7 ms·

Stanford, Harvard data science no more

23 points by MauiWarrior 3y ago

Guybrush_T 3y ago
I think it makes sense for them to emphasize a strong understanding of the fundamentals. It will help those students who later want to go into data science as well.
- bannedbybros 3y ago
  [dead]
- theGnuMe 3y ago
  It's rote learning though as ChatGPT proves by its scores on AP calculus exams. This is just a way to maintain elite admissions.
  - vineyardmike 3y ago
    Just because ChatGPT can do it, doesn’t mean that it isn’t valuable for a human to learn. This is especially true for foundational courses.
    - drewcoo 3y ago
      > Just because ChatGPT can do it, doesn’t mean that it isn’t valuable for a human to learn. No, but it does sort of suggest that, doesn't it? > This is especially true for foundational courses. Sure, but calculus is about memorizing ways to answer problems. We're not talking about real analysis, the course in which students develop the calculus and prove it works.
      - simplotek 3y ago
        > Sure, but calculus is about memorizing ways to answer problems. It really isn't. That might be how some people managed to get a passing grade, but clearly they learned nothing and squandered a once in a lifetime opportunity to get to know it.
        theGnuMe 3y ago
        I disagree.
        simplotek 3y ago
        > I disagree. Ok, thanks for your contribution.
    - theGnuMe 3y ago
      Its valuable if you wrap it up in an applied problem solving course like physics. That’s the point of the new curriculum reform anyway. Other countries that exceed us in test scores do this. So it really begs the question as to what is the point? The only thing I can think of is college admissions. A specific selection of rigorous memorization for elite admission.
bannedbybros 3y ago
[dead]
kenjackson 3y ago
While I’ve led a data science team, I’ve never taken a data science course — so I’m not sure what it teaches. But i do feel pretty confident in saying that I think math does lose its usefulness around after trig. Not to say there aren’t useful aspects, but the curriculum is so inefficient. And maybe it’s because everyone needs some part of it, but that part is different for each person. Math is interesting in that the early foundation is so useful, but the use drops off quickly. While I feel like other areas often become more useful as I learn more. Possibly because I haven’t spent 15 years on that topic like I had math.
- 2devnull 3y ago
  “math does lose its usefulness around after trig” This is the most jarring thing I’ve read today. I can’t say I agree, but I haven’t spent 15 years studying math myself, so who am I to disagree.
  - kenjackson 3y ago
    I think most people would agree if pressed. Math is so ridiculously useful prior to trig. Almost any white collar job relies on these maths. Trig is an interesting inflection point in that so much math gets built on top of it, although its not that useful in of itself. And then after trig, things become much more fragmented and you really need to go into specific subfields to determine which branch of math is of value. For example, if you go into medicine and medical research having a good understanding of statistics is useful, but very little in calculus or analysis is useful (and even if you do need Calculus, most of the useful stuff for those fields is taught in the 1st semester of Calculus).
    - mlyle 3y ago
      I think a lot of things use calculus concepts, even if calculus isn't explicitly invoked. A whole lot of finance and pharmacology are about exponential functions and their derivatives and integrals, for instance. A whole lot of fields use optimization, even if "just asking the computer to do it", etc. I admit I am weaker now in calculus and linear algebra because I lean on CAS and simulation a lot... but at least I know how it works so that I have an idea of what I'm doing.
CobaltFire 3y ago
Note that this is the recommendations for applying for Undergrad, not their classes or program offerings. Those two institutions are recommending more foundational (calculus) rather than applied courses (data science).
- mlyle 3y ago
  They continue to recommend statistics. They removed data science from a sentence that also included calculus and statistics.
  - CobaltFire 3y ago
    Thanks, reread that. I’ve corrected it but wanted to post to make sure your comment kept context.
  - simplotek 3y ago
    > They continue to recommend statistics. They removed data science from a sentence that also included calculus and statistics. I knew a professor from a math department from a top European university who taught data science courses who swore that data science and data mining were just marketing terms invented to sell statistics.
dooglius 3y ago
Geometry isn't really any more "fundamental" than statistics (for concreteness, let's say the geometry covered by the SAT and statistics as covered by the AP Statistics exam). Maybe they are using it as a proxy for formal proofs? A proof-based course in probability would actually be a lot more fundamental than either geometry or statistics, I think.
- mlyle 3y ago
  I don’t like the whole layer cake of math that we do. Still, in a traditional geometry course you get a lot of pieces that help with trig and calculus, and an exposure to at least informal proofs. A whole lot of stuff in AP Stats is a relatively dead end for many people, but geometry and geometric reasoning is necessary for all kinds of engineering-ish math.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  I think geometry and trig are pretty related, and have a lot of relevance in calculus especially multivariate. To your point geometry is also the first place formal proofs take shape. That said I think geometry and trig could each be a quarter of a year long and be taught to the extent needed for almost any pursuit, with supplemental at point of need. In my education geometry and trig were two entire years, and it was so dull I lost all interest in math until I took calculus. I agree a probability course would be useful, but I don’t think probability before calculus is an awesome idea. Statistics and probability can be taught at a rudimentary level without calculus, but insight really requires calculus and linear algebra. I found taking a non calc stats and probability course made the calc version harder.
