9 ms·
What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?
- fortran77 1y agohttps://archive.ph/QxAwK https://archive.ph/QxAwK
- ajross 1y agoEmbarassing Occam's failure in the lede: > For the past several years, America has been using its young people as lab rats in a sweeping, if not exactly thought-out, education experiment. Good grief. No, it's just the pandemic. The kids whose middle school years got disrupted are behind on skills taught in middle school. Can you squint and blame other things? Sure. But experimental education policies are hardly new ideas, and none of the nonsense from previous decades has shown an effect like this. If you want to show up to the game with a claim that it's some other effect, I want to see a big exposition of why it's not the obvious hypothesis at work. It's covid, folks. And over the next 3-4 years the scores will bounce back (to much crowing in the media from whichever faction wants to claim credit). Write it down.
- netsharc 1y agoDid you just read 5 words into the article and come to this conclusion? The article that the authors researched and told us it's been going on since before the pandemic? Ah, their next article should be about the confidence of fools...
- ajross 1y agoI did! Here's the quote: > But the national trend is very clear: America’s students are getting much worse at math. The decline started about a decade ago and sharply accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic. So I, a "fool", read that and think: Hm... well if the article isn't giving numbers I'm going to take the "sharp acceleration" as a statement about magnitude and clearly infer that the pandemic is at fault. Again, is the subject complicated? Sure. But education policy doesn't produce effects like this. It never has, probably never will, and the article even doesn't claim it does. You know what does produce effects like this? Keeping 13-year-olds out of class for two years. I mean, come on. I repeat: write it down, in 4 years we'll all be reading about the miracle of American education policy. And that will be wrong too.
- SPICLK2 1y agoOur response to Covid was just the accelerant. We're lucky, in a way, as we can see the outcomes of many current policies a lot quicker.
- WoodenChair 1y agoYou're hand wavy "it's the pandemic" neglects the other evidence provided in the article that happens to coincide with the pandemic such as the elimination of test scores as admissions criteria to many universities. And the article certainly doesn't blame it wholly on the pandemic, for example here are two theories it presents: > How did this happen? One theory is that the attention-shredding influence of phones and social media is to blame. The dip in math scores coincides with the widespread adoption of smartphones; by 2015, nearly three-quarters of high-school-aged kids had access to one. A related possibility is that technology is making students complacent. Emelianenko told me that students “are just not engaged in math classes anymore”; they seem to believe that they don’t need to learn math, because they can use AI instead. > Or maybe students have stopped achieving in math because schools have stopped demanding it of them. During the George W. Bush administration, federal policy emphasized accountability for public schools. Schools that saw poor performance on standardized tests received increased funding at first, but if scores still didn’t improve, they had their funding pulled. Research suggests that this helped improve math outcomes, particularly for poor Black students. After 2015, however, the federal government backed off from its accountability measures, which had faced bipartisan criticism. (Some teachers’ unions and progressive parents wanted less emphasis on standardized tests, and some conservative politicians wanted the federal government to remove itself from education policy.) Many schools across the country have shifted toward making math engaging for students at the expense of evidence-based teaching practices. And due to funding shortages or misguided efforts to improve equity, many students are held back from taking the hardest math courses.
- ajross 1y ago> You're hand wavy "it's the pandemic" neglects the other evidence provided There was no significant other evidence. And "hand wavy" is missing the point. There is a bleedingly obvious hypothesis for this effect with huge signal in all sorts of other areas of social policy. I mean, really? The pandemic is visible in every measurable segment of society but somehow not a major factor in education results? In some sense, yes, Occam's Razor is a principle that embraces "hand wavy" understanding by demanding extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims. And I think it's going to work very well here. Again, for the third time: write it down. In four years this will all bounce back. What's happening here is actually a different logical fallacy entirely. HN commenters have a distinct ideological bent against new ("woke") ideas in education. And they're willing to ignore things like giant global pandemics to chase their preferred explanations.
- sevensor 1y agoIt’s a shame other commenters are so busy waging culture war that this explanation is being minimized and dismissed. I’m married to a high school teacher, and not only is there a super obvious cohort that spent 8th-9th grade playing Fortnite instead of learning algebra, their successors are doing a lot better. Sure, the current cohort of college students needs remedial math. Let’s acknowledge the cause, offer them remedial math, and move forward. It’s not a sign that the sky is falling. The sky fell five years ago and we borrowed against the future to fix it. It’s the future now and the bill is due.
