271–276 of 276 posts
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I studied there, and during that time, spoke to and tutored many such students. Anecdotal evidence is better than no evidence.
"Anecdotal evidence is better than no evidence". Goodness! You mean the anti-vaxxers might have been onto something?
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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…
And yes, I don't know where the funding would come from if math education was commoditized, as perhaps it should be.
I was a grad student and teaching assistant in Berkeley maths 1998-99. I observed that the department intentionally admitted many more grad students than it could possibly put through the full PhD, and had a well-tuned system for weeding them out after a year or two - chiefly a "preliminary exam" that was notoriously tough and (in my view and that of many others) unfair. A charitable view would be that the department…
If hard working students fail a test, the failure is on the teacher, not the students. I highly doubt the majority of students at berkeley would be anything other than hard working.
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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.
> The didn't just decide to spend specific dollars on one cause that had been collected under a guise of a different cause.
Actually, in the case of the lottery, there are examples of this. See the part at 12:24 - https://youtu.be/9PK-netuhHA?t=12m24s
Perhaps one can say it was legal and not restricted money. Regardless, it is definitely odd how the state advertises that lottery money goes to education, and meanwhile corporate tax money disappears from the education budget.
The point is not legality, it is ethics.
>He went off on so many tangents, nitpicked on random things and when it came down to it, taught the material rather poorly. I took his class with prior calculus knowledge so it was alright but for those that never had calc, it would've been so awful.
>Tries to teach math in a confusing essay format, and marks you down when you don't use his method correctly. Extremely arrogant and set on proving how his principles in teaching are the best. Class was very disorganized and grading until the very end of the course. Avoid taking a class with him if possible.
>Doesn't give homework, doesn't have a syllabus. Exams are a bunch of meaningless boring calculations. He's a genius but not a good teacher.
>He is a nice person, but not a good teacher. Instead of math, he spends most of the lecture telling you how to be a good person: he starts with telling you 'not to give up', and then discusses a mathematical problem(which is not tough) and gets stuck. For the rest the lecture, he will actually show you what 'not to give up' means.
There are also many positive reviews in there (more than negative ones), but they often focus on his charisma and dedication:
>Coward is an inspiration- he deeply cares about his students' learning and believes that you must be infatuated with your education. He really cares for his students and always asks the class if he's being clear.
> I have never had a Math professor who I truly admire - he changed that. The level of interest he takes in the class is unmatched and he really wants his students to do well. Rebellious, fun, helpful and unimaginably intellectual. Best class at Cal so far.
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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".