  - vaidhy 3y ago
    While trig is used for starting on calculus now, in practice, I never had to use trig for ML. Most of the work was in numerical differentiation and integrations. I would think trig usefulness is more in some hard sciences while ML has a much more horizontal applicability. It is possible to teach calculus without trig (just for polynomials) and I think it is very useful just at that level.
AbrahamParangi 3y ago
Familiarity with pandas and familiarity with taking an integral aren’t even close to the same thing. I don’t think it ever made sense to group them together.
westurner 3y ago
Do Stanford or Harvard have a UC BIDS: UC Berkeley Institute of Data Science? > This is the [open] textbook for the Foundations of Data Science class at UC Berkeley: "Computational and Inferential Thinking: The Foundations of Data Science" http://inferentialthinking.com/ http://inferentialthinking.com/ (JupyterBook w/ notebooks and MyST Markdown) https://data.berkeley.edu/ https://data.berkeley.edu/ : > [#1 Undergrad Data Science program, #2 ranked Graduate Statistics program]
- westurner 3y ago
  Data literacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_literacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_literacy : > Data literacy is distinguished from statistical literacy since it involves understanding what data means, including the ability to read graphs and charts as well as draw conclusions from data.[6] Statistical literacy, on the other hand, refers to the "ability to read and interpret summary statistics in everyday media" such as graphs, tables, statements, surveys, and studies. [6] Data Literacy and Statistical Literacy are essential for good leadership. For citizens to be capable of Evidence-Based Policy, we need Data Driven Journalism (DDJ) and curricular data science in the public high schools. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20173228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20173228
hw-guy 3y ago
It's amazing how many bad ideas, if you scroll down far enough, are justified by an appeal to "equity." Which usually translates into dumbing things down.
humanistbot 3y ago
Misleading editorialized title. The actual title is "Stanford, Harvard revise high school math curriculum recommendations, exclude data science"
roddylindsay 3y ago
A high school "data science" course, if designed properly, will be far more useful to students and beneficial to society than calculus. Every high school student should learn how to grapple with uncertainty, how to evaluate statistical claims and experiments, how to interpret graphs and charts, understand how machine learning models work (at a high level), and internalize concepts like "significance", "error bars", and "expected value." This training will help all students every single day of their lives, because it teaches them how to think. Society benefits from having more people with the tools to evaluate data and deal with uncertainty, especially as we face a looming epistemological crisis. Calculus, on the other hand, will be used by very few students, and even for those few, it will not likely be used every day. Yes, it is a prerequisite for some STEM courses as part of a degree program, and so calculus can be taught to undergraduates pursuing a STEM field in their first year (or those who take it as an elective in high school.) It's a shame that Stanford and Harvard, which set the tone for high schools and high schoolers, are going the wrong direction here.
- simplotek 3y ago
  > A high school "data science" course, if designed properly, will be far more useful to students and beneficial to society than calculus. How do you expect students to understand what they are doing with "data science" without learning probability and statistics, and how do you expect students to get probability and statistics without learning calculus? I mean, Bayes' theorem. How do you get people to get it if they don't know calculus?
  - comte7092 3y ago
    High schools often teach physics and without calculus as a prerequisite. It definitely makes it more challenging, but you can still communicate the concepts at a different level of detail.
    - simplotek 3y ago
      > High schools often teach physics and without calculus as a prerequisite. Does it though? For example, you simply cannot teach Newton's laws of motion without knowing what a derivative is.
rawgabbit 3y ago
The article is written poorly with a click bait title. This is the Stanford guidance. Mathematics: four years of rigorous mathematics incorporating a solid grounding in fundamental skills (algebra, geometry, trigonometry). We also welcome additional mathematical preparation, including calculus and statistics. This is the Harvard guidance. Update to math curricular guidance: There is no single academic path we expect all students to follow, but the strongest applicants take the most rigorous secondary school curricula available to them. We receive many questions specifically about what type of math courses students should take. Applicants to Harvard should excel in a challenging high school math sequence corresponding to their educational interests and aspirations. Rigorous and relevant data science, computer science, statistics, mathematical modeling, calculus, and other advanced math classes are given equal consideration in the application process.
tinglymintyfrsh 3y ago
Seems like a mischaracterization because I don't see a problem. UC CS undergrads had to take statistics for engineers and scientists. UC CS undergrad majors in particular could end within 2 courses from a math undergrad degree. Is this not the case that squishier applied courses are possible? EE/CS undergrads had to take the entire upper-division physics track for scientists and engineers, including modern physics. So has something changed since then and is something changing back?

