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I heard a story once, that for a while France was teaching math to kids from first principles. Like trying to teach about number sets before diving into other t

by rtpg 4y ago

I heard a story once, that for a while France was teaching math to kids from first principles. Like trying to teach about number sets before diving into other topics. It was hard and abstract. They stopped. Instead they do what most people do: they teach concepts with a lot of papering over of the details. Then, once people have a stronger grasp on things, they go into first principles. It’s easier to understand commutativity if you can do addition already! Similarly, you can teach people black box stuff at first, then dive into details. it’s ok to use a high level language before understanding how to run stuff on a machine. Let’s not forget something important: Python and Lisp are basically abstracting away the important machinery anyways! Sussman has said it himself, computer science is about computers the same way that astronomy is about telescopes. And of course it’s not like SICP is the only class all these people are taking. One intro class. Meanwhile people get to do fun and engaging shit while learning. And they will learn more stuff later!

lisper 4y ago
Sure, but we're not talking about elementary school here. I think Python is a fine language for teaching first graders about programming. But this is MIT. If MIT students aren't expected to understand how things work under the hood, what hope is there for the rest of humanity? What I lament here is not the fate of 6001 specifically. It probably was outdated and in need of a refresh of some sort. What I lament here is the rationale that Sussman gives and apparently buys into, that the new approach is acceptable, and it's acceptable because treating things as magic black boxes is an inherent feature of modern engineering. No one understands, no one can even be expected to understand, and that's Just The Way It Is, and it's OK. Well, no, it's not OK. People can and must be expected to understand because the magic black boxes aren't actually magic. They were created by mere mortals not that long ago, some of whom went to MIT and read SICP. If SICP is dated (and it is) the thing to do is to update and improve it, not to discard it.
- rtpg 4y ago
  Isn’t this literally the first class you take? Like there are. 3.5 years left to learn all the other shit? This is a class for people with little to no programming experience. And it will include many people who will not be programmers (shocking I know). “Give people tools to do shit” does not preclude “learning all the details”. And it’s not the last class people take!
  - p_l 4y ago
    It also expected that you have considerable earlier knowledge, just not on programming itself (For example, at least some exposure to calculus is expected, as that's what some early examples use). The early lessons of SICP are more like teaching what's 2+2 in my opinion (substition model of function application, for example). In terms of practicality of the content, honestly I'd say SICP was at least as bad as most intro lectures I've seen, and honestly should stay but be combined with something like companion labs with "battery included" builds to play with things.
  - randcraw 4y ago
    In the OP video, Sussman mentions that SICP was one (the first) of four core courses in EECS that introduced essential concepts in programming, circuits, signals and systems, and computer architecture. I think all four completed by the end of year two and were prerequisite for all junior/senior EECS courses thereafter. It's hard to imagine the EECS program does not still require this material to earn a BS in CS or EE, but requiring four prerequisite courses probably interfered with non-EECS students who wanted to take junior/senior level EECS courses but did not want to have to run the "gauntlet of four" before doing so.
- inimino 4y ago
  The problem is that MIT used to be the high road for engineering and now it is a prestige degree and grants access to various roles etc. They gave in to the bureaucrats because it was inevitable that things would go that way anyway. At least they put the bullet in SICP and had a hand in the new curriculum. Now there is a generation of software engineers worried about losing their jobs to ChatGPT because they resigned to the fact that ChatGPT can probably glue things together better than they can long before they do the necessary work to understand ChatGPT from first principles. But this is branded as elitism, highly anti-bureaucratic.
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- CamperBob2 4y ago
  Unfortunately the view that we don't understand our own tools, while premature, will come true soon enough. Ask somebody at DeepMind exactly how AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol. At the end of the conversation, you will get a blank look. Don't even bother asking what inspired SD or DALL-E to generate a particular image.
ThrowawayR2 4y ago
IIRC the quote is from Dijkstra, not Sussman?
- rtpg 4y ago
  Sorry, I believe I heard Sussman say it (and they probably correctly attributed it), you’re likely right
urthor 4y ago
Do you have a source for France teaching mathematics from first principles?
randomifcpfan 4y ago
Sounds like you are thinking of “New Math”, which was tried in many Western countries including the US: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math In many ways SICP was from the same intellectual tradition as New Math.
- lanstin 4y ago
  As some one who loves SICP and first principles, I had a new math curriculum and loved it. Being able to derive the laws of arithmetic is usually a lot more useful than just knowing some particular instance of calculation. To be sure, I also did math contests in high school to bump up my speed at math, and in software will do timed speed tests (self devised on certain types of small tasks) also to bump up my speed in a particular language.
  - hnfong 4y ago
    You do know how the "first principles" came into place, right? They had arithmetic first. People counted chickens, sheep, coins first. Then, mathematicians invented more abstract rules that incidentally were able to derive arithmetic, and called them "first" principles. Chronologically they came last.
    - lanstin 4y ago
      I love axiomatic set theory and the history of maths and science. I love knowing how technology developed over the last few thousand years, Egyptian land measuring and trade accounting etc., and as much quantum field theory as I can understand (not that much, it's very hard). I like knowing about DNA and the history of animal husbandry. Deriving calculus and complex analysis from ZFC gives us tremendous intellectual power as far as the essentially and inherently true. Understanding how our culture has been lifting the vails of ignorance thru science and experiments and cultural evolution and so on is also important.
whimsicalism 4y ago
Sounds apocryphal to me.
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inimino 4y ago
You can read some of the story of France's experiments with Bourbakism in elementary education here, under the section about pedagogy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Lichnerowicz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Lichnerowicz tl;dr: New Math began in France, and they were the first to recover from it.

