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I 100% agree with you that math is real and that there is real benefit from learning it. With that out of the way, > It's treated as some kind of tournament to
by pacbard 5y ago
I 100% agree with you that math is real and that there is real benefit from learning it. With that out of the way,
> It's treated as some kind of tournament to get into college
and
> But most people admit that they forgot all of their math immediately upon finishing school.
in those 2 quotes, you summarize the current issues with school mathematics. There is no real benefit in learning school math as most people will just use up to 6th/7th grade math in their daily work. Even professions that "do math" daily (like carpenters) have, most of the time, figured out ways to do it "quickly" without really doing math (see, for example, the diamonds on a measuring tape and how they are used to solve the Pythagorean theorem).
That leaves school math as "the great sorter" of students. Students that "can" take advanced math classes and use those as leverage in college admissions. To see this process in motion, look up parents' concerns with California's new math sequence and how those usually involve college readiness (as in, college admission advantage) over career readiness (as in, calculus II is needed for whatever profession my kid will do after high school).
- GrinningFool 5y agoI thought those diamonds were placed at common stud/joist intervals for construction, and some searching doesn't find any connection to the Pythagorean theorem. What did you mean?
- mywittyname 5y agoI'm not sure what the OP is getting at, because you're right, they indicate stud centers for 16" on-center. He might be talking about the 3-4-5 trick (pythagorean triples). But the only place I can think of where that is really useful (roofing) has other, better, tricks for figuring out lengths of hypotenuses.
- abdullahkhalids 5y agoMy school had mandatory art class till 5th grade, and I imagine more schools had some mandatory art class. Yet, I have not really practiced any sort of coloring or painting since my last art class. I am not sure what this similarity with mathematics means for either mandatory art or math classes, but perhaps there is something to consider in our arguments.
- Jap2-0 5y agoThis reminds me of Lockhart's Lament[0], an essay about if art or music were taught how we teach math now. [0] https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament....
- Buttons840 5y agoCan we at least use statistics as the great sorter? The mindset gained from doing advanced statistics is more likely to be useful than the mindset gained from doing integration by hand.
- analog31 5y agoIndeed, I'd like to see more statistics. In fact, stats play right into the strengths of computers. Thanks to computers doing the drudge work, people can be introduced to stats by directly manipulating sets of numbers, rather than learning theorems about the properties of those sets. While I loved college stats, and especially the proofs, most people don't love math in that way. And if they memorize theorems without proofs, then I'd say they'd be better off without them.