- vacuity 1y agoGrade inflation seems to be the main long-term culprit. Lowered standards mean that any student that isn't incentivized for some other reason to learn math simply won't learn. I'm less enamored with the other explanations, such as technology distractions or relying on AI, but they probably play a small part too. You and GP seem very sure that, if the pandemic didn't happen, the decline in math skills wouldn't be happening to a significant degree, but the pandemic was a fast-forward.
- ajross 1y ago> Grade inflation seems to be the main long-term culprit Is it though, or is that just what your ideological sense tells you? Like I'm trying to point out, if you take the pandemic shock out of the data set, there really isn't much to argue about here. US aggregate education results have never been great internationally, but haven't ever been moving particularly fast either and seem not to have been before the pandemic either. There really is a woke-derangement-syndrome at work among the reactionary geek set these days. Teachers have always had funny ideas, and haven't broken kids yet. People need to relax.
- vacuity 1y agoI can't honestly call myself "anti-woke", nor can I honestly call myself "woke". What a pain. Harping on about either one makes for a dull comment. If anything, I'd probably be considered "woke" by ideological proximity. > Is it though, or is that just what your ideological sense tells you? What aside from grade inflation explains why those students in the UCSD report had high grades but had to take remedial math class? The schools I went to had some grade inflation, though perhaps it's not that bad. Heck, Harvard loves grade inflation. Also, what even is the ideological angle here? I'm the only one talking about grade inflation here (well, one other person mentioned it, but surely not to be "anti-woke"). > but haven't ever been moving particularly fast either Would it be false that education quality is declining even if it is doing so slowly? > Teachers have always had funny ideas, and haven't broken kids yet That "yet" is doing a lot of work, and ignoring the present article. A slow-moving train wreck is still a train wreck.
- Meekro 1y agoCOVID was a problem, but other systemic problems allowed the lack of math skill to go unnoticed until the kids showed up to college. This article[1] discusses how high school teachers were subject to political pressure, forcing them to give A's to students in a Calculus class who barely knew fractions. Combine that with UCSD dropping SAT requirements, and you've got a horrible mess. If the rest of the system was functioning properly, the COVID-related problems would have been caught early when those kids started failing their high school math classes-- which would have left them with plenty of time to go back and learn what they missed. And if UCSD still required the SAT, it would have been painfully obvious that they were admitting students who don't know basic math. [1] https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/when-grades-stop-meaning-anything https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/when-grades-stop-meaning-an...
- jackallis 1y ago".....In 2020, system leaders voted to phase standardized-test scores out of admissions decisions. They argued that the tests worsened racial divides and unfairly privileged wealthy students. But SAT and ACT scores are the most reliable predictors of a student’s math ability, the report found...."
- skeezyjefferson 1y ago"But SAT and ACT scores are the most reliable predictors of a student’s math ability, the report found...." how else do they gauge someone's math ability then?
- naIak 1y agoGauging someone’s abilities is meany mean.
- Aurornis 1y agoThey don’t. The movements pushing these ideas are against the idea of aptitude testing. Many of them are even against the idea of having advanced classes for those who are ahead. It’s not a niche ideology, sadly. It’s going mainstream. A core part of Zohran Mamdani’s platform was his goal to phase out gifted education programs, for example.
- tehjoker 1y agoThere is a silver lining though, when everyone is in the same class, better off people don't think they can escape and push to make the program better for everyone.
- naIak 1y agoYou can’t have a good teaching programme when there is a variance of 40 points of IQ among the pupils.
- tr45872267 1y agoThey can and do. Private schools already exist.
- skeezyjefferson 1y agocant do mathematic? shouldnt it be mathematics? ie "...students cant do maths anymore?"
- adzm 1y agoBoth are fine. The singular form "math" is predominant in the States. But, notably, not "mathematic"
- gizajob 1y agoMaths is the singular form in English speaking countries.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- notorious_pgb 1y agoNot in the US.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- skeezyjefferson 1y agoso is the saying "could care less", but both are wrong and indicative of some kind of low level neurological deficit, possibly lead contamination or something similar
- in_a_hole 1y agoAs a brit, yawn.
