Funny enough, it was an agricultural class where the utility of the quadratic equation hit me. Professor didn’t even call it that, but we used it to calculate maximum efficiency in fertilizer spread.
Canconda@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
Memorizing data doesn’t make one smarter… but learning concepts absolutely does.
The classic, “we’ll never need this in adult life” is math like Pythagoras’ theorem, or factoring binomial equations (remember FOIL?). We don’t learn that math because it’s practical for adult life… we learn that math so that grown ass adults don’t think someone using algebra is performing black magic.
Seems silly… but it’s just like how many folks never learned past middle school biology and now think XX&XY are the only chromosomal possibilities.
shalafi@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Canconda@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
o shit. Im gonna be expanding my garden next year. Didn’t know Id need my math text book haha
SmartmanApps@programming.dev 1 month ago
remember FOIL?
A lot of adults don’t, then proceed to argue about order of operations, having forgotten that Brackets have to be all expanded out before doing anything else at all.
We don’t learn that math because it’s practical for adult life
Yes we do. I use Maths every day, quite separate to the fact I teach it.
petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
We don’t learn that math because it [isn’t] practical for adult life
I love this argument because it’s like a guy who catches and eats raw fish saying that we don’t need fire. Like, man, you’re not even trying to use it, though.
SmartmanApps@programming.dev 5 weeks ago
I love this argument because it’s like a guy who catches and eats raw fish saying that we don’t need fire
and in fact had forgotten all about the fact that he cooked it over a fire as a treat for last Christmas 😂
ricecake@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
I think you missed that the next portion of their statement was connected to the part you (inappropriately) added the missing word to.
They’re saying, essentially, that it’s important to learn math just for a rounded education, even if it lacks application. They’re saying closer to “even if we’re eating sushi, we still need fire”.
petrol_sniff_king@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
I’m aware the quoted person agrees with me. I’m responding to a common public sentiment.
Canconda@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
I mean Pythagoras is useful but what are you foiling? Or are you misconstruing “that math” for “all math”?
SmartmanApps@programming.dev 5 weeks ago
Or are you misconstruing “that math” for “all math”?
I wasn’t even commenting on that, hence why I quoted “remember FOIL?” and not the rest.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
Students asking “why do we need to learn this” or worse graduates who proudly proclaim “Day 19,337 of never using the quadratic equation” are a symptom of teachers who haven’t read their Thorndike.
Learning is an active process. It takes effort to do. People do not like being made to waste effort. Students will be much more effective learners when they understand the value of the lesson to them in their lives. “You never know when this will come in handy” is not good enough. This is Thorndike’s principle of readiness. And especially high school teachers are bad at satisfying it.
Math teachers get it very often, because for some reason we approach teaching math to a nation full of hormonal teenagers as if they all want to grow up to be mathematicians. Starting in about the 7th grade they stop giving practical examples and teach math as a series of rules to be applied to contextless problems, and to the student it feels like years of pointless busywork.
And while I can’t claim to have ever factored a polynomial in my daily life since leaving school, I did recently come up against the order of operations. I calculated the width of some cabinet doors, and I factored in the gaps between them wrong. 3 doors, 4 gaps between the doors. I did door_width = opening_width / 3 - 4 * gap_width. When I needed to do door_width = (opening_width - 4 * gap_width) / 3. In the first case, you end up subtracting all 4 gap widths from each door. I would be better at math today if you’d explained it to me like that when I was 12.
SmartmanApps@programming.dev 1 month ago
we approach teaching math to a nation full of hormonal teenagers as if they all want to grow up to be mathematicians
No we don’t.
Starting in about the 7th grade they stop giving practical examples
No we don’t. Just check out some final exams to see plenty of them still included.
if you’d explained it to me like that when I was 12
Most teachers do, but some aren’t very good, especially in the U.S. where it’s not even required to have Maths qualifications to be a Maths teacher.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
No we don’t.
I mean, go ahead and lie about how I spent 6 years of my own life to my face. Memorizing proofs and working endless assignments of just…equations. Here is an equation. Do thing to it. Solve it, simplify it, factor it, graph it. I plugged and chugged so many numbers into the quadratic equation, I don’t think I was ever told what that’s for. Some chapters had token word problems.
A lot of the math I actually know I learned in physics class, where you’d do unit math. That 25 meters traveled in 5 seconds means a velocity of 5 meters/second. Science class math comes with sniff tests that math class math doesn’t.
