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This is the comment I just left on the blog: I will have to read the paper in more detail, but I have an extremely simple reason why math education in the US i

by lr 17y ago

This is the comment I just left on the blog: I will have to read the paper in more detail, but I have an extremely simple reason why math education in the US is so hard: We use the English system of measurement. Most students in grade school associate math with this horrific measurement system, and once that happens, there is almost no chance to engage students in what math is really all about. You want people in the US to embrace math? Then start on a campaign to scrap our horrific measurement system, a system to which logic and simple math can not be applied. In the metric system all you need to know is it is base 10. With the English system you must know that there are 12 inches in a foot, and that there are 3 feet in a yard. How many feet in a mile? There is NO WAY to logically derive this information, one must KNOW it! How may teaspoons in a tablespoon? Can math help us with that? Nope, one must know the answer. Sorry, I hope I am not ranting, but this has been a burr in my side for years. Yet it seems that no one ever talks about this aspect when talking about why people in the US are so adverse to math. I guess I should just write my own article about it…

MartinMond 17y ago
I think you are doing exactly what Lockhart talked about. It doesn't matter what system one needs to memorize (although only knowing the metric system I can imagine the English system being harder to learn) what matters is that students are given the intellectual freedom to develop their intuition and reasoning capabilities, while current math education is all about needless, rigid formalism that needs to be learned by heart, then applied. Even the few proofs that are shown are presented in such a formalized way that they are a big turnoff. Neither the English nor the metric system allow you to logically derive much about it (maybe Hertz = 1/second), the metric system is only more consistent and therefore easier to learn. At least that's my take on that.
timwiseman 17y ago
While I agree that the US would be better served moving over to the metric system, this has nothing at all to do with the article. The article was about focusing on math as art and on problem solving, not on any particular system and not on rote memorization.
philwelch 17y ago
The problem is that 10 is not an especially divisible number. It only divides evenly by 2 and 5. English measurements have lots of 12's and 60's and so forth not out of malice, but so we can precisely determine what 1/3 or 1/4 of a foot is without using decimals. Likewise, Fahrenheit temperatures are perfect for weather since the 0-100 scale consistently matches the spectrum from "especially cold day" to "especially hot day".
- timwiseman 17y ago
  And this was of great value when decimal notation was unknown in Europe and even retained some value when it was known only by a select few elite. Now most people are as (or more, especially when equipped with a calculator) using decimal notation as they are dealing with fractions. Now that the decimal system predominates the metric system is generally easier to use, once you get used to it. Moreover, it will bring us into line with virtually all of the rest of the world which simplifies international communications, not to mention that most technical/scientific work is done in the metric system anyway. This means that most school children are burdened with learning 2 separate systems of measurement and their conversions for very little reason now. While this is completely off topic from the main article, I think that overall America would be best served by the metric system.
  - philwelch 17y ago
    You're probably right, at least for most things. But justifying the English system is still worthwhile, if only to better understand its rationale in the first place. I still maintain that Fahrenheit is an exceptionally good temperature scale for weather, though. It's beautifully simple.

by lr 17y ago

MartinMond 17y ago

I think you are doing exactly what Lockhart talked about. It doesn't matter what system one needs to memorize (although only knowing the metric system I can imagine the English system being harder to learn) what matters is that students are given the intellectual freedom to develop their intuition and reasoning capabilities, while current math education is all about needless, rigid formalism that needs to be learned by heart, then applied. Even the few proofs that are shown are presented in such a formalized way that they are a big turnoff. Neither the English nor the metric system allow you to logically derive much about it (maybe Hertz = 1/second), the metric system is only more consistent and therefore easier to learn. At least that's my take on that.

timwiseman 17y ago

While I agree that the US would be better served moving over to the metric system, this has nothing at all to do with the article. The article was about focusing on math as art and on problem solving, not on any particular system and not on rote memorization.

philwelch 17y ago

The problem is that 10 is not an especially divisible number. It only divides evenly by 2 and 5. English measurements have lots of 12's and 60's and so forth not out of malice, but so we can precisely determine what 1/3 or 1/4 of a foot is without using decimals. Likewise, Fahrenheit temperatures are perfect for weather since the 0-100 scale consistently matches the spectrum from "especially cold day" to "especially hot day".

timwiseman 17y ago
And this was of great value when decimal notation was unknown in Europe and even retained some value when it was known only by a select few elite. Now most people are as (or more, especially when equipped with a calculator) using decimal notation as they are dealing with fractions. Now that the decimal system predominates the metric system is generally easier to use, once you get used to it. Moreover, it will bring us into line with virtually all of the rest of the world which simplifies international communications, not to mention that most technical/scientific work is done in the metric system anyway. This means that most school children are burdened with learning 2 separate systems of measurement and their conversions for very little reason now. While this is completely off topic from the main article, I think that overall America would be best served by the metric system.
- philwelch 17y ago
  You're probably right, at least for most things. But justifying the English system is still worthwhile, if only to better understand its rationale in the first place. I still maintain that Fahrenheit is an exceptionally good temperature scale for weather, though. It's beautifully simple.