4 ms·

How to solve the British maths problem?

9 points by reazalun 18y ago

Tichy 18y ago
I think it has to be more obvious how to apply maths to everyday life. Not sure if it is very easy to do, though. One problem that comes to mind is understanding mobile telephony costs. I am amazed how many people really seem to believe that their phone only cost 1€... Finances (interest rates, economics) would be another area, which could at the same time help prepare people for life after school. What about games? I just bought "The Theory Of Poker", perhaps stuff like that could arouse more interest about maths in kids? They could even play games at school, imagine that. Thinking about it, maybe it would be worthwhile to start a web site (wiki) about applied maths problems. Applied as in REALLY applied, everyday problems everybody could relate to. I have a server and would set it up, could anybody recommend a good wiki package (debian)?
DougBTX 18y ago
The problem is demonstrated by the video in the article. Maths? Here, try some Long Division. You could get yourself a maths degree without even touching long division, but it's the example they use to get people to do maths??
- petercooper 18y ago
  Indeed. In fact, thanks to this I have discovered that what I was taught as "long division" is not what other people (or, at least, Wikipedia and those in this video) were taught. The method I use still works though, but appears to be more of a dead reckoning system and heavier on the mental arithmetic.
- gaius 18y ago
  Well that's the thing: maths as taught in (British) schools is interminably dull. Kids are told, you need to learn to add up in case, errr, you work in a shop. Exciting, huh? It wasn't until I was 18 and in college that I first encountered interesting maths, linear programming. It was, literally, mind expanding. Suddenly an entire class of problems that I simply could not think about before were, well, not easy necessarily but possible. An experience like that is needed at a younger age.
mynameishere 18y ago
I looked at the division problem and guessed 472, and got it right. I think guessing accurately is important. You almost never have time to work things out. The 4 was obvious, and the 2 was probable--they wouldn't likely require a remainder from people. And so that left the 7 to guess. I mean, given a set of problems requiring such division, most could be acceptably answered by nearly-correct answers. This isn't true in finance, but for most other things it is.
neilk 18y ago
Is anyone else ever disturbed by the attempts to "make X fun!" by inclusion of cartoon characters and other inanity? I think it's a distraction; the kids just pay attention to the cartoon. I know that some teachers would disagree, but in my experience, most teachers at the primary level don't really love math. Not the way I do, anyway. At the very best, you get people who liked doing rote problems, and those sorts of people just suck. The rest struggle through the lessons as much as their charges do, and they'd be lost without the teacher's guide. In my opinion, the way to make math fun is to make the exercise of the skill itself more fun. Make it part of a game. For bonus points, make the game complex enough that multiple strategies can work, estimation or direct calculation or induction. And I'd like some recognition of the fact that some people are insanely good at this and others will always struggle, so create teams where different skills are useful (calculation, problem solving, record keeping, data gathering) but everyone learns the basic lessons. Sooner or later you're going to be alone with the pencil and paper and Mr. 4 and Ms. 5 are not going to be there to help.
- jodrellblank 18y ago
  "Is anyone else ever disturbed by the attempts to "make X fun!" by inclusion of cartoon characters and other inanity?" Yes, Mr Lockhart is - "A similar problem occurs when teachers or textbooks succumb to cutesyness. This is where, in an attempt to combat so-called 'math anxiety' (one of the panoply of diseases which are actually caused by school), math is made to seem 'friendly'. To help your students memorize formulas for the area and circumference of a circle, for example, you might invent this whole story about 'Mr. C', who drives around 'Mrs. A' and tells her how nice his 'two piesare' (C = 2πr) and how her 'pies are square' (A = πr2) or some such nonsense. But what about the real story? The one about mankind’s struggle with the problem of measuring curves; about Eudoxus and Archimedes and the method of exhaustion; about the transcendence of pi? Which is more interesting? measuring the rough dimensions of a circular piece of graph paper, using a formula that someone handed you without explanation (and made you memorize and practice over and over) or hearing the story of one of the most beautiful, fascinating problems, and one ofthe most brilliant and powerful ideas in human history? We’re killing people’s interest in circles for god’s sake!" - http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf (which I originally found linked on HN or reddit, and enjoyed reading ... but then what? Where is a near layperson to find mathematical writing that walks the line between Mr C and his two pies, and the impenetrable mathworld.wolfram.com, neatly skipping the textbooks written to look comprehensive to school purchasers, rather than to be useful? ( http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/11/lost-purposes.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/11/lost-purposes.html ))
vitaminj 18y ago
A lot of the guys I knew that were good at maths were labelled nerds, so to admit to being good at maths is to risk being labelled a nerd by association. On the other hand, to say that you suck at maths implicity says things about you that avoid this association eg. "I dispensed with my maths education to hang out with the cool kids". I think most people know this intuitively. The pride of a self-confessed maths half-wit is anchored in implied social standing rather than genuine pride in a lack of ability. I doubt anybody is saying "I can't add or subtract, how awesome am I?"

