4 ms·

It's a nice program and I can see it being both helpful and harmful. From my perspective, as a teacher of mathematics at a community college, students are unwi

It's a nice program and I can see it being both helpful and harmful. From my perspective, as a teacher of mathematics at a community college, students are unwilling to engage in thought about a problem. If they can't see the solution in a few minutes then they want to look at a complete solution. Mostly they are not willing to struggle through a problem. I vacillate on whether, with the advent of computer algebra systems, it is necessary for students to master algebraic manipulations. I started to think that conceptual questions are better. For instance, give me an example of an equation with no solution. Explain how a baseball player can have the highest batting average the first half of a season and in the second half of a season but not have the highest overall average. Draw the graph of a function defined on [0, 1] but has not maximum or minimum. Students can't do those types of problems either. They are very frustrating problems for students because it requires you to really think about what the words mean and to think of extreme situations. So I've reverted back to the traditional style of teaching math. Manipulation of symbols.

pasquinelli 10y ago
people expect to work in school, not think. the sad part is i think they only have that attitude through rigorous conditioning. in earlier education it always seems like you should be able to do any of the work you're given easily, given the proper effort; if you can't, then there's something wrong with you. maybe that makes sense for teaching little kids fundamental age-appropriate skills, but it just seems to stick around.
bigger_cheese 10y ago
When I was in year 12, 15 years ago, my math teacher introduced our class to a website called "Wolfram's Integrator" which could simplify complicated integrals automatically for you. I just googled it and it still exists: http://www.wolframalpha.com/calculators/integral-calculator/?redirected=true http://www.wolframalpha.com/calculators/integral-calculator/... At the time I thought it was pretty cool in a passing trivia kind of way but didn't make much use of it. A year after that I was a first year university student all of our linear algebra tutorials were taught in the labs using a computer program called "Maple". I really struggled to wrap my head around it. I didn't do well in the class until I started writing out the problems myself and solving them on paper. I found at least for me personally that inputting problems into a computer and having it spit the answer out wasn't teaching me anything (besides which functions to call), in other words I was learning the programming language and not the underlying concepts. Nowadays I work with FEA and LP solvers and I rely on computer assistance all the time to do my job. I'd like to think having a firm grasp of the underlying math is advantageous and makes me a better engineer but I know there are people around that get by just by "plugging things into Ansys".

pasquinelli 10y ago

people expect to work in school, not think. the sad part is i think they only have that attitude through rigorous conditioning. in earlier education it always seems like you should be able to do any of the work you're given easily, given the proper effort; if you can't, then there's something wrong with you. maybe that makes sense for teaching little kids fundamental age-appropriate skills, but it just seems to stick around.

bigger_cheese 10y ago

When I was in year 12, 15 years ago, my math teacher introduced our class to a website called "Wolfram's Integrator" which could simplify complicated integrals automatically for you. I just googled it and it still exists: http://www.wolframalpha.com/calculators/integral-calculator/?redirected=true http://www.wolframalpha.com/calculators/integral-calculator/... At the time I thought it was pretty cool in a passing trivia kind of way but didn't make much use of it. A year after that I was a first year university student all of our linear algebra tutorials were taught in the labs using a computer program called "Maple". I really struggled to wrap my head around it. I didn't do well in the class until I started writing out the problems myself and solving them on paper. I found at least for me personally that inputting problems into a computer and having it spit the answer out wasn't teaching me anything (besides which functions to call), in other words I was learning the programming language and not the underlying concepts. Nowadays I work with FEA and LP solvers and I rely on computer assistance all the time to do my job. I'd like to think having a firm grasp of the underlying math is advantageous and makes me a better engineer but I know there are people around that get by just by "plugging things into Ansys".