaching is a highly respected profession. Teachers receive good salaries and high social status. Therefore, admission into teacher training programs is highly competitive and successful candidates are smart, motivated, and have good foundational knowledge. In the US, teachers come from the bottom 10% of college graduating classes. Those incoming teachers are weak in fundamental knowledge, motivation, and inherent capabilities. In one teacher education class I taught at Hunter College, none of the 21 students knew who Abraham Lincoln was, and they were college sophomores and juniors. We must begin by attracting intelligent, motivated, ambitious people to teaching by making it attractive. Competitive salaries and ongoing support and training for teachers, like that described in the article, can transform our schools from their dreary present reality into America's real hope for the future.

[Anonymous No.7123455]

>>7123070
Please be joking lol

[Anonymous No.7123459]

>>7123037
There is literally just not enough time in a normal school day to explain all of these topics in depth

Maybe if we removed all other classes and devoted all school time to math

[Anonymous No.7123464]

>>7122485
Just reforing math education seems pointless. The whole educational sector needs a restruturization from the ground up.
My money is a modular system after elementary school.

[Anonymous No.7123474]

>>7123247
The head of education of Finland actually came over here and in a speech declared that what they're doing right cannot be done right in the US, we're simply far too large with far too low a teacher/student ratio.

[Anonymous No.7123478]

>>7123426

Honestly it's probably going to take more than paying teachers more money. At this point the curriculum for public schools is warped to hell and the priorities of the average parent or parents (assuming they mean well) is split between working, paying bills and putting food on the table.

In other countries like germany and japan the emphasis and respect on education/ teaching is essentially baked in the culture itself so even if the parents are barely there society itself will either help you or curse you until you get proper schooling and assimilate into the working class.

In America it's different because the culture lays more emphasis on entrepreneurship and autodidacticism which helps a lot for innovation but at the cost of a lower than average "competitive" society in academia.

The person you pointed may not even realize he or she is prescribing to the very ideals that causes less emphasis put on public education in America. They maybe trying to do what's best for the kid but they're simply reinforcing the feedback loop that's making the public education even more warped by taking it into their own hands rather than start a citizen movement for education reform.

That's of course if they really desire to be like all the "others" education wise.

[Anonymous No.7123484]

>>7123478
teachers do need to be paid more to convince more qualified people to become them

the only people who end up being teachers tend to be idiots - look at education majors in college, a bunch of stupid slutty girls

come on

[Anonymous No.7123493]

>>7123295
>>7123298
The opposite of cherry picking is generalizing which is equally bad.
What is your point?

[Anonymous No.7123498]

>>7123484

Listen I'm not saying they shouldn't be paid more, I would be for it. But the problem goes deeper since all of the nations that we are admiring and jealous of have cultures that are seeped with emphasis in education. Especially the Asian ones where China has had over 1500 years of national testing and people in south korea are breaking laws to squeeze a few more hours of study time for entrance exams.

That's what we're dealing here, people who will most likely curb stomp you if you get in there way of getting into a good program. Because really, that's all they have and their best ticket into a decent life. Of course at least with the Asian countries, the Europeans ones fair much better in decent alternatives.

[Anonymous No.7123799]

>>7123455
>Learning history, culture, and how the world works is bad

[Anonymous No.7123933]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazine/why-do-americans-stink-at-math.html
>I am a mathematician who has taught many undergraduates who have gone on to teach math at both the elementary and secondary level. My main goal was to show these teachers-to-be that mathematics does not consist not mindless calculation but is rather an exciting creative activity. Of course, creativity requires intellectual curiosity and a willingness to learn new ways of viewing what they think they already know. Apart from a few exceptional students, my experience is that most education majors have very little intellectual curiosity. This is not to say that these individual did not become teachers who are dedicated to teaching our children. I am sure that they try their best on behalf of our children. Yet, if we want teachers who inspire creative thinking in our kids, then we need to find a way to attract the intellectually curious and the open-minded to the teaching profession. (It might also be good if university schools of education were to weed out those who have no intellectual curiosity.)

>I was formerly a secretary in a college of education. When chatting with students, I often asked why they chose their particular field of teaching (elementary, secondary social studies, special education, etc.). I remain surprised at the number of elementary and early childhood majors who told me they chose that area because "I can't do math." I am sad that a teacher introducing formal math concepts to children would be a person who believed he/she couldn't "do math."

>This is a fascinating article, but it ignores the elephant in the room. Our teachers come from the bottom of the class.
>Instead of spending time, effort and money improving their academic skills, why don't we offer enough money to hire people who are already better at what they do - academics?
>Otherwise, we will continue to have the academically challenged producing more academically challenged, and wondering why that is.

[Violent Simians Guy No.7123972]

>>7122532
>What would that solve? It would just make everyone even stupider

A true abolishment can't be attained. Reform means change. The system should be changed so that it sifts people to find the Humans, in a less brutal operation than the Bene Gesserit do.