23 points by MauiWarrior 3y ago

I think it makes sense for them to emphasize a strong understanding of the fundamentals. It will help those students who later want to go into data science as well.

bannedbybros 3y ago
[dead]
theGnuMe 3y ago
It's rote learning though as ChatGPT proves by its scores on AP calculus exams. This is just a way to maintain elite admissions.
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  Just because ChatGPT can do it, doesn’t mean that it isn’t valuable for a human to learn. This is especially true for foundational courses.
  - drewcoo 3y ago
    > Just because ChatGPT can do it, doesn’t mean that it isn’t valuable for a human to learn. No, but it does sort of suggest that, doesn't it? > This is especially true for foundational courses. Sure, but calculus is about memorizing ways to answer problems. We're not talking about real analysis, the course in which students develop the calculus and prove it works.
    - simplotek 3y ago
      > Sure, but calculus is about memorizing ways to answer problems. It really isn't. That might be how some people managed to get a passing grade, but clearly they learned nothing and squandered a once in a lifetime opportunity to get to know it.
      - theGnuMe 3y ago
        I disagree.
        simplotek 3y ago
        > I disagree. Ok, thanks for your contribution.
  - theGnuMe 3y ago
    Its valuable if you wrap it up in an applied problem solving course like physics. That’s the point of the new curriculum reform anyway. Other countries that exceed us in test scores do this. So it really begs the question as to what is the point? The only thing I can think of is college admissions. A specific selection of rigorous memorization for elite admission.

bannedbybros 3y ago

[dead]

kenjackson 3y ago

While I’ve led a data science team, I’ve never taken a data science course — so I’m not sure what it teaches. But i do feel pretty confident in saying that I think math does lose its usefulness around after trig. Not to say there aren’t useful aspects, but the curriculum is so inefficient. And maybe it’s because everyone needs some part of it, but that part is different for each person. Math is interesting in that the early foundation is so useful, but the use drops off quickly. While I feel like other areas often become more useful as I learn more. Possibly because I haven’t spent 15 years on that topic like I had math.

