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It’s odd that you don’t instantly recognise your objection as whitewashing. Covering up problems by referring to state-level statistics instead of looking at d

It’s odd that you don’t instantly recognise your objection as whitewashing. Covering up problems by referring to state-level statistics instead of looking at demographics is racist propaganda. Race is indeed a political tool, as are efforts to ignore it.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
fluoridation 4y ago
Is it possible that mathematics should be taught dispassionately, without resorting to inflammatory examples? Surely anyone can trivially come up with dozens of questions to use in a statistics problem that wouldn't raise any eyebrows. If so, the fact that someone would choose that specific question should call into question the motivation behind it.
- derevaunseraun 4y ago
  Why does it raise eyebrows? What about this question raises eyebrows if it indicates actual socioeconomic divisions in society? Do you just wanna pretend that those differences aren't there? These examples aren't inflammatory unless you're in denial
  - fluoridation 4y ago
    The fact that you're saying it shouldn't raise eyebrows implies that you know it raises at least some eyebrows. So I ask again: why are you asking a question that you know could raise some eyebrows when you could have asked one that wouldn't have raised any? You can't ask a politically-charged question in a class that has nothing to do with politics and then act surprised when people accuse you of injecting politics where it doesn't belong.
    - derevaunseraun 4y ago
      I never said I was surprised The difference is the example question isn't political, it merely puts a data set in front of students and has them analyze it. > You can't ask a politically-charged question in a class that has nothing to do with politics The question has nothing to do with politics. It would be political if the teacher said: "now draw these conclusions, vote for these people". I know the link I provided had questions that were more in line with this, but the specific example I gave isn't asking for any conclusions, only observations
      - fluoridation 4y ago
        How is a question about ethnic groups in the US now not political? Where do you think those differences in food security come from? >the specific example I gave isn't asking for any conclusions, only observations Well, here's an observation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster#/media/File:PiratesVsTemp(en).svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster#/medi... Setting the joke aside, is there really that much difference between giving you that (perfectly true) statistic and just telling you "pirates prevent global warming"?
      - upsidesinclude 4y ago
        Yeah, this is the bad faith argument in action. Of course it had to do with politics and you want to pretend otherwise. The subject is MATH. The learning should be MATH. Other learning can happen where those types of critical thinking skills are taught. That is not the purpose of a MATH class.
        derevaunseraun 4y ago
        And you're saying analyzing a data set and making observations isn't math? What about this hypothetical data set makes you so uncomfortable?
        upsidesinclude 4y ago
        Once again you are arguing in bad faith. This isn't about me. It's about whether children should be expected to deal with irrelevant topics in class. There are an infinite number of ways to ask the same mathematical problem that don't involve political issues. But you insist that it must be so, then deny that it is so. And to cap it off, you call anyone that disagrees a racist... not flat out, through insinuation. Bad faith argument.
  - emerged 4y ago
    Surely you don’t think we should include questions about which race commits the most violent crimes proportionally? Because in this thread your claim is that dry simple facts should be fine even if they raise eyebrows. It seems to me that context is important and often people don’t agree on what the statements mean, and that these concerns have no place in a math class.
    - ashwagary 4y ago
