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This is probably taking his off-hand remarks too seriously, but I don't think anyone really uses the quadratic equation for anything. Quadratic functions defini
by Eridrus 9y ago
This is probably taking his off-hand remarks too seriously, but I don't think anyone really uses the quadratic equation for anything. Quadratic functions definitely come up, and the derivation of the quadratic formula is definitely useful to learn, but the formula itself seems like a mathematical dead end.
In general I think being forced to learn things with no clear application is part of why the school system fails so many people.
- bushin 9y agoAccording to the Abel–Ruffini theorem the formula for fourth-degree equations is a dead end :)
- SomeStupidPoint 9y agoDo you mean fifth degree? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartic_function#General_formula_for_roots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartic_function#General_formu...
- panic 9y agoHere's an application of the quadratic formula: https://twitter.com/beesandbombs/status/863124880614719488 https://twitter.com/beesandbombs/status/863124880614719488
- jtraffic 9y agoI see your position. We should acknowledge that both sides of this are well-trodden, and the article even touches on it: "It puts Google, and the tech economy, at the center of one of the great debates that has raged in American education for more than a century: whether the purpose of public schools is to turn out knowledgeable citizens or skilled workers." I guess over time I've started leaning more toward "knowledgeable citizens," but I don't know why they need to be mutually exclusive.
- dkarapetyan 9y agoYou can do both if the tools being used are commodified but not if they're propietary. Chromebooks and Google applications are proprietary products so they're at odds with creating knowledgeable citizens that can work and think outside Google sanctioned confines.