The way I was introduced to order of operations was, the teacher wrote a long expression on the board, this plus that divided by such minus thus times such plus this times that. Spend a second solving this. Okay, who got 7? Who got -23? If you got -23, you’re right.
That is FUCKGARBAGE teaching. It may be the flight instructor in me, that my classroom is an actual airplane that we fly over actual people and their homes, but few things piss me off as deeply as setting up your students to fail. Because introducing the subject this way separates your class into two groups: Those that already have a functioning understanding of the topic whose time is being wasted, and those who don’t already understand it and need you to teach them this skill, who now feel tricked, confused and frustrated.
This teacher went on to explain Order of Operations as a series of rules you follow because following rules is what you do. “You do parenthesis before exponents before multiplication/division before addition/subtraction.” PEMDAS, Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally. This was taught with the same “This is how nature is” attitude as the planets of the solar system or how ionic bonds work, except algebraic notation is artificial. It’s manmade, like the English language. It’s a method of communicating ideas, except it was taught as a series of rules and procedures that you were supposed to memorize how to do without understanding the goal, and fuck your life if you lacked the vocabulary to describe what about it you didn’t understand.
SmartmanApps@programming.dev 5 weeks ago
I mean, go ahead and lie
I’m not lying. It’s there in the textbooks. There are many available for free online these days.
Memorizing proofs
No students are required to memorise proofs, only how to do proofs to begin with.
Some chapters had token word problems
They’re not token problems - learning how to do word problems is a central core of Maths. They’re thrown in often.
Science class math comes with sniff tests that math class math doesn’t
Not really. v=d/t, s=ut+½at², and similar equations are used often in teaching Maths (such as in non-linear graphs).
because following rules is what you do
That’s right. We teach that if you follow all the rules you will always get the correct answer. Now witness adults on social media arguing about the answer to an order of operations question because they’ve forgotten the rules but refuse to admit that’s even possible, and yet the rules are still there to be found in Maths textbooks now, same as they were then, still the same rules (despite some of them claiming the rules have been changed).
algebraic notation is artificial.
No it isn’t.
It’s manmade,
The notation is, the Maths isn’t.
like the English language.
It’s not at all like language, any language.
It’s a method of communicating ideas
No, it’s a method of calculating things, like rocket trajectories, etc. Got nothing to do with communication at all.
except it was taught as a series of rules and procedures that you were supposed to memorize how to do without understanding the goal
I can’t help it if you yourself had a bad teacher, but look in the textbooks and that isn’t how it’s taught at all.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Most teachers do, but some aren’t very good, especially in the U.S. where it’s not even required to have Maths qualifications to be a Maths teacher.
there’s more of the country than florida
SmartmanApps@programming.dev 5 weeks ago
there’s more of the country than florida
And there’s more of the country falling behind the rest of the world in Maths than just Florida. It was all over the news, again, just a few weeks ago.
TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world 1 month ago
How about we meet in the middle and say “learning the concept that you might be wrong will help your intelligence”?
My mother who “allegedly” graduated high school has more confidence than anyone I know and will say things like “you can’t divide a small number by a bigger number” or “temperatures don’t have decimals, only full numbers”. Then as you stare at her blankly trying to figure out if she’s joking or not, she’ll tell you you’re clearly not very smart if you don’t know that
Canconda@lemmy.ca 1 month ago
IMO you’re just describing a closed mind versus an open mind. Learning the concept that you might be wrong is fundamental to having an open mind.
TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world 1 month ago
And it’s difficult if not impossible to be more intelligent with a closed mind no?
Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
(not the op) but yeah, I agree with that.
That said, with the example of your mom, it sounds like it could be insecurity as much as it could be a closed mind. Some people really struggle with the idea that others might think they’re dumb, especially their children. So they assert things as fact, because they want to maintain the image that they have all the facts. Especially when kids are bright, some parents will fight tooth and nail to maintain an air of intellectual superiority, to assert intellectual dominance.
It may seem sad, but it’s pretty understandable, relatable even.
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
I think that kind of thing is more cultural than anything. Probably she doesn’t care very much whether it’s actually true or not, and feels she’d be losing face by being anything but confident about it.
TheReanuKeeves@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Very possible. I just couldn’t see myself purposely saying something I didn’t think was true and then doubling up with calling the other person dumb over it. I don’t agree with almost anything she does though so that checks out.