- zecg 1y ago> “Who is going to trust somebody who got a degree in airline engineering who doesn’t know how to think through a problem without a computer telling them the answer?” I think the answer is Boeing
- giancarlostoro 1y agoWhat bewilders me is that I've read (maybe here on HN) that the issue with some of those planes is a lot of the key people who built the previous generations were moved around to different departments, and I'm just thinking to myself, are you guys going to get the right people in the right spots? This is embarrassing and downright evil if you aren't taking steps to ensure the quality of your aircrafts.
- ceedan 1y agoIt's a publicly traded company that is enslaved to it's investors, growth, profit and quarterly reporting.
- giancarlostoro 1y agoThe more time passes the more I hate publicly traded companies. I feel like the stock market rots companies.
- Ekaros 1y agoAlso the same seems to extend to things when private companies discussed. Nothing is enough you cannot be happy with company making million in post tax profit a year. Next year you must do two million, then 4 and 8 and so on... Even not attempting this is somehow failure for some people...
- giancarlostoro 1y agoIt feels more skewed for public companies for me. There's definitely "well off" small private companies that have good returns (mom and pop shops) and keep going and making their customers happy for decades, and those aren't an issue. There'll definitely be 'evil' private companies, but something about the stock market ruins companies. You are too dependent on the perception of your company and the markets reaction to it and your decisions. Investors do a lot of knee jerk selling. Meanwhile billionaires swoop in and purchase a chunk of your company at a discount.
- Theodores 1y agoHow much mathematics is needed anyway? In the day job, how many people have to use maths skills beyond arithmetic? What about trigonometry? Differential equations? Integration and calculus? To be honest, if I am using Boolean Logic then that might as well be 'advanced mathematics', far beyond the comprehension of non-coders. Even simple trigonometry isn't so simple to most people. Clearly we need some people on the planet able to do more than basic arithmetic, however, what is the point in trying to teach the whole population how to do differential equations given the lack of workplace opportunities to use such knowledge? The why question isn't explained with maths beyond the theoretical 'yep, you will earn more'. Too many maths textbooks are utterly abstract, you might as well be learning cuneiform for the amount of practical use cases. It seems to me that the policy makers and journalists that complain about the demise of maths skills aren't doing a lot of maths themselves yet they want to force maths on the masses, as if it was good for you in a 'eat your greens' type of way. Maths is hard and it really does not suit a lot of people. Fluency in maths is only attainable by a few, the majority that can do maths need a lot of armbands, whether that be calculators, text books or internet crib sheets. Then there is everyone else, not even floundering, just giving it a miss. Rather than forcing the entire population to be maths geniuses, which will never happen, maths needs to be a specialist subject chosen by those that know what it can be used for, and with ambitions to take a career path where maths happens.
- qsort 1y ago> How much mathematics is needed anyway? In the day job, how many people have to use maths skills beyond arithmetic? A lot. It's also pretty funny that your examples of useless math are 3 of the most concrete and directly applicable concepts in the entire set of human knowledge. Try, idk, ergodic Ramsey Theory next time. > What about trigonometry? Ever heard about FM radio? Or anything that takes a Fourier series? Anything using complex numbers? Game programming? Graphics? Positional encodings in large language models? > Differential equations? My brother in christ, literally Newton's second law. > Integration and calculus? Ever needed to numerically find the minimum of a function or solve an equation? Newton-Raphson? Literally all of machine learning? The thing with math is that if you aren't familiar with the concepts then you don't know what you don't know.
- BurningFrog 1y agoAs long as odd college students can still do math, it's not a big problem.
- NiloCK 1y ago> “Who is going to trust somebody who got a degree in airline engineering who doesn’t know how to think through a problem without a computer telling them the answer?” Years ago when I was working in education (Canadian public schools) our school board had a conference ahead of the school year. The keynote was an inclusive-ed researcher / consultant / speaker who told an anecdote of how they had successfully lobbied for a student with a substantive intellectual disability to be registered for the high school physics courses. Part of the anecdote was pushback from the physics head: "I've known Jake for years. Great kid. But what is he supposed to get out of physics class?" The consultant's in-anecdote response: "what is anybody supposed to get out of physics class?" Wild laughter and applause. --- A surprising number of people in education seem to simply not know that there is substantive and consequential content in the curriculum. Having never really learned math, they've never really used it. Having never used it, they don't recognize its utility. They seem to earnestly believe that it isn't an actual tool but a gatekeeping mechanism devised by autistic persons to humiliate normies.
