4 ms·

Finding Unity in the Math Wars

101 points by kalid 14y ago

dvse 14y ago
Some really nice suggestions in the article that for whatever reason are not often brought up while discussing maths education. A good way to bootstrap the "math avengers" website would be to get people to write up running commentary to some classic maths texts, e.g. Silvanus Thompson (out of copyright), Halmos, Rudin etc. Essentially all high school maths programs are less than great to put it politely and often created by people with rather limited appreciation of the subject. Better university textbooks are not readily accessible without an instructor. Running commentary from several authors giveing additional motivation, examples, clarifications or alternative derivations can be of great help to students and wikipedia style platform can be great for organising such a project. Sites like wikipedia and mathoverflow / stackexchange are great for specific questions but lack structure - centering the efforts around certain "canonical" texts can help to organise the material which otherwise would be overwhelming.
- kalid 14y ago
  Thanks for the ideas. Exactly, something like running commentary / different approaches could work. I greatly prefer text to online videos [not sure why, I think I get impatient that I can't read at the exact speed I want?] and would go through those. Wikipedia is self-described as a reference [not teaching tool], stackexchange is good for point-fixes [q&a], but some more "guided tour" could be useful. Especially to help appreciate math as an art/journey vs. pure problem solving.
BigTigger 14y ago
Sorry, I'm not usually a pain with comparisons but comparing "Super Bass: 268M views in a year; Khan Academy: 175M views in 5 years" is illogical as Super Bass, from my quick Googling is around a song lasting 2m30s to Khan Academy which probably on average has around 10-20minute videos. This doesn't even go into the fact that people could easily passively listen to Super Bass in a non-active window while Khan Academy requires much more active watching from the user. (i.e. I could have super bass on my iPad in my car while I drive somewhere as background noise but Khan Academy requires me to be sitting in front of my PC focused on it).
- kalid 14y ago
  Yeah, it's mostly a tongue-in-cheek comparison :). The meta-point is that the entire online learning space has a small fraction of society's collective attention, scraping by against the popularity of a rap artist who will be forgotten in a few years.
charlieflowers 14y ago
There are no "Math Wars!" There is only the Khan Academy, doing great stuff, and a group of disgruntled, jealous math teachers such as the author of this post, who have levied silly, petty, baseless criticisms against the Khan Academy. After launching the silly criticisms and stirring up a little controversy (but by no means a "war"), they now want to cast the whole hullabaloo as a "war" because it glorifies their role in the whole thing. It's like a flea trying to recast his battle against the St. Benard he rides on as a "war." Khan Academy is doing great stuff, and getting great results right now. If you're a jealous math teacher who thinks you have better answers, then quit spewing a bunch of FUD-like rhetoric with no substance, and fucking DO SOMETHING to help some people learn math right now. If what you do is so much better than Khan Academy, then it will become obvious in short order. P.S. And by "help some people learn math right now", I don't mean your day job as a teacher/professor. Do something that helps improve the effectiveness of math education on a grand scale ... as Khan Academy is doing. P.P.S. The whole thing makes me grumpy as hell, and I'm sure that comes out. But the reason is this -- if the "math teachers" side of this "war" is so all-fired passionate about disrupting the status quo and raising the overall quality of math education in the world, then why on Earth would you take potshots at Khan Academy, who is doing so much towards that very goal??! If that truly was your goal, you'd celebrate and help. I think the potshots show that the greater motivation is jealousy that some outsider has gotten so much more traction on the problem so quickly.
- dvse 14y ago
  Have you checked the "Articles" section on betterexplained.com? Clearly the author of the article is trying to put his ideas into practice - not perfect but rather helpful in fostering something like actual understanding of topics that are all too often presented as a sequence of rote manipulations (more or less all of K12 and many "service" university courses follow this).
  - charlieflowers 14y ago
    dvse, see my response to kalid. I thought "Math Wars" was a reference to a specific set of criticisms levied against Kahn Academy recently, when perhaps it was not a reference to that at all. If so, the whole thing could be a misunderstanding on my part. Waiting for kalid to clarify.
dinkumthinkum 14y ago
Curation isn't the answer. It's just cute and it has a pretty interface. But it's like ice cream against a nuclear holocaust. There is no silver bullet. The big issue is that just can't deny the role of parents in the education problem.