9 points by reazalun 18y ago

Tichy 18y ago

I think it has to be more obvious how to apply maths to everyday life. Not sure if it is very easy to do, though. One problem that comes to mind is understanding mobile telephony costs. I am amazed how many people really seem to believe that their phone only cost 1€... Finances (interest rates, economics) would be another area, which could at the same time help prepare people for life after school. What about games? I just bought "The Theory Of Poker", perhaps stuff like that could arouse more interest about maths in kids? They could even play games at school, imagine that. Thinking about it, maybe it would be worthwhile to start a web site (wiki) about applied maths problems. Applied as in REALLY applied, everyday problems everybody could relate to. I have a server and would set it up, could anybody recommend a good wiki package (debian)?

DougBTX 18y ago

The problem is demonstrated by the video in the article. Maths? Here, try some Long Division. You could get yourself a maths degree without even touching long division, but it's the example they use to get people to do maths??

petercooper 18y ago
Indeed. In fact, thanks to this I have discovered that what I was taught as "long division" is not what other people (or, at least, Wikipedia and those in this video) were taught. The method I use still works though, but appears to be more of a dead reckoning system and heavier on the mental arithmetic.
gaius 18y ago
Well that's the thing: maths as taught in (British) schools is interminably dull. Kids are told, you need to learn to add up in case, errr, you work in a shop. Exciting, huh? It wasn't until I was 18 and in college that I first encountered interesting maths, linear programming. It was, literally, mind expanding. Suddenly an entire class of problems that I simply could not think about before were, well, not easy necessarily but possible. An experience like that is needed at a younger age.

mynameishere 18y ago

I looked at the division problem and guessed 472, and got it right. I think guessing accurately is important. You almost never have time to work things out. The 4 was obvious, and the 2 was probable--they wouldn't likely require a remainder from people. And so that left the 7 to guess. I mean, given a set of problems requiring such division, most could be acceptably answered by nearly-correct answers. This isn't true in finance, but for most other things it is.

neilk 18y ago

Is anyone else ever disturbed by the attempts to "make X fun!" by inclusion of cartoon characters and other inanity? I think it's a distraction; the kids just pay attention to the cartoon. I know that some teachers would disagree, but in my experience, most teachers at the primary level don't really love math. Not the way I do, anyway. At the very best, you get people who liked doing rote problems, and those sorts of people just suck. The rest struggle through the lessons as much as their charges do, and they'd be lost without the teacher's guide. In my opinion, the way to make math fun is to make the exercise of the skill itself more fun. Make it part of a game. For bonus points, make the game complex enough that multiple strategies can work, estimation or direct calculation or induction. And I'd like some recognition of the fact that some people are insanely good at this and others will always struggle, so create teams where different skills are useful (calculation, problem solving, record keeping, data gathering) but everyone learns the basic lessons. Sooner or later you're going to be alone with the pencil and paper and Mr. 4 and Ms. 5 are not going to be there to help.

jodrellblank 18y ago
"Is anyone else ever disturbed by the attempts to "make X fun!" by inclusion of cartoon characters and other inanity?" Yes, Mr Lockhart is - "A similar problem occurs when teachers or textbooks succumb to cutesyness. This is where, in an attempt to combat so-called 'math anxiety' (one of the panoply of diseases which are actually caused by school), math is made to seem 'friendly'. To help your students memorize formulas for the area and circumference of a circle, for example, you might invent this whole story about 'Mr. C', who drives around 'Mrs. A' and tells her how nice his 'two piesare' (C = 2πr) and how her 'pies are square' (A = πr2) or some such nonsense. But what about the real story? The one about mankind’s struggle with the problem of measuring curves; about Eudoxus and Archimedes and the method of exhaustion; about the transcendence of pi? Which is more interesting? measuring the rough dimensions of a circular piece of graph paper, using a formula that someone handed you without explanation (and made you memorize and practice over and over) or hearing the story of one of the most beautiful, fascinating problems, and one ofthe most brilliant and powerful ideas in human history? We’re killing people’s interest in circles for god’s sake!" - http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf (which I originally found linked on HN or reddit, and enjoyed reading ... but then what? Where is a near layperson to find mathematical writing that walks the line between Mr C and his two pies, and the impenetrable mathworld.wolfram.com, neatly skipping the textbooks written to look comprehensive to school purchasers, rather than to be useful? ( http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/11/lost-purposes.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/11/lost-purposes.html ))

vitaminj 18y ago

A lot of the guys I knew that were good at maths were labelled nerds, so to admit to being good at maths is to risk being labelled a nerd by association. On the other hand, to say that you suck at maths implicity says things about you that avoid this association eg. "I dispensed with my maths education to hang out with the cool kids". I think most people know this intuitively. The pride of a self-confessed maths half-wit is anchored in implied social standing rather than genuine pride in a lack of ability. I doubt anybody is saying "I can't add or subtract, how awesome am I?"