19 ms·

One tangible example of what this looks in practice is the widespread push in California for "equitable math": https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/site

One tangible example of what this looks in practice is the widespread push in California for "equitable math": https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11...

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
infotainment 2y ago
> • Identify and challenge the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views. Maybe the real mistake the Soviet Union made was not banning math, as it can apparently only be used for capitalism.
- defrost 2y ago
  > as it can apparently only be used for capitalism. Care to show your working? Many people, if asked to identify ways in which a hammer is used to build a cupboard, wouldn't conclude hammers can only be used for cupboards.
WalterBright 2y ago
> White supremacy culture shows up in math classrooms when... There is a greater focus on getting the "right" answer than understanding concepts and reasoning. When designing airplane parts, there are definitely right and wrong answers.
- defrost 2y ago
  Indeed, and you correctly used a plural thus reinforcing the notion that methods with an undue focus on singular right answers a particular teacher is thinking of aren't all that great.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    That's not what I meant, but I'll go with it for the moment. You can design and build a functioning automobile without math. You cannot design a functioning airplane without math. You cannot design a functioning spacecraft without a very, very strong math background. With aircraft parts, you can make mistakes up to a point, but those mistakes will make the airplane cost more, such as being overweight. There is always an optimum answer, and I took it as a point of pride to get things exactly right. I knew some engineers who couldn't do arithmetic very well. The results were parts that were overweight and often would not even fit together, causing expensive redesign and rework. Engineering management knew who they were, and assigned them tasks where their deficient work was not going to cause much trouble. But in no case was 2+2 not equal to 4.
    - defrost 2y ago
      > You cannot design a functioning airplane without math. Did the Wright brothers use a lot of math in their wind tunnel experiments or was it more empirical .. given that "correct" math for flight dynamics took a while longer to come about. > With aircraft parts, there are a lot of "right* answers; three pairs of wings, two pairs, a single pair, a single wing, push from the back, pull from the front, control surfaces here or forward canards there. > There is always an optimum answer There are multiple optimums in the field of avionics.
      - WalterBright 2y ago
        > Did the Wright brothers use a lot of math in their wind tunnel experiments Yes, they did. They did a lot of math in their design (their notebooks survive). That's why they were successful and their contemporaries all failed. They developed the first mathematical theory of propellers, for example, and used it to create a propeller that was twice as efficient as that of other experimenters. See "The Wright Brothers as Engineers, An Appraisal" by Quentin Wand > there are a lot of "right* answers None of them flew if they got thrust/lift/drag/weight/cg/strength/stability wrong answers. Lots of people died as the result of wrong answers.
      - 2y ago
- zzo38computer 2y ago
  Getting the right answer is important in many situations, such as that; however, understanding concepts and reasoning is important so that you can know how to get the right answer (and so that you can understand math, in general). However, there may be more than one valid way to do so (and the answer will be the same). For example, there is many way to prove Pythagorean theorem, factorial duplication formula, and other stuff; and shortcuts for making some kinds of calculations, etc. (However, this does not seem to have to do with white supremacy; it is something else.)
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    There are many ways to arrive at an arithmetic sum, but there is only one correct sum.
    - piva00 2y ago
