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This is compounded in the weird American class called "precalculus," which is just a random grab bag of math crap that might maybe needed before calculus but mi

by kaitai 9y ago

This is compounded in the weird American class called "precalculus," which is just a random grab bag of math crap that might maybe needed before calculus but might not. In most precalc classes I've encountered, not only is there no explanation of why the concepts will be used in calculus, but there is little attempt to relate the concepts covered in the class. Let's go from linear equations to complex numbers to polar coordinates! And let's not mention that complex numbers and polar coordinates are related! To top it all off, a lot of young college students taking precalculus are taking it as a terminal math class -- they'll never take calculus! It's just for a credit! So you've got some poor kid who hit that wall in high school and is repeating precalc and going through some unit on polar coordinates who will never take another math class again and will somewhat justifiably think this whole thing is stupid. In theory, I strongly support "math for liberal arts"-type classes instead in college. When done well they might cover voting systems and how you can prove there isn't a perfect one, gerrymandering and how you can use math to get several solutions, perspective drawing and its relation to projective geometry and Renaissance art, a bit of number theory and basic cryptography....

dsfyu404ed 9y ago
>"math for liberal arts"-type classes I took a class that met in a room used by a class like that the period prior and got to listen to the better part of it. In the one lecture the prof coaxed them into creating an algorithm for the number of moves to solve a rubix cube based on the number of cells who's configuration is known and where those cells are located on the cube. In a different lecture they were doing the math necessary to cut hypoid gears on a manual milling machine. They didn't even know what they had did until he tied it back to the underlying concept. The quality of those courses depends on the prof.
- kaitai 9y ago
  > The quality of those courses depends on the prof. Entirely. In theory they are great :) The one you listened in on sounds interesting!
acjohnson55 9y ago
> In theory, I strongly support "math for liberal arts"-type classes instead in college. I love it. They could call it "math"! ;) Seriously, I think that captures an important concept: for the most part, math was developed to serve the needs of humanity. I used to wonder, how do we know our numbers are the "true" numbers? Did we just happen upon one way of computing, and there are countless alternatives that could have been explored? Of course, the answer to that is actually "kinda, yeah". Abstract algebra leads to all sorts of systems that behave more or less like our familiar numbers and operations. And besides the whole numbers, which represent physical quantities, every extension to things like integers, reals and complex numbers are used not because of their tangible reality, but because they do a good job of modeling human concerns. Because my brain has a limited ability to pursue abstraction for its own sake, its this aspect of math that really captivates me. I think that's true for most people.

by kaitai 9y ago

dsfyu404ed 9y ago

>"math for liberal arts"-type classes I took a class that met in a room used by a class like that the period prior and got to listen to the better part of it. In the one lecture the prof coaxed them into creating an algorithm for the number of moves to solve a rubix cube based on the number of cells who's configuration is known and where those cells are located on the cube. In a different lecture they were doing the math necessary to cut hypoid gears on a manual milling machine. They didn't even know what they had did until he tied it back to the underlying concept. The quality of those courses depends on the prof.

kaitai 9y ago
> The quality of those courses depends on the prof. Entirely. In theory they are great :) The one you listened in on sounds interesting!

acjohnson55 9y ago

> In theory, I strongly support "math for liberal arts"-type classes instead in college. I love it. They could call it "math"! ;) Seriously, I think that captures an important concept: for the most part, math was developed to serve the needs of humanity. I used to wonder, how do we know our numbers are the "true" numbers? Did we just happen upon one way of computing, and there are countless alternatives that could have been explored? Of course, the answer to that is actually "kinda, yeah". Abstract algebra leads to all sorts of systems that behave more or less like our familiar numbers and operations. And besides the whole numbers, which represent physical quantities, every extension to things like integers, reals and complex numbers are used not because of their tangible reality, but because they do a good job of modeling human concerns. Because my brain has a limited ability to pursue abstraction for its own sake, its this aspect of math that really captivates me. I think that's true for most people.