A responsible and sane education system would be dynamic enough to continue sifting people to let them find their own level. Let them find what interests them, then subject them to incremental testing along the way.

Our current system is allergic to anything like that, since few Blacks would end up in anything other than manual labor. So politics and ideology have taken over, wasting a lot of our socio-economic energy.

[Anonymous No.7123996]

>>7123313

This. I have no proclivity for STEM, but the one science class that ever got me excited about science was Chemistry, because that sainted teacher had the sense to teach a lot of the history of chemistry and the personalities involved. I didn't come away from it any good at Chemistry, but I did develop an abiding passion for history and through that good experience, a profound respect for science as something wholly awesome and richly woven into history, even if I wasn't the person to do it myself.

[Anonymous No.7124000]

>>7123119

Silly anon, school shouldn't be teaching people important practical concerns like physiology and economics so they can better manage their lives. Just cram as much esoteric abstract shit that only 1% of them will ever appreciate or use, that way we might be able to bump the numbers up to 1.5%! The rest of the hoi paloi can go forth and run society into the ground due to their ignorance, we'll be safe in our ivory tower!

[Anonymous No.7124061]

>>7123459
>There is literally just not enough time in a normal school day to explain all of these topics in depth

8 hours a day x 5 days a week x 40 weeks in a year is a lot of time.

Grades 1-4 could all be done within a single year's time if they had excellent teachers
Grades 5-7 are fairly normal school years
Grades 8-10 have a decent workload but now you're dealing with teenagers so they should be able to handle more
Grades 11-12 would amount to a full time college workload but they are practically college level already

[Anonymous No.7124068]

>>7122485
The sole issue comes from the fact that each state controls education procedures and protocol

It made sense when nearly nobody went to higher learning, but now it's a mess.

[Anonymous No.7124182]

I don't know about the US, but Germany's curiculum absolutely needs a reform. It doesn't have to be as extreme as some anons are suggesting here, but the pupils should at least learn about complex numbers and matrices in their A-levels.

[Anonymous No.7124192]

http://learninglab.uchicago.edu/Publications_files/23%20Richland%20%282012%29%20Teaching%20Conceptual%20Structure.pdf

Just read this, an interesting article on how US mathematic teaching and solutions do not focus on the conceptual relations but rather focuses on training specific solutions from specific tasks. Some of the examples come from American community colleges, so they may be too shocking for those in actual universities.

>Hereisanexampleoftheanswersproducedbyonestudent(Givvin et al., 2011):
10×3=30
10×13=130
20×13=86
30×13=120
31×13=123
29×13=116
22×13=92
>In summary, most students answered most problems by
retrieving answers or procedures from memory

[Anonymous No.7124200]

http://learninglab.uchicago.edu/Publications_files/23%20Richland%20%282012%29%20Teaching%20Conceptual%20Structure.pdf

Just read this, an interesting article on how US mathematic teaching and solutions do not focus on the conceptual relations but rather focuses on training specific solutions from specific tasks. Some of the examples come from American community colleges, so they may be too shocking for those in actual universities.

Pic related.

[Anonymous No.7124507]

The best motivation a school can provide to make kids score better in math is to sterilize the ones that can't.

Suddenly they'll see it as important.

[Anonymous No.7124537]

>>7124061
you seem to have the impression that 6 year olds are just as smart and learn just as quickly as 12 year olds, who in turn are just as smart and learn just as quickly as 22 year olds. this simply isnt the case.

and designing an entire education system for society that 99% of students fail out of before the end and only .1% actually fully understand and benefit from is completely fuck retarded.

[Anonymous No.7124543]

[meta]

why the fuck do we always have these threads on /sci/? every month,, there's at least one or two "let's improve math education in US".

aren't you people out of fucking high school? what the fuck attracts people to shitpost on this topic? why the fuck do you care?

I just don't get it.

[Anonymous No.7124547]

>>7124543
A good educational system can make mankind advance much faster than 100 Terence Tao's

[Anonymous No.7124571]

>>7124537
>you seem to have the impression that 6 year olds are just as smart and learn just as quickly as 12 year olds, who in turn are just as smart and learn just as quickly as 22 year olds.

No, there's a clear progression of difficulty of the material as you move up the grades. You seem to have the impression that children are children and therefore can't learn anything. Just because our currently bad system causes 20 year olds to learn algebra in college doesn't mean 10 year olds can't understand algebra.

[Anonymous No.7124584]

>>7124543
>what the fuck attracts people to shitpost on this topic? why the fuck do you care?

Once you start impregnating girls, you'll start worrying about your kids' future education.

[Anonymous No.7124587]

Isn't it proven that children learn the best and most when they're younger? Like, 4 years old young?