- webdevver 1y ago>They seem to earnestly believe that it isn't an actual tool but a gatekeeping mechanism devised by autistic persons to humiliate normies. it should be that, though.
- Joel_Mckay 1y agoA learned language is often lost without regular repetitive practice. People often either become overly specialized in some area, or end up teaching basic-theory while regretting their life choices. In time, most figure out people create pet mathematical fictions regardless of background, and while authoritative confident liars often allow people to feel better about uncertainty... it adds little value in the long-term. =3
- IAmBroom 1y agoThe anecdote I heard was a grade-school teacher admitting they had never used the Pythagorean formula IRL. Well, no fucking shit, Sherlock! You aren't the sort of person to turn to math to solve problems. You're the sort of homesy chuckle-cluck who puts up inspirational posters on your bedroom wall. OTOH, I've been on my back in an attic with a house builder, and calculated the 3-dimensional length of the bizarre edges of a skylight (where the ceiling opening was completely skew to the roof opening). We absolutely used math to solve the problem. That grade school teacher? They wouldn't have been asked to check the calculations. The carpenter? Used math IRL.
- juancn 1y agohttps://archive.is/fPJiW https://archive.is/fPJiW
- TrackerFF 1y agoLet's be clear though, there's quite a difference in doing problems related to working memory, mental computation, etc. under time constraints - usually what you get when taking standardized tests, aptitude tests, IQ tests, etc. - and solving "actual" real world math problems, like mathematical modelling, numerical methods, and what have you. I'm sure if I walk around in the office and ask people a problem like "Car A starts driving south at time zero, with speed 30km/h. Car B is located 10 km down south and starts driving north 5 minutes later, at speed 45 km/h, at what time do they meet? You have 1 minute. Go." a bunch of them will start to sweat, and many will likely fail - even though they have graduate STEM degrees.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- in_cahoots 1y agoDid you read the article? These kids can't even divide a fraction in half. It's basic numeracy and foundational skills that are missing.
- TrackerFF 1y agoI did. My comment was to the “Who is going to trust somebody who got a degree in airline engineering who doesn’t know how to think through a problem without a computer telling them the answer?” comment in the article. Even if you suck at math when enrolling college, if you actually manage to get through some math-heavy STEM degree, you've probably learned the math through your studies. I also did check out the paper, and it does indeed seem like the number of students that are placed into Math 2 (The lowest or second lowest placement if I read it correctly) has 20-fold increased in just 5 years, while most other Math placements have stayed somewhat stable, at least toward the top. My conclusion is that the students that simply don't have the math knowledge to pursue STEM-degrees, will either not enter them, or finish them, so that might not be a huge problem? They'll purse other majors that don't require math. My hunch is also that those that are not interested in math, have found shortcuts to get through their math classes the past 5 years (cheating? AI?). But, then again, what are the chances they'll actually end up working with anything math-related after college?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- nohuck13 1y agoThe UCSD report shows some of the questions they asked incoming students. 39% got this right: Round the number 374518 to the nearest 100 34% got this right: Find 13/16 ÷ 2. 2% got this right: If a=-2 and b=-3, evaluate ab² - a/b https://senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347/sawg-report-on-admissions-review-docs.pdf https://senate.ucsd.edu/media/740347/sawg-report-on-admissio... page 49
- alexb_ 1y agoTo clarify, these are percentages for the sample of students taking the remedial Math 2 class, not generally. Two percent is still crazy low though, that's practically nothing.
- nohuck13 1y agoA yep that's a critical piece of information. For context, "In the 2025 incoming class, this group constitutes roughly one-eighth of our entire entering cohort."
- in_a_hole 1y agoTo be fair, the ÷ symbol for division must be abolished.
- vacuity 1y agoI did fall for it just now, but I think it's typically easier to read when handwritten.
- CWuestefeld 11mo agoWhat is the correct order of operations there? I'm treating both representations of division as equivalent, so just running the whole thing from left to right. But there's no reason that because both operators indicate division, that they must have the same precedence.
- chneu 1y agoA shocking number of Americans are also functionally illiterate. I think 21% or about 41 million Muricans. 54% of Americans read below a 6th grade level. We don't need to know how to do these things when we can just have someone/something do it for us.
- fortran77 1y agoMaybe there are too many colleges if there's not enough qualified students. Perhaps save taxpayer money and downsize UCSD. Better have fewer, but qualified, students than load it up with people who shouldn't be there.
