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For the average person, arithmetic is sufficient but for an advanced major, giving them problems is crushing (I speak from personal experience). This is a v

For the average person, arithmetic is sufficient but for an advanced major, giving them problems is crushing (I speak from personal experience). This is a very insightful observation. I loved mathematics till high school (in India), and solving problems was real fun (with a good understanding of what it was all about). Then i started my engineering (again in India), and was completely put off by the insanity of solving only problems without much thinking and appreciating the beauty and underlying principles. I was also startled a bit by the following statement in the article: Math homework in India consists of math problems that students work through, as opposed to the United States, where homework is heavy on reading about math topics in a textbook. To me, it's almost impossible to think of basic math without problem solving. May be it's only me, but the real 'fun' is not complete without it, and i daresay it is not the greatest strategy of attracting inquisitive kids to it. For some reason, American kids seem to be willing to put in the work with athletics, but not put it in with the one subject that’s going to matter more to their lives than any other activity. Honestly, even i would prefer my kid to put more work in athletics if (s)he can handle the money and understand the way around converting measurement units. :-). I can't think of anything else i use it for these days.

Retric 18y ago
I think an example of the failures of rote learning is a simple math problem. An army is marching down a road at Xmph and stretches out 1 mile in length. An officer at the rear of the army notices a problem. How long does it take him to get to the front of the line traveling at Ymph and how many minutes does it take him to do the round trip? Now, if you hand this to a bunch of collage students who have not seen it before a surprisingly small fraction is going to be able to do it quickly and they are not generally the ones who think of math a series of steps from problem to solution.

Retric 18y ago

I think an example of the failures of rote learning is a simple math problem. An army is marching down a road at Xmph and stretches out 1 mile in length. An officer at the rear of the army notices a problem. How long does it take him to get to the front of the line traveling at Ymph and how many minutes does it take him to do the round trip? Now, if you hand this to a bunch of collage students who have not seen it before a surprisingly small fraction is going to be able to do it quickly and they are not generally the ones who think of math a series of steps from problem to solution.