      Sure but do we want kids to just learn what's the correct sum or do we want them to learn the process to arrived at the correct sum? From my school years as a kid who enjoyed math I had a lot of fun trying to arrive at the correct answer while most of my peers just wanted to get the "correct" answer because they were being tested on it, anything else that wasn't the correct answer had no value to them. I believe that's what you quoted refers to: >> White supremacy culture shows up in math classrooms when... There is a greater focus on getting the "right" answer than understanding concepts and reasoning. > When designing airplane parts, there are definitely right and wrong answers. Focus on getting the right answer makes kids not value the process to get to the right answers, getting the right answer is a result of a process they need to learn but if they are only tested on if the answer is right or wrong they won't learn the concepts and reasoning, they will memorise a formula and apply it at wrong times/places because they don't know why the formula is what it is.
      - WalterBright 2y ago
        You can set up the equations many ways, but then there's "turning the crank", aka "plug and grind" and there's the correct answer, and everything else is wrong. Yes, I know that singularities are special cases, as well as two roots for the square root, etc. > they won't learn the concepts and reasoning Memorizing comes first for children. Concepts and reasoning comes later. In college, concepts and reasoning come first, and memorization is unimportant. I remember memorizing the times tables when I was 5 or 6. I'd draw out the 10*10 matrix and fill in all the boxes, using addition. Eventually I noticed that "times" meant add the number that many times, and that I didn't have to memorize it anymore. But the work memorizing it laid the groundwork for the epiphany.
- davorak 2y ago
  > understanding concepts and reasoning. Steelmanning "There is a greater focus on getting the "right" answer than understanding concepts and reasoning." Correct understanding and reasoning leads to correct answers. I want my airplane engineers to understand the concepts and reason through them and not have a shallow understanding of memorized solutions.
  - tux1968 2y ago
    How does that have anything to do with white supremacy, though?
    - gravescale 2y ago
      White reflects sunlight better and leads to less heating of the airframe's skin, shows up damage and leaks well, and the expensive paint job doesn't fade in the high-UV troposphere, so it's the supreme paint colour for most civil aircraft both in practical and economic terms.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    > I want my airplane engineers to understand the concepts and reason through them and not have a shallow understanding of memorized solutions. So do I, and I had some disrespect for the engineers who relied on memorization, but memorization is the first step towards understanding. For example, if you want to play guitar like Van Halen, you gotta start by memorizing the finger positions.
    - davorak 2y ago
      > So do I, and I had some disrespect for the engineers who relied on memorization, but memorization is the first step towards understanding. I disagree that it is always the first step towards understanding. It is for some people but it is not the only route. At the end of the day some memorization is needed in most disciplines not just math. > "There is a greater focus on getting the "right" answer than understanding concepts and reasoning." Approximate rewording to what should/can be done rather what should't be done ~"focus first on understand concepts and reasoning, then getting the correct answer"
- atoav 2y ago
  If you get any answer, isn't the only way to know whether it is right or wrong to understand it? What is critiqued here isn't that people manage to add numbers the right way. What is critiqued here is in a metaphorical sense that students learn the results for any given input by hard, and don't understand what addition does and what happens when you add things. As someone who had mechanical engineering classes if I had to pick someone to build my plane I'd pick someone who understands that the bend on a 5m aluminum rod is not going to be in the order of 2km over a person that accepts that result because they think they applied the rules they learned. You only get the former kind of thinking by making people understand what they are doing. And a good way to avoid developing that understanding is by constantly focus on things being right instead of only doing so in special situations (e.g. a test).
