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Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

alexandercoward.com

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Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#261

Post by chris_wot »

yojo wrote: post #105
ezmuller wrote: post #91

I'll just be over here waiting on the other side of the story...

I have no dog in this fight, but his description lines up with my experience. I showed up at Cal in 2001 as a nerdy kid super-jazzed about math. I took Math 1A my first semester, and the lectures started with the professor turning his back to the class and proceeding to write proofs on the board for 90 minutes in indecipherable handwriting with little to no explanation. People would show up to class with pillows, no…

I would love to have someone secretly record that lecture and put it on YouTube to shame the lecturer. I'm curious if someone has actually done this?

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#262

Post by chris_wot »

daniel-levin wrote: post #163

Coward has justifiable grievances with the UCB mathematics department. It must be extraordinarily depressing to work hard at exposition of lower division mathematics to a class of otherwise largely unmotivated students, only to be fired for doing so. Having said that, I am going to adopt a somewhat contrarian viewpoint. The math department fired Coward for deliberately and repeatedly subverting their requests to conf…

If he is teaching mathematics successfully and well yo undergraduate students, then shouldn't they be the only actors who count? And if he is a staff member, perhaps they should explain why they require their procedures, even if most people seem to find them not only ineffective but demotivational?

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#263

Post by chris_wot »

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #68
jathak wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He isn't employed as a research professor. He's employed as a lecturer. Berkeley does have a lecturer position with security of employment (commonly called lecturer SOE or teaching professor). These positions are evaluated on teaching rather than research. I don't know how common it is in other departments, but I know the EECS department employs several teaching professors (which means many classes, especially 61A an…

The math department here traditionally doesn't hire long-term lecturers, as mentioned in one of the email chains Coward attached.

That's a pretty poor reflection on the math department!

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#264

Post by agumonkey »

chris_wot wrote: post #258
agumonkey wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of your teachers focused on efficient learning ? I can't remember one. Even the handful of teacher that left a deep trace in my memory never mentioned 'learning'. They were just so well aware of their subject, they could be the catalyst to bridge gaps in my view of things, triggering inspiration and desire.

There needs to be a desire in the student to learn, but the teacher must also be able to impart things clearly. Otherwise, why bother having teachers at all? Why not have everyone self-learn? Ironically, that's what I'm actually doing right now, but still it's good to get recorded lectures as this tends to really help fill in blanks.

I'm doing a lot of self studies too, and what I'm missing the most is a little peer pressure to focus and test, especially tests. That's why I personally enjoyed MOOCs since they provide that. My experience is doubly biased, I don't recall any teacher being really helping in learning as I said, but I went to college at a time I couldn't interact with them normally too.

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#265

Post by [deleted] »

chris_wot wrote: post #258
agumonkey wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of your teachers focused on efficient learning ? I can't remember one. Even the handful of teacher that left a deep trace in my memory never mentioned 'learning'. They were just so well aware of their subject, they could be the catalyst to bridge gaps in my view of things, triggering inspiration and desire.

There needs to be a desire in the student to learn, but the teacher must also be able to impart things clearly. Otherwise, why bother having teachers at all? Why not have everyone self-learn? Ironically, that's what I'm actually doing right now, but still it's good to get recorded lectures as this tends to really help fill in blanks.

[deleted]

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#266

Post by chris_wot »

I looked up one of Alexander Coward's lectures here:

https://vimeo.com/137661254

I was really impressed! He started with logic notation to explain the definition of a limit, which IMO is actually really important... do most lecturers cover this in an introduction to calculus?

I've heard a lot people complain on this forum that he didn't cover the material in the way that the math faculty liked. But this doesn't dumb down the material, this explains it in more detail!

Maybe I'm wrong though, maybe this is covered, but I don't seem to re all it in any calculus book I've seen. He was also very open about the text-book industry practice of making minor changes between editions just to sell new books. Maybe he fell afoul of them there as well.

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#267

Post by moron4hire »

studentrob wrote: post #245
moron4hire wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling it a time-bomb was me editorializing. I just meant for this specific idea, since spending the money is at the Department's discretion, and they have shown a desire to get rid of Coward, then it seems likely accepting this donation would be just asking for trouble some time in the future when their conflicting motivations finally catch up to them. And it's not so much that the expendables are "fungible". By de…

In some domains, even restricted funds are fungible. Check out John Oliver's video on state lotteries: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9PK-netuhHA

No, that's not what he said at all. Because of a new restricted fund, they changed the budget for other funding sources. The didn't just decide to spend specific dollars on one cause that had been collected under a guise of a different cause.

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#268

Post by fluidcruft »

retbull wrote: post #232
fluidcruft wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are often very big challenges in the freshman courses. The case I'm most familiar with is the calculus courses (in undergrad I was an engineering and mathematics dual major so I had to figure out how to splice in the coursework and petition to get some courses substituted for others etc). There is a lot of pressure on the non-majors course to deemphasize the mechanics of calculation and move toward theory and r…

You still didn't refute that his students are doing better in their later classes. If your complaint is lack of foundation what is causing his students to do better?

The forest is composed of students with a variety of majors and a diverse set of "later classes".

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#269

Post by j2kun »

chris_wot wrote: post #260
j2kun wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just send Coward a check directly?

That wouldn't prevent him from being fired. If they don't allow him on the campus, it doesn't matter if he was able to work for "free".

I don't think sending the university a check would prevent him from being fired either, if the university really wanted to make a point of it.

Re: Blowing the Whistle on the UC Berkeley Mathematics Department

#270

Post by j2kun »

Natsu wrote: post #255
j2kun wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this caught on all mathematics departments would lose funding and no longer be able to fund research. It's a strange conflict of interests.

I would hope there would be funding from somewhere, at least at the state/federal level. Mathematical research has proven very important to a number of advances in the sciences, even research that was once thought to have no practical use.

I think a pretty overwhelming majority of math research funding comes from the fact that math departments are service departments for engineering, physics, etc.

The NSF spends a total of just under 250 million per year on math research. The DoD and DoE also have around 100 million each. Some mathematicians estimate [1] about 30k mathematicians in the US, which at a conservative salary of 50k per year (!) is already 1.5 billion.

In other words, either gov't agencies would have to roughly triple their funding (just for math), or about a third of mathematicians would lose their jobs. These are, of course, very rough estimates.

[1]: http://mathoverflow.net/questions/5485/how-many-mathematicia...

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