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The reason so many people hate maths is because maths is taught so poorly: https://www.rangevoting.org/FeynTexts.html https://www.rangevoting.org/FeynTexts.html
by kongin 5y ago
The reason so many people hate maths is because maths is taught so poorly: https://www.rangevoting.org/FeynTexts.html https://www.rangevoting.org/FeynTexts.html
>The reason was that the books were so lousy. They were false. They were hurried. They would try to be rigorous, but they would use examples (like automobiles in the street for "sets") which were almost OK, but in which there were always some subtleties. The definitions weren't accurate. Everything was a little bit ambiguous – they weren't smart enough to understand what was meant by "rigor." They were faking it. They were teaching something they didn't understand, and which was, in fact, useless, at that time, for the child.
>[...] That's the way everything was: Everything was written by somebody who didn't know what the hell he was talking about, so it was a little bit wrong, always! And how we are going to teach well by using books written by people who don't quite understand what they're talking about, I cannot understand. I don't know why, but the books are lousy; UNIVERSALLY LOUSY!
- faeriechangling 5y agoAre there any books that aren't lousy or is it truly universal?
- codetheweb 5y agoI did Art of Problem Solving in high school which has excellent textbooks. Certainly not for everyone though.
- abrax3141 5y agoThere are many many wonderful math books, and many many wonderful math resources on youtube. (As well as, of course, many many terrible ones!) I second AOPS! They have a fantastic series for younger kids called "Beast Academy" (https://beastacademy.com https://beastacademy.com), and their challenge problem sets are fantastic! The same blog has a couple of other posts about them: https://leosstemhacks.wordpress.com/2019/11/06/the-three-best-science-math-channels-on-youtube-and-one-video-from-each-that-will-blow-your-mind/ https://leosstemhacks.wordpress.com/2019/11/06/the-three-bes...
- netr0ute 5y agoThere's also Life of Fred which is definitely different to anything else out there.
- jabajabadu 5y agoIsrael Gelfand wrote a number of amazing books covering many areas of high school math.
- bradrn 5y agoI enjoyed Measurement [0]. I was unsurprised when I eventually learnt that its author had previously written Lockhart’s Lament [1]. [0] https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?content=reviews&isbn=9780674284388 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?content=reviews&isbn... [1] https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament....
- jtc331 5y agoThe Singapore Math curriculum is fantastic.
- bmn__ 5y agohttps://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/xg3hXCYQPJkwHyik2/the-best-textbooks-on-every-subject https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/xg3hXCYQPJkwHyik2/the-bes...
- AndrewOMartin 5y agoOne memorable example of this was a book which said you could tell the temperature of a star by the wavelength of the light it emitted. It then asked you to calculate the temperature of stars in a depicted galaxy. I'm sure there are some subtleties that are not exactly perfect but good enough for a school textbook. The part that made Feynman erupt in anger was the follow up question, "what is the total temperature of the galaxy".
- pharmakom 5y agoCan you explain this?
- DuskStar 5y agoThe problem is incredibly ill defined. Do they want the sum of the temperatures calculated above? (Nonsensical) The temperature that the galaxy would have if you mixed everything together? (Insufficient information on star size and material composition) The average of the stars temperatures? (ALSO nonsensical!)
- mattkrause 5y agoWhat's wrong with the average temperature over many stars? It gives you the best possible estimate (in a MSE sense) for the temperature of a new star for which you know nothing about. It may not be a great estimate (e.g, the distribution is multimodal because stars come in various types), but it doesn't seem obviously nonsensical.
- jmount 5y agoI haven't seen the source. But I am guessing the anger is temperature is a number that doesn't make since to blindly add. Example: 2 boiling pots are not 200 degrees C. Or more technically temperature is the mean molecular kinetic energy, an average not a total.
- mattkrause 5y agoThe really frustrating part is that a trivial edit--ask for the average temperature instead--could make it into a sensible question.