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Mathematics is arguably the worst taught subject. I think this is entirely the fault of the teachers and writers of the curriculum, who systematically fail to e
by api 13y ago
Mathematics is arguably the worst taught subject. I think this is entirely the fault of the teachers and writers of the curriculum, who systematically fail to explain their subject in an approachable way. I wrote a rant about it here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5819935 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5819935
TL;DR: This rant identifies a major cause: math is taught as if one should magically be able to comprehend its language and syntax without explanation.
- zephjc 13y agoMath uses symbols heavily as its own jargon, and someone approaching formulae that have unspecified symbols, without knowing this jargon, is typically fruitless. That said, I agree that math is terribly taught. My mother and my wife both hate math, and talking it out with both of them, I've been able to pinpoint it to a single bad/discouraging (and sometimes straight out mean) math teacher for both of them. Once the teacher is mean or otherwise bad about teaching, they have not only failed as teachers, but have sometimes caused the students to put up mental walls that can be hard to tear down. I suspect the sister mentioned in the OP may have had such an experience.
- api 13y agoI never got math or liked it until I had to do real-world things with it, at which point I dug and managed to teach myself things that I needed. Nearly all my math teachers were horrible. One or two of them seemed almost intentionally obtuse... like they were trying to trick you and taking pleasure in your failure to understand what they were teaching.
- IanCal 13y agoYou might enjoy "A Mathematicians Lament": http://www.maa.org/devlin/lockhartslament.pdf http://www.maa.org/devlin/lockhartslament.pdf
- iandanforth 13y agoThis is exactly how I feel about math. It's also why I love Python. Single character variable names are bad variable names. Terse method names are worse than clear method names. Also in mathematical notation there is no concrete flow to how you evaluate an equation. You can start just about anywhere. With programming, the order in which things get done might be arbitrary (and frustrating at first) it is at least consistent. Mathematical notation is really good, for some people, to describe, communicate, and explore relations. They can directly see that by increasing the value of the denominator the resulting value decreases. But without a tool designed by Bret Victor, my brain does not do that. I want to follow along a set of instructions, maybe iterate through a series of inputs, and then I understand how the operations applied to the input produce an output. Math has always seemed to me to be badly formatted code.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]