2devnull 3y ago
“math does lose its usefulness around after trig” This is the most jarring thing I’ve read today. I can’t say I agree, but I haven’t spent 15 years studying math myself, so who am I to disagree.
- kenjackson 3y ago
  I think most people would agree if pressed. Math is so ridiculously useful prior to trig. Almost any white collar job relies on these maths. Trig is an interesting inflection point in that so much math gets built on top of it, although its not that useful in of itself. And then after trig, things become much more fragmented and you really need to go into specific subfields to determine which branch of math is of value. For example, if you go into medicine and medical research having a good understanding of statistics is useful, but very little in calculus or analysis is useful (and even if you do need Calculus, most of the useful stuff for those fields is taught in the 1st semester of Calculus).
  - mlyle 3y ago
    I think a lot of things use calculus concepts, even if calculus isn't explicitly invoked. A whole lot of finance and pharmacology are about exponential functions and their derivatives and integrals, for instance. A whole lot of fields use optimization, even if "just asking the computer to do it", etc. I admit I am weaker now in calculus and linear algebra because I lean on CAS and simulation a lot... but at least I know how it works so that I have an idea of what I'm doing.

CobaltFire 3y ago

Note that this is the recommendations for applying for Undergrad, not their classes or program offerings. Those two institutions are recommending more foundational (calculus) rather than applied courses (data science).

mlyle 3y ago
They continue to recommend statistics. They removed data science from a sentence that also included calculus and statistics.
- CobaltFire 3y ago
  Thanks, reread that. I’ve corrected it but wanted to post to make sure your comment kept context.
- simplotek 3y ago
  > They continue to recommend statistics. They removed data science from a sentence that also included calculus and statistics. I knew a professor from a math department from a top European university who taught data science courses who swore that data science and data mining were just marketing terms invented to sell statistics.

dooglius 3y ago

Geometry isn't really any more "fundamental" than statistics (for concreteness, let's say the geometry covered by the SAT and statistics as covered by the AP Statistics exam). Maybe they are using it as a proxy for formal proofs? A proof-based course in probability would actually be a lot more fundamental than either geometry or statistics, I think.

mlyle 3y ago
I don’t like the whole layer cake of math that we do. Still, in a traditional geometry course you get a lot of pieces that help with trig and calculus, and an exposure to at least informal proofs. A whole lot of stuff in AP Stats is a relatively dead end for many people, but geometry and geometric reasoning is necessary for all kinds of engineering-ish math.
fnordpiglet 3y ago
I think geometry and trig are pretty related, and have a lot of relevance in calculus especially multivariate. To your point geometry is also the first place formal proofs take shape. That said I think geometry and trig could each be a quarter of a year long and be taught to the extent needed for almost any pursuit, with supplemental at point of need. In my education geometry and trig were two entire years, and it was so dull I lost all interest in math until I took calculus. I agree a probability course would be useful, but I don’t think probability before calculus is an awesome idea. Statistics and probability can be taught at a rudimentary level without calculus, but insight really requires calculus and linear algebra. I found taking a non calc stats and probability course made the calc version harder.
- vaidhy 3y ago
  While trig is used for starting on calculus now, in practice, I never had to use trig for ML. Most of the work was in numerical differentiation and integrations. I would think trig usefulness is more in some hard sciences while ML has a much more horizontal applicability. It is possible to teach calculus without trig (just for polynomials) and I think it is very useful just at that level.