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    > isn't the only way to know whether it is right or wrong to understand it? The other way to know is to test it. Things are tested anyway, just to ensure the math was done correctly. I designed the stabilizer trim jackscrew so it could withstand 151% of the maximum load. (The extra 1% was for tolerances.) The test people grinned and told me they were going to bust my jackscrew. Off I went to Plant 2 where they had the medieval torture rig all set up. It was two I-beams, hinged together at one end. There was a hydraulic ram connected to form a triangle. My poor little jackscrew was fixed to both I-beams. And, with a grin, the testers started cranking up the pressure in the ram. I watched with my safety googles on. They ran it up to 150%, and the I-beam bent like limp noodle, and my jackscrew stood strong and proud! No creaks, no cracks, no spalling, no buckling. The testers were chagrined, and I simply went back to the office. There were two takeaways here: 1. It was too strong. Evidently Saginaw Gear forged a masterpiece. I've always liked Saginaw Gear since. They're some bad mofos. 2. The test people didn't do the math.
    - atoav 2y ago
      Believe me I would have loved to forklift a load onto a steel beam during mechanical engineering exams just to test my calculations, but somehow none of us were forklift certified and the school failed to provide steel beams to toy around with. Looking back at that education the important lessons there were to acknowledge that even if multiple people try for hours under high stress to get things right, chances are more than 50% will still be wrong. And to only way around that is to really know your shit inside out. I had many colleagues who I met uears later which wouldn't even be able to explain basic mechanical laws as all they did back then is learn for exams like other people learn poems. That is what I meant when I said understanding is more important than being right in school. If you construct a plane you better check it ten times and then test it a hundred times.
- primitivesuave 2y ago
  As is true with algorithms. To piggyback on your other comment about testing, it's entirely possible (and widely experienced in the software world) to come up with something that seems correct but does not withstand real-world behavior. The premise that the "right answer" is somehow racist or exclusionary is a ridiculous statement to any engineer.
- gravescale 2y ago
  As usual, there's a relevant Akin's Law: > 12. There is never a single right solution. There are always multiple wrong ones, though. I'm not sure simple arithmetic is really the focus there, though I suppose "2²" is a good an answer to "what is 2 + 2" as "4". The real right answer is of course "can't say without knowing what the field is that we're operating in". https://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html https://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html
- red-iron-pine 2y ago
  doesn't even have to be that serious -- can be something as simple as measuring fractions and percentages for baking bread. get those baker's percentages wrong and it's gonna be inedible
WalterBright 2y ago
I'm reminded of: 1. a novice follows the rules because he's supposed to 2. a master follows the rules because he understands the rules 3. a guru transcends the rules because he knows the rules don't apply There's no way to skip steps 1 and 2. That reference tries to skip straight to 3. It'll never work.
- atoav 2y ago
  The problem math education has is that 99% of it is thought by people who are still at step 1, while it should be thought by people who are at step 2 or 3.
gravescale 2y ago
That's a document that really has had money spent on the formatting, it's really very nicely designed. The editable fields are a great touch as you can just paste in your answers directly from ChatGPT.
- Symbiote 2y ago
  I assume the misspellings "agnecy" and "sutdents" are intentional, as showing perfectionism would be a sign of white supremacy. Except the reference they give for these characteristics of white supremacy [1] says: > Organizations that are people of color led or a majority people of color can also demonstrate many damaging characteristics of white supremacy culture. [1] https://www.thc.texas.gov/public/upload/preserve/museums/files/White_Supremacy_Culture.pdf https://www.thc.texas.gov/public/upload/preserve/museums/fil...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

