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Marvin Minsky: What makes mathematics hard to learn? (2008)

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Re: Marvin Minsky: What makes mathematics hard to learn? (2008)

#91
post #22

"we need to provide our children with better cognitive maps of the subjects we want them to learn" This style of learning works for everyone -- including children. There is a growing community of people sharing educational, animated gifs on Reddit that recognizes the value of visual learning. Popular subreddits include: - /r/educationalgifs - /r/mechanical_gifs/ - /r/GifRecipes/

I'm not sure that is what he means with a "cognitive map". I believe, he means that children need a better understanding of what is possible to do with, and what the point is with math.

Agree. For me it was games.

While other kids complained about algebra, I recognized it as exactly what I had been doing with my little Apple II games, basically fumbling on my own. Now each math lesson was a chance to make my games even more interesting.

My first graphing calculator had a simple example of 3D point rotation. It was like learning a magical incantation! (This is pre-internet.) My friend and I were so excited at the possibilities and immediately wrote a primitive ray-tracer.

The point is: by connecting it to games, we were literally hungry to learn more math.

Re: Marvin Minsky: What makes mathematics hard to learn? (2008)

#92
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many students, however, "rediscover" math when they get to their first class that involves theorems and proofs (often in high-school geometry) High school geometry (at least in the US, and in my experience) is the worst of them all! Two-column proofs should be banned.

These? https://dj1hlxw0wr920.cloudfront.net/userfiles/wyzfiles/a8e3... I had those in high school and I hardly see any problem with them. It's just writing the proof neatly organized into a table, with the reasons for each step given.

It looks "unpleasant" out of context, but it is important to note that the proof is accompanied by a diagram of the parallelogram and the students who write this proof have been exposed to the reasoning behind the steps.

High school geometry introduces many students to the idea that math is a way of reasoning and this is _very_ different from the boring grind that they were used to.

Re: Marvin Minsky: What makes mathematics hard to learn? (2008)

#93
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how you would define the Fourier Transform geometrically without needing 4 spatial dimensions, at which point intuitive geometric reasoning is impossible.

Far from impossible, it's even reasonably intutitive. Wikipedia has an excellent graphic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fourier_transform_time_an... . Then for people for which that's too abstract, I find this graphic helps a lot in explaining. http://static.nautil.us/1635_42a3964579017f3cb42b26605b9ae8e... You picked a really bad example for the unintutiveness of mathematics.

I'd suggest most of homological algebra as an example. It's called "abstract nonsense" for a reason.

Personally, my intuition gives up at spectral sequences.

Re: Marvin Minsky: What makes mathematics hard to learn? (2008)

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. Kids disengage from math for many different reasons. There is no single pattern to it. If it were that simple, it would not have remained an issue since schools were commonplace. Minsky solidly makes the point that when math is taught as nothing more than an endless series of tedious drills with no purpose in sight, of course it demotivates kids. No one likes pointless Sisyphean tasks. Many students, howeve…

Humanity as such absolutely loves pointless repetition, and abhors thinking about something hard, which involves focusing intensely on one subject in which where no repeatable progression of simple successes is taking place, leading to a mounting sense of discomfort. Just look at various cultural traditions, popular (and even serious) music, crafts, sports, ... sneeze ligion. Mindless repetition is everywhere. The sa…

The kids I am describing are somewhat lucky for not having "checked out" before progressing beyond fractions. But they're not extraordinary, they're just kids who have been taught competently and who have been motivated in one way or another to get that far.

Kids are naturally curious and fighting against their curiosity can easily lead to losing their interest.

Re: Marvin Minsky: What makes mathematics hard to learn? (2008)

#95
Math is hard for the same reasons that anything is hard. It is literally a mental strain on your brain.

I agree with the author in that a teacher's enthusiasm and perspective, and 'rigidity' in school can compound difficulties.

But as a physicist, the most difficult part of learning math, for me, is overcoming my own mental barriers. I need patience and focus to comprehend even the most simple sentences. If I don't want to learn/strain in the moment, then I won't.

Re: Marvin Minsky: What makes mathematics hard to learn? (2008)

#96
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how you would define the Fourier Transform geometrically without needing 4 spatial dimensions, at which point intuitive geometric reasoning is impossible.

Far from impossible, it's even reasonably intutitive. Wikipedia has an excellent graphic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fourier_transform_time_an... . Then for people for which that's too abstract, I find this graphic helps a lot in explaining. http://static.nautil.us/1635_42a3964579017f3cb42b26605b9ae8e... You picked a really bad example for the unintutiveness of mathematics.

