3 ms·

> as elementary school children in Japan were being taught to use 3 as a substitute for pi in some calculations That's robbing them of getting an (intuitive) u

> as elementary school children in Japan were being taught to use 3 as a substitute for pi in some calculations That's robbing them of getting an (intuitive) understanding of a whole class of numbers. And limits too!

ajsnigrutin 6y ago
pi=3 is a totally usefull approximation for when the students are old enough to know, when pi=3 is good enough. Definitely not elementary school.
- tkgally 6y ago
  According to the Japanese Wikipedia article I cited above, children were not taught that pi equals 3; rather, children who had not yet learned how to calculate with decimals were told that they could use 3 as a rough approximation for pi when calculating by hand. This minor change in the official curriculum came at a time when the Japanese government was trying to de-emphasize rote memorization and promote critical thinking in school education. Because that policy also reduced class hours and the amount of material covered, it was widely criticized for supposedly dumbing down school education. The notion that children were being taught “pi = 3” was an exaggeration, but it resonated with other objections to educational policy and apparently led the university to pose that problem on its entrance exam in protest. I still think it's an interesting problem. I wonder how far I could have gotten with it if, at the age of 18 or 19, I had encountered it on an exam and had just twenty or thirty minutes to try to come up with a proof.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    Ah! That's more nuanced. Sadly I do not speak Japanese so I didn't read the original source. > I wonder how far I could have gotten with it if, at the age of 18 or 19, I had encountered it on an exam and had just twenty or thirty minutes to try to come up with a proof. It's a nice one. Especially because since pi shows up in so many places there are multiple ways of doing it.

ajsnigrutin 6y ago

pi=3 is a totally usefull approximation for when the students are old enough to know, when pi=3 is good enough. Definitely not elementary school.

tkgally 6y ago
According to the Japanese Wikipedia article I cited above, children were not taught that pi equals 3; rather, children who had not yet learned how to calculate with decimals were told that they could use 3 as a rough approximation for pi when calculating by hand. This minor change in the official curriculum came at a time when the Japanese government was trying to de-emphasize rote memorization and promote critical thinking in school education. Because that policy also reduced class hours and the amount of material covered, it was widely criticized for supposedly dumbing down school education. The notion that children were being taught “pi = 3” was an exaggeration, but it resonated with other objections to educational policy and apparently led the university to pose that problem on its entrance exam in protest. I still think it's an interesting problem. I wonder how far I could have gotten with it if, at the age of 18 or 19, I had encountered it on an exam and had just twenty or thirty minutes to try to come up with a proof.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  Ah! That's more nuanced. Sadly I do not speak Japanese so I didn't read the original source. > I wonder how far I could have gotten with it if, at the age of 18 or 19, I had encountered it on an exam and had just twenty or thirty minutes to try to come up with a proof. It's a nice one. Especially because since pi shows up in so many places there are multiple ways of doing it.