infotainment 2y ago

> • Identify and challenge the ways that math is used to uphold capitalist, imperialist, and racist views. Maybe the real mistake the Soviet Union made was not banning math, as it can apparently only be used for capitalism.

defrost 2y ago
> as it can apparently only be used for capitalism. Care to show your working? Many people, if asked to identify ways in which a hammer is used to build a cupboard, wouldn't conclude hammers can only be used for cupboards.

WalterBright 2y ago

> White supremacy culture shows up in math classrooms when... There is a greater focus on getting the "right" answer than understanding concepts and reasoning. When designing airplane parts, there are definitely right and wrong answers.

defrost 2y ago
Indeed, and you correctly used a plural thus reinforcing the notion that methods with an undue focus on singular right answers a particular teacher is thinking of aren't all that great.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  That's not what I meant, but I'll go with it for the moment. You can design and build a functioning automobile without math. You cannot design a functioning airplane without math. You cannot design a functioning spacecraft without a very, very strong math background. With aircraft parts, you can make mistakes up to a point, but those mistakes will make the airplane cost more, such as being overweight. There is always an optimum answer, and I took it as a point of pride to get things exactly right. I knew some engineers who couldn't do arithmetic very well. The results were parts that were overweight and often would not even fit together, causing expensive redesign and rework. Engineering management knew who they were, and assigned them tasks where their deficient work was not going to cause much trouble. But in no case was 2+2 not equal to 4.
  - defrost 2y ago
    > You cannot design a functioning airplane without math. Did the Wright brothers use a lot of math in their wind tunnel experiments or was it more empirical .. given that "correct" math for flight dynamics took a while longer to come about. > With aircraft parts, there are a lot of "right* answers; three pairs of wings, two pairs, a single pair, a single wing, push from the back, pull from the front, control surfaces here or forward canards there. > There is always an optimum answer There are multiple optimums in the field of avionics.
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      > Did the Wright brothers use a lot of math in their wind tunnel experiments Yes, they did. They did a lot of math in their design (their notebooks survive). That's why they were successful and their contemporaries all failed. They developed the first mathematical theory of propellers, for example, and used it to create a propeller that was twice as efficient as that of other experimenters. See "The Wright Brothers as Engineers, An Appraisal" by Quentin Wand > there are a lot of "right* answers None of them flew if they got thrust/lift/drag/weight/cg/strength/stability wrong answers. Lots of people died as the result of wrong answers.
    - 2y ago
zzo38computer 2y ago
Getting the right answer is important in many situations, such as that; however, understanding concepts and reasoning is important so that you can know how to get the right answer (and so that you can understand math, in general). However, there may be more than one valid way to do so (and the answer will be the same). For example, there is many way to prove Pythagorean theorem, factorial duplication formula, and other stuff; and shortcuts for making some kinds of calculations, etc. (However, this does not seem to have to do with white supremacy; it is something else.)
- WalterBright 2y ago
  There are many ways to arrive at an arithmetic sum, but there is only one correct sum.
  - piva00 2y ago
    Sure but do we want kids to just learn what's the correct sum or do we want them to learn the process to arrived at the correct sum? From my school years as a kid who enjoyed math I had a lot of fun trying to arrive at the correct answer while most of my peers just wanted to get the "correct" answer because they were being tested on it, anything else that wasn't the correct answer had no value to them. I believe that's what you quoted refers to: >> White supremacy culture shows up in math classrooms when... There is a greater focus on getting the "right" answer than understanding concepts and reasoning. > When designing airplane parts, there are definitely right and wrong answers. Focus on getting the right answer makes kids not value the process to get to the right answers, getting the right answer is a result of a process they need to learn but if they are only tested on if the answer is right or wrong they won't learn the concepts and reasoning, they will memorise a formula and apply it at wrong times/places because they don't know why the formula is what it is.
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      You can set up the equations many ways, but then there's "turning the crank", aka "plug and grind" and there's the correct answer, and everything else is wrong. Yes, I know that singularities are special cases, as well as two roots for the square root, etc. > they won't learn the concepts and reasoning Memorizing comes first for children. Concepts and reasoning comes later. In college, concepts and reasoning come first, and memorization is unimportant. I remember memorizing the times tables when I was 5 or 6. I'd draw out the 10*10 matrix and fill in all the boxes, using addition. Eventually I noticed that "times" meant add the number that many times, and that I didn't have to memorize it anymore. But the work memorizing it laid the groundwork for the epiphany.
davorak 2y ago
> understanding concepts and reasoning. Steelmanning "There is a greater focus on getting the "right" answer than understanding concepts and reasoning." Correct understanding and reasoning leads to correct answers. I want my airplane engineers to understand the concepts and reason through them and not have a shallow understanding of memorized solutions.
- tux1968 2y ago
  How does that have anything to do with white supremacy, though?
  - gravescale 2y ago
