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Absolutely no! 90% of educated population does not handle basic math (such as rule of proportions). History would dilute math even more. But it would be easier
by jankotek 10y ago
Absolutely no! 90% of educated population does not handle basic math (such as rule of proportions). History would dilute math even more. But it would be easier for teachers and students to 'pass'.
- jakobegger 10y agoI agree. The fact that high school students are struggling with epsilon-delta notation of limits is not because they lack historical context. It is just far beyond what most people can grasp. Most of my school mates had zero understanding of the mathematics we learned. They memorised how to compute the distance between a point and a sphere, a line and a sphere, a plane and a sphere, and then they'd solve one of these problems for the exam, get a good grade, and forget everything immediately afterwards. At no point have they understood what a scalar product is and why they are using it. If you'd really want to improve mathematics education, you should focus a lot more on the basics, and teach advanced subjects only to the handful of students that are interested in them.
- im3w1l 10y agoI don't know about American conditions, but I remember that many struggled with epsilon delta because it was their first encounter with formal logic. "For every... there exists a..." took some getting used to for them.