- judahmeek 1y agoWe need to redefine math as procedural logic (like imperative programming for humans). That way, we can defend the study of mathematics as a form of discipline for the human mind that has benefits beyond the knowledge gained. The meta-process for solving any mathematical problem is the same as any other form of project management. Or maybe we should first try to teach kids the value of project management & then try to get them to apply those principles to math problems?
- nh23423fefe 1y agothe uncurious are being selected against. its ok
- general1465 1y agoWhat if USA would stop treating education like a business - customer paid for degree, customer gets the degree no matter if customer has essential knowledge for the degree?
- IAmBroom 1y agoWhat if we publicly acknowledged it's a key infrastructure to our economy, government, and society?
- spwa4 1y agoWait ... you can't mean ... and pay for it? Am I in a bad dream? Or perhaps a really good one?
- readthenotes1 1y agoThats close to what I was going to say: the answer to the prompt in the headline is clearly "don't admit them to college". But since there is a massive profit motive to admit and keep young fools taking on student loans, I doubt that's the answer the industry would adopt Or as Munger said "show me the incentive and I'll show you the behavior"
- BurningFrog 1y agoYou're describing a terrible business, where you pay for something worthless. If that's the college business model today, it won't survive for long. Colleges that give you valuable skills for your money should keep doing well though.
- general1465 1y agoI mean is it really terrible? Is customer going to return for more degrees? Unlikely. You just need good marketing on high schools to explain new fools why they should pay you money for getting a degree.
- insane_dreamer 1y agothat's actually more like a business than what it is today we already have "degree-mills" from which you can purchase a degree; doesn't benefit society in any way
- german_dong 1y agoThey can do math?
- ivansavz 1y agoI never understood why math is such a divisive topic and gets certain people all defensive. Why is the reaction so different from literacy? For example, I have never heard anyone say "I am not a reading person; I don't like to read." but I have head the "I am not a math person" so many times (I'd estimate 30%+ of population around me). I think bad math teachers (educated in the education department) and bad textbooks are to blame for this collective trauma inflicted on the general populaiton... grown up adults swerving away aggressively at first mention of an formula or algebraic equation. Chill, y'all. Some of this stuff[1] was know thousands of years ago... it would take you a few months to (re)learn all of high school math and solve all your math phobia issues. You're an adult now, you can totally handle that shit. [1] https://minireference.com/static/conceptmaps/math_concepts.pdf https://minireference.com/static/conceptmaps/math_concepts.p...
- tsoukase 1y agoMath is the most abstract logical way of human thinking. On the other side pure art is totally on the other side. If you are an artist or similar, you don't need math. If you are a STEM professional, definitely. In between (eg health care, management, politics) it is desirable but not necessary. That simple.
- naishoya 11mo agoWhat happens? It seems we have entered the Find Out phase of FAFO; which FA began with a lack of preparation in US educators in the 1960's for "New Math" which focused on conceptual understanding and abstractions, such as set theory and differential number bases. This lack of preparation, especially among primary educators (who had not themselves encountered mathematical theory in their own education) led to a regression; "Back to Basics" in the mid 1970's. Those missteps; both in educator preparedness, and in systemic regression to a rote memorization approach were substantially aggravated by reduced standards testing in the 1980's to hide the resulting weaknesses resulting from this regression. First hand experience as a student through these epochs from the late 70's through the 80's and 90's in US academia led to thinking I was 'not good at mathematics.' For me the 'breaking point' of this pattern was the discovery that even with an undergraduate STEM degree from a PAC10 university, including 'advanced' math courses available therein, I was not sufficiently mathematically educated to qualify for enrollment in a post-graduate physics program at a leading scientific institute or to participate in advanced mathematics discourse at an international mathematics symposium. During COVID lock-down I attempted graduate level bio-molecular studies from several tier-one US and UK online university programs and ran into proctored coursework where the educators opined that "some problems are simply intractable due to scope or complexity" and I was unwilling or unable to accept that there was no approach to solutions for these systems. The ensuing self-directed relearning from international curricula and classical resources has remedied my misconception of inability; extended my approaches to include concepts such as p-adic bases and complex topological approaches. and shows that current cohorts of US students will need to become self empowered to learn conceptual math beyond what their educators believe achievable. Those who do not grok math will always be in the position of being taken advantage of by those who do. -- edit Paragraph Spacing --