4 ms·

It's probably the thinking in your antepenultimate paragraph reinforcing itself. Instead, abstract skills can offer a gateway to the application of more rigid r

It's probably the thinking in your antepenultimate paragraph reinforcing itself. Instead, abstract skills can offer a gateway to the application of more rigid rules, so to speak, because it shows that they are strong, but the applicability is flexible.

orhmeh09 7y ago
> antepenultimate paragraph “Second paragraph” is a simpler way to put it.
- seisvelas 7y ago
  "Second to last"
  - lewilewilewi 7y ago
    "Third to last"
    - throwno 7y ago
      His third to last paragraph is the second paragraph which is why it's stupid to use some wordy bullshit like "antepenultimate". You NEED to get Grammarly as the incessant ads say. To downvoters: Toxic pedantry like this is what drives women and minorities out of STEM. You're the reason we can't have diversity.
    - posterboy 7y ago
      I was confused, I meant "second to last" indeed, but you are correct.
      - orhmeh09 7y ago
        By that I did mean you should have called it the second or third sentence instead, not that antepenultimate means second from last. Doing otherwise in a four-paragraph passage (and nearly any other context, frankly) is absurd and makes most people think you’re trying to sound well-read, and you end up where it is unclear even to yourself what you said.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
downut 7y ago
Math grad student lecturer of various university entry level to intermediate mathematics courses at UF and ASU here. Over 30 years ago, but the following anecdotage is still vivid in my mind: I taught many hundreds of students quite a variety of courses ranging from 'Finite Math', entry level algebra, all the way up to honors calc and linear algebra. Unique among all the courses, 'Finite Math' was so entirely abstract I, the math grad student, could not understand the point of the exercises. I only taught it once, but after two weeks the coursework was so incoherent I stated in class that I would teach them exactly how to solve the problems, and if they learned that, they'd pass (all they cared about). I explicitly stated I wouldn't try to teach them anything at all about why any of it was relevant to their external problems. Exactly the opposite of my approach to every other course, all without fail entirely satisfying to teach. I loved teaching college math! I'd do it again for very little, but the absurd adjunct rates are strongly discouraging. That is, I'd teach anything but these ridiculous stand ins for math courses like 'Finite Math'. OTOH, there's a deep beauty in real math starting with calculus and I dunno I find it calming and even though abstract and not really applicable to the external world these days it might be useful for some prisoners' mental health. There are a lot of stories of the prison library opening up some otherwise hopeless cases.
- mlyle 7y ago
  > I taught many hundreds of students quite a variety of courses ranging from 'Finite Math', entry level algebra, all the way up to honors calc and linear algebra. Unique among all the courses, 'Finite Math' was so entirely abstract I, the math grad student, could not understand the point of the exercises. Yup. The stuff we teach in trig and precalc provides some preparation for calculus, but it seems pretty broken. Even early calc instruction tends to be broken-- we make things complicated over various historical analytic crises, but then we take enough shortcuts in explanation that we still need to relearn half of everything when we take an actual analysis class. I have a 5th grader who's taking Algebra I now and will rapidly run out of math classes he can take while in middle school. I'm hoping I can find him a better path for preparation for calc.
  - defen 7y ago

orhmeh09 7y ago

> antepenultimate paragraph “Second paragraph” is a simpler way to put it.

seisvelas 7y ago
"Second to last"
- lewilewilewi 7y ago
  "Third to last"
  - throwno 7y ago
    His third to last paragraph is the second paragraph which is why it's stupid to use some wordy bullshit like "antepenultimate". You NEED to get Grammarly as the incessant ads say. To downvoters: Toxic pedantry like this is what drives women and minorities out of STEM. You're the reason we can't have diversity.
  - posterboy 7y ago
    I was confused, I meant "second to last" indeed, but you are correct.
    - orhmeh09 7y ago
      By that I did mean you should have called it the second or third sentence instead, not that antepenultimate means second from last. Doing otherwise in a four-paragraph passage (and nearly any other context, frankly) is absurd and makes most people think you’re trying to sound well-read, and you end up where it is unclear even to yourself what you said.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

downut 7y ago

Math grad student lecturer of various university entry level to intermediate mathematics courses at UF and ASU here. Over 30 years ago, but the following anecdotage is still vivid in my mind: I taught many hundreds of students quite a variety of courses ranging from 'Finite Math', entry level algebra, all the way up to honors calc and linear algebra. Unique among all the courses, 'Finite Math' was so entirely abstract I, the math grad student, could not understand the point of the exercises. I only taught it once, but after two weeks the coursework was so incoherent I stated in class that I would teach them exactly how to solve the problems, and if they learned that, they'd pass (all they cared about). I explicitly stated I wouldn't try to teach them anything at all about why any of it was relevant to their external problems. Exactly the opposite of my approach to every other course, all without fail entirely satisfying to teach. I loved teaching college math! I'd do it again for very little, but the absurd adjunct rates are strongly discouraging. That is, I'd teach anything but these ridiculous stand ins for math courses like 'Finite Math'. OTOH, there's a deep beauty in real math starting with calculus and I dunno I find it calming and even though abstract and not really applicable to the external world these days it might be useful for some prisoners' mental health. There are a lot of stories of the prison library opening up some otherwise hopeless cases.

mlyle 7y ago
> I taught many hundreds of students quite a variety of courses ranging from 'Finite Math', entry level algebra, all the way up to honors calc and linear algebra. Unique among all the courses, 'Finite Math' was so entirely abstract I, the math grad student, could not understand the point of the exercises. Yup. The stuff we teach in trig and precalc provides some preparation for calculus, but it seems pretty broken. Even early calc instruction tends to be broken-- we make things complicated over various historical analytic crises, but then we take enough shortcuts in explanation that we still need to relearn half of everything when we take an actual analysis class. I have a 5th grader who's taking Algebra I now and will rapidly run out of math classes he can take while in middle school. I'm hoping I can find him a better path for preparation for calc.
- defen 7y ago