[Anonymous No.7124588]

>>7124543
>Butthurt underage that hates the idea of harder education detected

[Anonymous No.7124594]

>>7124537
>99% of students fail out of before the end and only .1% actually fully understand and benefit
lololololol

>>7124571
>You seem to have the impression that children are children and therefore can't learn anything. Just because our currently bad system causes 20 year olds to learn algebra in college doesn't mean 10 year olds can't understand algebra.
A strawman made from black and white straw? Neat!

>>7124587
They have shitty teachers, though.

[Anonymous No.7124609]

>>7124571
>No, there's a clear progression of difficulty of the material as you move up the grades.
difficulty, yeah. not workload. teaching kids 3 years worth of material in 1 year means you have to give them 3x as much work. and once you get past middle school workloads in general get way too low but fucking 2nd graders do not need to be doing 10 hours of schoolwork a day like asian robots.

>You seem to have the impression that children are children and therefore can't learn anything
no, I just think they are children and therefore should not be force fed high school level subjects in elementary school.

>Just because our currently bad system causes 20 year olds to learn algebra in college doesn't mean 10 year olds can't understand algebra.
Just because the system could be improved doesn't mean you should be teaching real analysis to 14 year olds and fourier analysis in high school.

[Anonymous No.7124622]

>>7124594
That isn't bullshit either. I seriously didn't get a strong grasp on algebra until I started college (and a pretty good college too) and when it hit me I fucking loved math and even though it isn't my major I still add an extra class of additional math every semester just because it feels like you understand the world more each time you get more of it.

[Anonymous No.7124721]

>>7124609
>teaching kids 3 years worth of material in 1 year means you have to give them 3x as much work

You're wrong because you don't need to spend 3 fucking years on addition or 3 fucking years on multiplication or 3 fucking years on algebra. Each of those 3 years is time wasted on doing the same thing over and over again (far beyond what is necessary for practice) with very little new added in each year. You can very easily cut out the foot dragging and do them within 4 years with plenty of room for added practice. "Motivated" kids have done it all in a year:
>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rave-mehta/reclaiming-our-world-rank_b_6413910.html
>How I Taught a 6-Year-Old Algebra in Four Months
>I was asked to tutor a 6-year old boy named Brad, who was starting first grade, for an hour a night for four nights a week. Brad was your average kid who came from divorced parents with a single mom who was so busy working to keep food on the table, that she would feed him microwave dinners and use the TV or gameboy to keep him distracted while she worked to keep up with the house. When he was with his father, he received even less attention. He had a lot of suppressed anger which would often erupt into temper tantrums and other behavioral issues including a self-defeating attitude. He also had a hard time focusing on anything except the next game he wanted to play and was diagnosed with ADHD
>When I started with him, his class was learning single digit addition (2 + 3 = 5). After helping him with basic addition, I taught him basic rules of math, such as adding anything to 0 is the same number, multiplying anything by 0 is 0, when multiplying anything by 10 you add a 0 to that number
>...
>In addition to solving for basic algebra equations, Brad also learned to graph various equations, calculate the areas of squares, rectangles, and triangles, work with money, measure time and more by the time December rolled around and his 4 month semester was over

[Anonymous No.7124724]

>>7124721
>one kid with super-motivated parents in a perfectly suited environment with a talented educator giving him personal tutoring exactly at the pace he needs is the same as a standardized education system that needs to accommodate the needs of every student in the country
Yep, you're fucking retarded.

[Anonymous No.7124732]

>>7124609
>no, I just think they are children and therefore should not be force fed high school level subjects in elementary school.

Algebra, Geometry, Discrete Math, and Trigonometry have no right being high school level subjects in the first place.

>Just because the system could be improved doesn't mean you should be teaching real analysis to 14 year olds

Real analysis is listed above as 11th grade (17 year olds) and Fourier analysis is well worth teaching to seniors.

[Anonymous No.7124736]

>>7124732
>Algebra, Geometry, Discrete Math, and Trigonometry have no right being high school level subjects in the first place.
Wrong.

>Fourier analysis is well worth teaching to seniors.
Anyone who actually believes this is completely out of touch with society and should not be making any decisions outside of their lab or math classroom.

[Anonymous No.7124739]

>>7124724

God damn you fail at reading comprehension

>divorced parents with a single mom who was so busy working to keep food on the table, that she would feed him microwave dinners and use the TV or gameboy to keep him distracted while she worked to keep up with the house. When he was with his father, he received even less attention
"super-motivated parents"
>He had a lot of suppressed anger which would often erupt into temper tantrums and other behavioral issues including a self-defeating attitude. He also had a hard time focusing on anything except the next game he wanted to play and was diagnosed with ADHD
"a perfectly suited environment"
>an hour a night for four nights a week
"talented educator giving him personal tutoring exactly at the pace he needs"

[Anonymous No.7124752]

>>7124736
>Wrong.

