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Oh my god — I can't believe it. A professor of mine in college (I'm currently a freshman — this happened a few months ago) told me a story _exactly_ like this
by aroman 12y ago
Oh my god — I can't believe it.
A professor of mine in college (I'm currently a freshman — this happened a few months ago) told me a story _exactly_ like this — just at the University of Pittsburgh Masters in Education program and wherein nobody knew (or cared) that 1 was not a prime number.
I may be more dumbfounded now than I was sitting in his office during office hours... one is an anecdote, two is pattern.
- throwaway283719 12y agoIn fairness, thinking that 1 is a prime number (or just not knowing that it isn't) is in quite a different league to not knowing how to calculate the average of a list of numbers.
- aroman 12y agoSee my comment to the other reply. Ordinarily I'd agree, but these were all graduated undergrad math majors in a course about how to teach math (specifically prime numbers) to high schoolers.
- zaroth 12y agoI think knowing if 1 is prime is almost trivia compared to knowing how to calculate an average. The latter is incomprehensible to me. What age are the students in this anecdote?
- aroman 12y agoFrom what my professor told me, they were almost exclusively in their mid-20s, having just finished undergrad degrees in math. You're right — knowing if 1 is prime is kind of a trivial point, but this was a course for would-be math teachers specifically about how to teach _math_ to high schoolers. In fact, the specific context of the story was an in-class presentation about teaching kids about primes. I definitely should have mentioned that in the OP.