101 points by kalid 14y ago

dvse 14y ago

Some really nice suggestions in the article that for whatever reason are not often brought up while discussing maths education. A good way to bootstrap the "math avengers" website would be to get people to write up running commentary to some classic maths texts, e.g. Silvanus Thompson (out of copyright), Halmos, Rudin etc. Essentially all high school maths programs are less than great to put it politely and often created by people with rather limited appreciation of the subject. Better university textbooks are not readily accessible without an instructor. Running commentary from several authors giveing additional motivation, examples, clarifications or alternative derivations can be of great help to students and wikipedia style platform can be great for organising such a project. Sites like wikipedia and mathoverflow / stackexchange are great for specific questions but lack structure - centering the efforts around certain "canonical" texts can help to organise the material which otherwise would be overwhelming.

kalid 14y ago
Thanks for the ideas. Exactly, something like running commentary / different approaches could work. I greatly prefer text to online videos [not sure why, I think I get impatient that I can't read at the exact speed I want?] and would go through those. Wikipedia is self-described as a reference [not teaching tool], stackexchange is good for point-fixes [q&a], but some more "guided tour" could be useful. Especially to help appreciate math as an art/journey vs. pure problem solving.

BigTigger 14y ago

Sorry, I'm not usually a pain with comparisons but comparing "Super Bass: 268M views in a year; Khan Academy: 175M views in 5 years" is illogical as Super Bass, from my quick Googling is around a song lasting 2m30s to Khan Academy which probably on average has around 10-20minute videos. This doesn't even go into the fact that people could easily passively listen to Super Bass in a non-active window while Khan Academy requires much more active watching from the user. (i.e. I could have super bass on my iPad in my car while I drive somewhere as background noise but Khan Academy requires me to be sitting in front of my PC focused on it).

kalid 14y ago
Yeah, it's mostly a tongue-in-cheek comparison :). The meta-point is that the entire online learning space has a small fraction of society's collective attention, scraping by against the popularity of a rap artist who will be forgotten in a few years.

charlieflowers 14y ago

There are no "Math Wars!" There is only the Khan Academy, doing great stuff, and a group of disgruntled, jealous math teachers such as the author of this post, who have levied silly, petty, baseless criticisms against the Khan Academy. After launching the silly criticisms and stirring up a little controversy (but by no means a "war"), they now want to cast the whole hullabaloo as a "war" because it glorifies their role in the whole thing. It's like a flea trying to recast his battle against the St. Benard he rides on as a "war." Khan Academy is doing great stuff, and getting great results right now. If you're a jealous math teacher who thinks you have better answers, then quit spewing a bunch of FUD-like rhetoric with no substance, and fucking DO SOMETHING to help some people learn math right now. If what you do is so much better than Khan Academy, then it will become obvious in short order. P.S. And by "help some people learn math right now", I don't mean your day job as a teacher/professor. Do something that helps improve the effectiveness of math education on a grand scale ... as Khan Academy is doing. P.P.S. The whole thing makes me grumpy as hell, and I'm sure that comes out. But the reason is this -- if the "math teachers" side of this "war" is so all-fired passionate about disrupting the status quo and raising the overall quality of math education in the world, then why on Earth would you take potshots at Khan Academy, who is doing so much towards that very goal??! If that truly was your goal, you'd celebrate and help. I think the potshots show that the greater motivation is jealousy that some outsider has gotten so much more traction on the problem so quickly.

dvse 14y ago
Have you checked the "Articles" section on betterexplained.com? Clearly the author of the article is trying to put his ideas into practice - not perfect but rather helpful in fostering something like actual understanding of topics that are all too often presented as a sequence of rote manipulations (more or less all of K12 and many "service" university courses follow this).
- charlieflowers 14y ago
  dvse, see my response to kalid. I thought "Math Wars" was a reference to a specific set of criticisms levied against Kahn Academy recently, when perhaps it was not a reference to that at all. If so, the whole thing could be a misunderstanding on my part. Waiting for kalid to clarify.

dinkumthinkum 14y ago

Curation isn't the answer. It's just cute and it has a pretty interface. But it's like ice cream against a nuclear holocaust. There is no silver bullet. The big issue is that just can't deny the role of parents in the education problem.