      The race which committed the most violent crime in the last 5, 4, 3, 2, & 1 centuries are whites but I suspect you wouldnt like that answer. Just because we conveniently don't include mass murder (Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, WW2, etc) durings wars on the white tally, it doesn't change that fact. Generally, most framing in the western world is self serving to a particular group of people, so these kinds of facts don't go over so well.
      - upsidesinclude 4y ago
        So you are trying to say that any action of the US military is a white action? Maybe check the statistics on that one. If anything, what you are saying is racist and discounts ever person in the government and military that is not 'white' , a bizarre category of not actually being a race that is invented for arguments like your own
        ashwagary 4y ago
        >So you are trying to say that any action of the US military is a white action? How many of the commanders in chief were non-white? I rest my case.
        upsidesinclude 4y ago
        Barrack didn't have a problem with war
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    >These examples aren't inflammatory unless you're in denial Some facts can be both true and inflammatory. Complex and nuanced topics should be approached with respect, as it is very easy to mislead or confuse, especially children. Imagine using homicide offense rate by race to teach fractions for an example how someone could draw wild conclusions from accurate facts. If a teacher used the example black men are 7 times more likely than white men as a math example, it would be incredibly reckless. Race is a very loaded topic. You could teach a college course on this fact and still start to scratch the surface.
- upsidesinclude 4y ago
  It is possible and necessary to divorce pure learning from some version of politics. Real mathematicians respect math
- manicdee 4y ago
  What would raise my eyebrows is not using real world examples to help children understand mathematics. There are very few people who can handle completely abstract mathematics at any age, and it has been necessary to use examples such as counting rocks or sticks to teach basic numeracy since language was invented. This need to ground the instruction in practical examples applies especially to statistics in schools where the most relatable population for discussing populations is the human population. The history of erasing inconvenient populations by various deliberate or accidental means such as focussing on outcomes rather than causes is something that absolutely does need to be taught as part of a statistics course. When studying the physical properties of gasses we don’t ignore the spurious peaks in excitation data, we look for explanations as to why those two peaks in the hydrogen excitation experiment occurred. Binning by wider excitation ranges would have helped erase those anomalies, but the scientists chose to ask the question rather than hide the uncomfortable facts (“eliminate the outliers”). We necessarily should be asking political questions in statistics because most statistics are innately tied to human behaviour, not pure mathematics or science. Are there more people working in maths and physics or law enforcement and legislation? The best way to educate future statisticians about invisible populations is to teach them about the mistakes of the past. These mistakes include for example focussing on which current populations commit the most violent domestic crimes per capita without thinking to ask why people commit crime, and then comparing per capita crime rates to the various causative factors of crime (which might be for example wealth, access to employment, police hours per capita). Everything is politics, any time there are one or more people involved. There is no escaping this even in mathematics. To pretend otherwise is to reinforce the erasure of oppressed populations such as women and non-majority races/cultures (and note that using the word “cultures” instead of “races” doesn’t stop you being racist). Essay topic for today: is there race or gender discrimination in physics and maths employment in the USA? Why are there so few women in STEM and where do populations start to become more distinct? Is the bimodal distribution of various characteristics by sex sufficient to explain the male dominance of mathematics and physics and the rapid decline of female populations from high school through to the end of a bachelors degree? Are there factors apart from IQ that can explain the lack of women in STEM?
upsidesinclude 4y ago
I don't recognize NewSpeak