Those classes are utterly trivial. There's no way a child couldn't learn them if they have a teach that understands them.

>Anyone who actually believes this is completely out of touch with society

Fourier analysis is as important in the world as arithmetic, algebra, and calculus is.

[Anonymous No.7124759]

>>7124736
>Wrong.

Those classes are utterly trivial. There's no way a child couldn't learn them if they have a teacher that fully understands them.

>Anyone who actually believes this is completely out of touch with society

Fourier analysis is as important in the world as arithmetic, algebra, and calculus is.

[Anonymous No.7124775]

>>7124739
You are not saying anything worth saying.

All you are doing is pointing out that with individual tutoring and attention paid to a student to teach him at his own pace, you can accomplish vastly more than you can in a classroom setting.

This is very basic shit, it is education 101, every educator and every education system in the world accepts its validity, it also doesn't change shit because you can't tutor every student and trying to teach a classroom full of students of different aptitudes the same material at the same rate will never be anywhere near as effective.

You need to understand this before you can have a serious discussion about education reform. You also need to understand that the point of a standard education system is to get the average graduate to the best level of knowledge possible, not teach only the top 1% of students and only teach them math skills and nothing useful outside of STEM and let everyone else drop out in middle school and pretend this is progress.

[Anonymous No.7124778]

>>7124759
>Fourier analysis is as important in the world as arithmetic, algebra, and calculus is.
thanks anon I don't even need to make a post you just said more than I ever could

[Anonymous No.7125092]

1955: A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of this price. What is his profit?

1960 (New math): A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100 (base 10). His cost of production is 0.4 (base 5) of this price. What is his profit?

1970 (Traditional math): A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. What is his profit?

1985 (New New math): A logger exchanges a set L of lumber for a set M of money. The cardinality of set M is 100 and each element is worth $1.

(a) make 100 dots representing the elements of the set M

(b) The set C representing costs of production contains 20 fewer points than set M. Represent the set C as a subset of the set M.

(c) What is the cardinality of the set P of profits?

1995 (Dumbed-down math): A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20. Underline the number 20.

2012 (Common Core Math): By cutting down a forest full of beautiful trees, a logger makes $20.

(a) What do you think of this way of making money?

(b) How did the forest birds and squirrels feel?

(c) Draw a picture of the forest as you'd like it to look.

[Anonymous No.7125096]

Autism: The Thread

[Anonymous No.7125107]

>>7125096

That thread is over here >>>7122206

[Anonymous No.7125119]

>>7122485

The way my middle and high school did math was that we weren't required to be correct on our homework, only needing to "show our work" and then we'd go over the right answers in class. Correct answers had to be given for quizzes and tests, though.

On the one hand, that's how I squeaked through highschool in my senior year. On the other hand, it's been a crushing regret of mine that I was never better at math. Even in the two years I was in college I was taking remedial shit like Intermediate Algebra, which I still failed.

Granted, I have passion for other interests now, but I still feel like I should be more mathematically literate. What'd I do to finally conquer Algebra.

[Anonymous No.7125122]

>>7125119

*What I'd do

[Anonymous No.7125142]

>>7125119
Why are you in /Sci/ if you don't even know algebra? A solid understanding of (at minimum) calculus is required to really quantify most scientific fact/theory. Also, it's your own fault if you have no mathematical education/understanding. There are so many resources to learn basic math-multi variable calculus on the web and they are FREE. Khan academy. MIT open courseware, even purple math.

[Anonymous No.7125161]

>>7125119
>What'd I do to finally conquer Algebra

Read the book by the master
http://books.google.com/books/about/Elements_of_Algebra.html?id=X8yv0sj4_1YC
http://web.mat.bham.ac.uk/C.J.Sangwin/euler/

[Anonymous No.7125162]

>>7122485
I propose that you reform it to be named Maths education.

[Anonymous No.7125170]

>>7125162
Math is an uncountable noun and thus can't be pluralized. You never say "a math" or "2 maths".

Furthermore, "Maths" implies math subjects are enumerable which was proven mathematically impossible.

[Anonymous No.7125175]

>>7125170
Mathematics is already a plural, when you shorten it, you keep the s so it become Maths. Like if you see loads of televisions, you'd say I see loads of TVs, rather than loads of TV.

[Anonymous No.7125183]

>>7122485
This thread belongs in /pol/
remove thyself from these demesnes and begone!

[Anonymous No.7125184]

>>7125175
You never say "Mathematic" or "a Mathematic" or "2 Mathematics". You do say "a television" and "a TV".

There's a difference between countable and uncountable nouns. Learn it

[Anonymous No.7125226]

>>7125183
But Lincoln, you love math

[Anonymous No.7125826]

>>7125162
No and "maths" sounds retarded.