AbrahamParangi 3y ago

Familiarity with pandas and familiarity with taking an integral aren’t even close to the same thing. I don’t think it ever made sense to group them together.

westurner 3y ago

Do Stanford or Harvard have a UC BIDS: UC Berkeley Institute of Data Science? > This is the [open] textbook for the Foundations of Data Science class at UC Berkeley: "Computational and Inferential Thinking: The Foundations of Data Science" http://inferentialthinking.com/ http://inferentialthinking.com/ (JupyterBook w/ notebooks and MyST Markdown) https://data.berkeley.edu/ https://data.berkeley.edu/ : > [#1 Undergrad Data Science program, #2 ranked Graduate Statistics program]

westurner 3y ago
Data literacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_literacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_literacy : > Data literacy is distinguished from statistical literacy since it involves understanding what data means, including the ability to read graphs and charts as well as draw conclusions from data.[6] Statistical literacy, on the other hand, refers to the "ability to read and interpret summary statistics in everyday media" such as graphs, tables, statements, surveys, and studies. [6] Data Literacy and Statistical Literacy are essential for good leadership. For citizens to be capable of Evidence-Based Policy, we need Data Driven Journalism (DDJ) and curricular data science in the public high schools. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20173228 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20173228

hw-guy 3y ago

It's amazing how many bad ideas, if you scroll down far enough, are justified by an appeal to "equity." Which usually translates into dumbing things down.

humanistbot 3y ago

Misleading editorialized title. The actual title is "Stanford, Harvard revise high school math curriculum recommendations, exclude data science"

roddylindsay 3y ago

A high school "data science" course, if designed properly, will be far more useful to students and beneficial to society than calculus. Every high school student should learn how to grapple with uncertainty, how to evaluate statistical claims and experiments, how to interpret graphs and charts, understand how machine learning models work (at a high level), and internalize concepts like "significance", "error bars", and "expected value." This training will help all students every single day of their lives, because it teaches them how to think. Society benefits from having more people with the tools to evaluate data and deal with uncertainty, especially as we face a looming epistemological crisis. Calculus, on the other hand, will be used by very few students, and even for those few, it will not likely be used every day. Yes, it is a prerequisite for some STEM courses as part of a degree program, and so calculus can be taught to undergraduates pursuing a STEM field in their first year (or those who take it as an elective in high school.) It's a shame that Stanford and Harvard, which set the tone for high schools and high schoolers, are going the wrong direction here.

simplotek 3y ago
> A high school "data science" course, if designed properly, will be far more useful to students and beneficial to society than calculus. How do you expect students to understand what they are doing with "data science" without learning probability and statistics, and how do you expect students to get probability and statistics without learning calculus? I mean, Bayes' theorem. How do you get people to get it if they don't know calculus?
- comte7092 3y ago
  High schools often teach physics and without calculus as a prerequisite. It definitely makes it more challenging, but you can still communicate the concepts at a different level of detail.
  - simplotek 3y ago
    > High schools often teach physics and without calculus as a prerequisite. Does it though? For example, you simply cannot teach Newton's laws of motion without knowing what a derivative is.

rawgabbit 3y ago

The article is written poorly with a click bait title. This is the Stanford guidance. Mathematics: four years of rigorous mathematics incorporating a solid grounding in fundamental skills (algebra, geometry, trigonometry). We also welcome additional mathematical preparation, including calculus and statistics. This is the Harvard guidance. Update to math curricular guidance: There is no single academic path we expect all students to follow, but the strongest applicants take the most rigorous secondary school curricula available to them. We receive many questions specifically about what type of math courses students should take. Applicants to Harvard should excel in a challenging high school math sequence corresponding to their educational interests and aspirations. Rigorous and relevant data science, computer science, statistics, mathematical modeling, calculus, and other advanced math classes are given equal consideration in the application process.

tinglymintyfrsh 3y ago

Seems like a mischaracterization because I don't see a problem. UC CS undergrads had to take statistics for engineers and scientists. UC CS undergrad majors in particular could end within 2 courses from a math undergrad degree. Is this not the case that squishier applied courses are possible? EE/CS undergrads had to take the entire upper-division physics track for scientists and engineers, including modern physics. So has something changed since then and is something changing back?