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

fluoridation 4y ago

Is it possible that mathematics should be taught dispassionately, without resorting to inflammatory examples? Surely anyone can trivially come up with dozens of questions to use in a statistics problem that wouldn't raise any eyebrows. If so, the fact that someone would choose that specific question should call into question the motivation behind it.

derevaunseraun 4y ago
Why does it raise eyebrows? What about this question raises eyebrows if it indicates actual socioeconomic divisions in society? Do you just wanna pretend that those differences aren't there? These examples aren't inflammatory unless you're in denial
- fluoridation 4y ago
  The fact that you're saying it shouldn't raise eyebrows implies that you know it raises at least some eyebrows. So I ask again: why are you asking a question that you know could raise some eyebrows when you could have asked one that wouldn't have raised any? You can't ask a politically-charged question in a class that has nothing to do with politics and then act surprised when people accuse you of injecting politics where it doesn't belong.
  - derevaunseraun 4y ago
    I never said I was surprised The difference is the example question isn't political, it merely puts a data set in front of students and has them analyze it. > You can't ask a politically-charged question in a class that has nothing to do with politics The question has nothing to do with politics. It would be political if the teacher said: "now draw these conclusions, vote for these people". I know the link I provided had questions that were more in line with this, but the specific example I gave isn't asking for any conclusions, only observations
    - fluoridation 4y ago
      How is a question about ethnic groups in the US now not political? Where do you think those differences in food security come from? >the specific example I gave isn't asking for any conclusions, only observations Well, here's an observation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster#/media/File:PiratesVsTemp(en).svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster#/medi... Setting the joke aside, is there really that much difference between giving you that (perfectly true) statistic and just telling you "pirates prevent global warming"?
    - upsidesinclude 4y ago
      Yeah, this is the bad faith argument in action. Of course it had to do with politics and you want to pretend otherwise. The subject is MATH. The learning should be MATH. Other learning can happen where those types of critical thinking skills are taught. That is not the purpose of a MATH class.
      - derevaunseraun 4y ago
        And you're saying analyzing a data set and making observations isn't math? What about this hypothetical data set makes you so uncomfortable?
        upsidesinclude 4y ago
        Once again you are arguing in bad faith. This isn't about me. It's about whether children should be expected to deal with irrelevant topics in class. There are an infinite number of ways to ask the same mathematical problem that don't involve political issues. But you insist that it must be so, then deny that it is so. And to cap it off, you call anyone that disagrees a racist... not flat out, through insinuation. Bad faith argument.
- emerged 4y ago
  Surely you don’t think we should include questions about which race commits the most violent crimes proportionally? Because in this thread your claim is that dry simple facts should be fine even if they raise eyebrows. It seems to me that context is important and often people don’t agree on what the statements mean, and that these concerns have no place in a math class.
  - ashwagary 4y ago
    The race which committed the most violent crime in the last 5, 4, 3, 2, & 1 centuries are whites but I suspect you wouldnt like that answer. Just because we conveniently don't include mass murder (Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, WW2, etc) durings wars on the white tally, it doesn't change that fact. Generally, most framing in the western world is self serving to a particular group of people, so these kinds of facts don't go over so well.
    - upsidesinclude 4y ago
      So you are trying to say that any action of the US military is a white action? Maybe check the statistics on that one. If anything, what you are saying is racist and discounts ever person in the government and military that is not 'white' , a bizarre category of not actually being a race that is invented for arguments like your own
      - ashwagary 4y ago
        >So you are trying to say that any action of the US military is a white action? How many of the commanders in chief were non-white? I rest my case.
        upsidesinclude 4y ago
        Barrack didn't have a problem with war
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  >These examples aren't inflammatory unless you're in denial Some facts can be both true and inflammatory. Complex and nuanced topics should be approached with respect, as it is very easy to mislead or confuse, especially children. Imagine using homicide offense rate by race to teach fractions for an example how someone could draw wild conclusions from accurate facts. If a teacher used the example black men are 7 times more likely than white men as a math example, it would be incredibly reckless. Race is a very loaded topic. You could teach a college course on this fact and still start to scratch the surface.
upsidesinclude 4y ago
It is possible and necessary to divorce pure learning from some version of politics. Real mathematicians respect math
manicdee 4y ago
What would raise my eyebrows is not using real world examples to help children understand mathematics. There are very few people who can handle completely abstract mathematics at any age, and it has been necessary to use examples such as counting rocks or sticks to teach basic numeracy since language was invented. This need to ground the instruction in practical examples applies especially to statistics in schools where the most relatable population for discussing populations is the human population. The history of erasing inconvenient populations by various deliberate or accidental means such as focussing on outcomes rather than causes is something that absolutely does need to be taught as part of a statistics course. When studying the physical properties of gasses we don’t ignore the spurious peaks in excitation data, we look for explanations as to why those two peaks in the hydrogen excitation experiment occurred. Binning by wider excitation ranges would have helped erase those anomalies, but the scientists chose to ask the question rather than hide the uncomfortable facts (“eliminate the outliers”). We necessarily should be asking political questions in statistics because most statistics are innately tied to human behaviour, not pure mathematics or science. Are there more people working in maths and physics or law enforcement and legislation? The best way to educate future statisticians about invisible populations is to teach them about the mistakes of the past. These mistakes include for example focussing on which current populations commit the most violent domestic crimes per capita without thinking to ask why people commit crime, and then comparing per capita crime rates to the various causative factors of crime (which might be for example wealth, access to employment, police hours per capita). Everything is politics, any time there are one or more people involved. There is no escaping this even in mathematics. To pretend otherwise is to reinforce the erasure of oppressed populations such as women and non-majority races/cultures (and note that using the word “cultures” instead of “races” doesn’t stop you being racist). Essay topic for today: is there race or gender discrimination in physics and maths employment in the USA? Why are there so few women in STEM and where do populations start to become more distinct? Is the bimodal distribution of various characteristics by sex sufficient to explain the male dominance of mathematics and physics and the rapid decline of female populations from high school through to the end of a bachelors degree? Are there factors apart from IQ that can explain the lack of women in STEM?

upsidesinclude 4y ago

I don't recognize NewSpeak