by rtpg 4y ago

lisper 4y ago

Sure, but we're not talking about elementary school here. I think Python is a fine language for teaching first graders about programming. But this is MIT. If MIT students aren't expected to understand how things work under the hood, what hope is there for the rest of humanity? What I lament here is not the fate of 6001 specifically. It probably was outdated and in need of a refresh of some sort. What I lament here is the rationale that Sussman gives and apparently buys into, that the new approach is acceptable, and it's acceptable because treating things as magic black boxes is an inherent feature of modern engineering. No one understands, no one can even be expected to understand, and that's Just The Way It Is, and it's OK. Well, no, it's not OK. People can and must be expected to understand because the magic black boxes aren't actually magic. They were created by mere mortals not that long ago, some of whom went to MIT and read SICP. If SICP is dated (and it is) the thing to do is to update and improve it, not to discard it.

rtpg 4y ago
Isn’t this literally the first class you take? Like there are. 3.5 years left to learn all the other shit? This is a class for people with little to no programming experience. And it will include many people who will not be programmers (shocking I know). “Give people tools to do shit” does not preclude “learning all the details”. And it’s not the last class people take!
- p_l 4y ago
  It also expected that you have considerable earlier knowledge, just not on programming itself (For example, at least some exposure to calculus is expected, as that's what some early examples use). The early lessons of SICP are more like teaching what's 2+2 in my opinion (substition model of function application, for example). In terms of practicality of the content, honestly I'd say SICP was at least as bad as most intro lectures I've seen, and honestly should stay but be combined with something like companion labs with "battery included" builds to play with things.
- randcraw 4y ago
  In the OP video, Sussman mentions that SICP was one (the first) of four core courses in EECS that introduced essential concepts in programming, circuits, signals and systems, and computer architecture. I think all four completed by the end of year two and were prerequisite for all junior/senior EECS courses thereafter. It's hard to imagine the EECS program does not still require this material to earn a BS in CS or EE, but requiring four prerequisite courses probably interfered with non-EECS students who wanted to take junior/senior level EECS courses but did not want to have to run the "gauntlet of four" before doing so.
inimino 4y ago
The problem is that MIT used to be the high road for engineering and now it is a prestige degree and grants access to various roles etc. They gave in to the bureaucrats because it was inevitable that things would go that way anyway. At least they put the bullet in SICP and had a hand in the new curriculum. Now there is a generation of software engineers worried about losing their jobs to ChatGPT because they resigned to the fact that ChatGPT can probably glue things together better than they can long before they do the necessary work to understand ChatGPT from first principles. But this is branded as elitism, highly anti-bureaucratic.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
CamperBob2 4y ago
Unfortunately the view that we don't understand our own tools, while premature, will come true soon enough. Ask somebody at DeepMind exactly how AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol. At the end of the conversation, you will get a blank look. Don't even bother asking what inspired SD or DALL-E to generate a particular image.

ThrowawayR2 4y ago

IIRC the quote is from Dijkstra, not Sussman?

rtpg 4y ago
Sorry, I believe I heard Sussman say it (and they probably correctly attributed it), you’re likely right

urthor 4y ago

Do you have a source for France teaching mathematics from first principles?

randomifcpfan 4y ago

Sounds like you are thinking of “New Math”, which was tried in many Western countries including the US: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Math In many ways SICP was from the same intellectual tradition as New Math.

lanstin 4y ago
As some one who loves SICP and first principles, I had a new math curriculum and loved it. Being able to derive the laws of arithmetic is usually a lot more useful than just knowing some particular instance of calculation. To be sure, I also did math contests in high school to bump up my speed at math, and in software will do timed speed tests (self devised on certain types of small tasks) also to bump up my speed in a particular language.
- hnfong 4y ago
  You do know how the "first principles" came into place, right? They had arithmetic first. People counted chickens, sheep, coins first. Then, mathematicians invented more abstract rules that incidentally were able to derive arithmetic, and called them "first" principles. Chronologically they came last.
  - lanstin 4y ago
    I love axiomatic set theory and the history of maths and science. I love knowing how technology developed over the last few thousand years, Egyptian land measuring and trade accounting etc., and as much quantum field theory as I can understand (not that much, it's very hard). I like knowing about DNA and the history of animal husbandry. Deriving calculus and complex analysis from ZFC gives us tremendous intellectual power as far as the essentially and inherently true. Understanding how our culture has been lifting the vails of ignorance thru science and experiments and cultural evolution and so on is also important.

whimsicalism 4y ago

Sounds apocryphal to me.

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inimino 4y ago

You can read some of the story of France's experiments with Bourbakism in elementary education here, under the section about pedagogy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Lichnerowicz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Lichnerowicz tl;dr: New Math began in France, and they were the first to recover from it.