Speaking in my capacity as a person who doesn't understand Fourier transforms, I'm afraid I have to say that your "intuitive" graphics are anything but. I can't even make sense of your second graphic.

Just a data point for you.

Re: Marvin Minsky: What makes mathematics hard to learn? (2008)

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not do it yourself? I think that fostering a particular topic by the parents should be a first step.

I agree completely. But I also think it is helpful to understand how others who may have focused on this issue more than I have to date are approaching this. I see a fair amount of discussion regarding how we can do a better job of introducing math to children, but far less on what we should actually do. Should I just start playing around with LOGO or Scratch myself?

When my kids were younger, the curriculum that their school used was more about the aha!s and connections than about rote recipes. I volunteered in one's first grade math class where they spent 20 minutes of the 45 minute math period learning to draw puppies and kitties so they could answer the question, "Sue has 15 puppies and kitties. How many of each does she have?" The goal was to get the kids to come up with every combination from 0 puppies and 15 kitties through 15 puppies and 0 kitties, and first graders are still mostly concrete thinkers and need those pictures.

At this level, getting 3+2=5 was MUCH less important than being able to explain in writing that 3 apples and two bananas added up to a bunch of fruits in words. 4, 6, 8, 5, whatever. Alas, they never got 3+2=5 hardwired in this curriculum. But they were better artists for it!

And my kids did not learn math, because the curriculum was more about writing than math and explaining reasoning (I called it "math for people who don't like math and would rather write about it than do it"). So in elementary school, I taught my kids math using Singapore Math curriculum and let the school do its thing so it was balanced, and I volunteered weekly in math during the elementary school years so I was on top of what they were learning and how.

In addition, we always did math at home in informal ways without being explicit about it, from counting lug nuts on cars when they were toddlers through guessing the color of the next car to go by the stop sign on our walks to estimating which box of cereal was cheapest without a calculator to noting that the arrival rate at a traffic signal wasn't random in one direction because the only way cars could get to it was by going through another signal. Heck, even counting in binary using the 3 lights above an airplane row on visits to the grandparents - Look, with three lights I can only count to 8! And now with high schoolers and college kids, math jokes like log(fu) = log(f) + log(u) are the height of hilarity, or at least lighten the mood at exam time.

Point is - there is "studying math" (with whatever curriculum and rubrics) and there is "playing with math." As a parent, especially with younger kids, I found that it was great to establish both. Math isn't a "thing", it's part of life.

Re: Marvin Minsky: What makes mathematics hard to learn? (2008)

#98
post #22

"we need to provide our children with better cognitive maps of the subjects we want them to learn" This style of learning works for everyone -- including children. There is a growing community of people sharing educational, animated gifs on Reddit that recognizes the value of visual learning. Popular subreddits include: - /r/educationalgifs - /r/mechanical_gifs/ - /r/GifRecipes/

I'd just like to give a heads up to anyone that needs to get any work done today, don't visit the educational gifs subreddit.

Re: Marvin Minsky: What makes mathematics hard to learn? (2008)

#99
post #27

There is something quite interesting about the form of the article. While Mr Minsky talks about teaching using the "deck of cards method" and why it might not be the best approach if the child wants to advance to more complex subjects he also wants us to learn about his experiments (which are quite good!). Having read the article I find it well written but WHAT THE HELL?! Why doesn't he use pictures? simple diagrams?…

He doesn't use pictures because neither his target audience nor the subject matter require pictures. His target audience is composed of people who are interested in mathematics teaching (parents, teachers and such). He expects (correctly in my opinion) that these have handled and can handle long texts. The subject matter is an opinion piece without much underlying data, so graphical representation is not required. Th…

I do agree with you. Preaching the converted doesn't require that much effort.

Now to nuance a bit this over-simplistic sentence I just written: do you think I am interested in mathematics teaching? I did read the article anyway so you might be right but I felt a bit overwhelmed by all this "jargon" when an example would have been so simple to understand.

After all, Mr Minsky was a teacher, certainly a mighty good one :)

Re: Marvin Minsky: What makes mathematics hard to learn? (2008)

#100
post #22

"we need to provide our children with better cognitive maps of the subjects we want them to learn" This style of learning works for everyone -- including children. There is a growing community of people sharing educational, animated gifs on Reddit that recognizes the value of visual learning. Popular subreddits include: - /r/educationalgifs - /r/mechanical_gifs/ - /r/GifRecipes/

...I'm fairly sure that by 'cognitive map', Minsky means that student should have an idea what the given subject / field is really all about, where it is useful and what kind of problems it tries to solve, even if they are taking the first baby steps on studying it. Visualizations would be only tangentially related.
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