    White reflects sunlight better and leads to less heating of the airframe's skin, shows up damage and leaks well, and the expensive paint job doesn't fade in the high-UV troposphere, so it's the supreme paint colour for most civil aircraft both in practical and economic terms.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  > I want my airplane engineers to understand the concepts and reason through them and not have a shallow understanding of memorized solutions. So do I, and I had some disrespect for the engineers who relied on memorization, but memorization is the first step towards understanding. For example, if you want to play guitar like Van Halen, you gotta start by memorizing the finger positions.
  - davorak 2y ago
    > So do I, and I had some disrespect for the engineers who relied on memorization, but memorization is the first step towards understanding. I disagree that it is always the first step towards understanding. It is for some people but it is not the only route. At the end of the day some memorization is needed in most disciplines not just math. > "There is a greater focus on getting the "right" answer than understanding concepts and reasoning." Approximate rewording to what should/can be done rather what should't be done ~"focus first on understand concepts and reasoning, then getting the correct answer"
atoav 2y ago
If you get any answer, isn't the only way to know whether it is right or wrong to understand it? What is critiqued here isn't that people manage to add numbers the right way. What is critiqued here is in a metaphorical sense that students learn the results for any given input by hard, and don't understand what addition does and what happens when you add things. As someone who had mechanical engineering classes if I had to pick someone to build my plane I'd pick someone who understands that the bend on a 5m aluminum rod is not going to be in the order of 2km over a person that accepts that result because they think they applied the rules they learned. You only get the former kind of thinking by making people understand what they are doing. And a good way to avoid developing that understanding is by constantly focus on things being right instead of only doing so in special situations (e.g. a test).
- WalterBright 2y ago
  > isn't the only way to know whether it is right or wrong to understand it? The other way to know is to test it. Things are tested anyway, just to ensure the math was done correctly. I designed the stabilizer trim jackscrew so it could withstand 151% of the maximum load. (The extra 1% was for tolerances.) The test people grinned and told me they were going to bust my jackscrew. Off I went to Plant 2 where they had the medieval torture rig all set up. It was two I-beams, hinged together at one end. There was a hydraulic ram connected to form a triangle. My poor little jackscrew was fixed to both I-beams. And, with a grin, the testers started cranking up the pressure in the ram. I watched with my safety googles on. They ran it up to 150%, and the I-beam bent like limp noodle, and my jackscrew stood strong and proud! No creaks, no cracks, no spalling, no buckling. The testers were chagrined, and I simply went back to the office. There were two takeaways here: 1. It was too strong. Evidently Saginaw Gear forged a masterpiece. I've always liked Saginaw Gear since. They're some bad mofos. 2. The test people didn't do the math.
  - atoav 2y ago
    Believe me I would have loved to forklift a load onto a steel beam during mechanical engineering exams just to test my calculations, but somehow none of us were forklift certified and the school failed to provide steel beams to toy around with. Looking back at that education the important lessons there were to acknowledge that even if multiple people try for hours under high stress to get things right, chances are more than 50% will still be wrong. And to only way around that is to really know your shit inside out. I had many colleagues who I met uears later which wouldn't even be able to explain basic mechanical laws as all they did back then is learn for exams like other people learn poems. That is what I meant when I said understanding is more important than being right in school. If you construct a plane you better check it ten times and then test it a hundred times.
primitivesuave 2y ago
As is true with algorithms. To piggyback on your other comment about testing, it's entirely possible (and widely experienced in the software world) to come up with something that seems correct but does not withstand real-world behavior. The premise that the "right answer" is somehow racist or exclusionary is a ridiculous statement to any engineer.
gravescale 2y ago
As usual, there's a relevant Akin's Law: > 12. There is never a single right solution. There are always multiple wrong ones, though. I'm not sure simple arithmetic is really the focus there, though I suppose "2²" is a good an answer to "what is 2 + 2" as "4". The real right answer is of course "can't say without knowing what the field is that we're operating in". https://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html https://spacecraft.ssl.umd.edu/akins_laws.html
red-iron-pine 2y ago
doesn't even have to be that serious -- can be something as simple as measuring fractions and percentages for baking bread. get those baker's percentages wrong and it's gonna be inedible

WalterBright 2y ago

I'm reminded of: 1. a novice follows the rules because he's supposed to 2. a master follows the rules because he understands the rules 3. a guru transcends the rules because he knows the rules don't apply There's no way to skip steps 1 and 2. That reference tries to skip straight to 3. It'll never work.

atoav 2y ago
The problem math education has is that 99% of it is thought by people who are still at step 1, while it should be thought by people who are at step 2 or 3.

gravescale 2y ago

That's a document that really has had money spent on the formatting, it's really very nicely designed. The editable fields are a great touch as you can just paste in your answers directly from ChatGPT.

Symbiote 2y ago
I assume the misspellings "agnecy" and "sutdents" are intentional, as showing perfectionism would be a sign of white supremacy. Except the reference they give for these characteristics of white supremacy [1] says: > Organizations that are people of color led or a majority people of color can also demonstrate many damaging characteristics of white supremacy culture. [1] https://www.thc.texas.gov/public/upload/preserve/museums/files/White_Supremacy_Culture.pdf https://www.thc.texas.gov/public/upload/preserve/museums/fil...