11–20 of 51 posts
Can someone tell me WTF "pre-calculus" is meant to mean? AFAICT, it's just a fancy word for algebra.
Many remedial courses in math in colleges will have the title "college algebra" while others will have the title "precalculus," with much the same content.
Bear with me here, I have to lay down some foundation to get to my point. Bias has a specialized definition in machine learning; in a (really thin) nutshell, it represents the set of concepts a given technique can represent. If your banana vs. ball classifier can only represent "roundness" and "yellowness", the bias will prevent it from seeing a yellow cube as anything but a banana. (If you really dig in, I find this…
This is blogspam. The original article from Psychology Today was already submitted to HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1211198 But I must acknowledge that some searches for submissions of the original article that I just tried on Google failed, although SearchYC works with enough keywords.
Note: Wikipedia defines blogspam as "the post of a blogger who creates no-value added posts to submit them to other sites".
Can someone tell me WTF "pre-calculus" is meant to mean? AFAICT, it's just a fancy word for algebra.
We had already had two classes in algebra, one in geometry, and one in functions, statistics, and trigonometry.
Bear with me here, I have to lay down some foundation to get to my point. Bias has a specialized definition in machine learning; in a (really thin) nutshell, it represents the set of concepts a given technique can represent. If your banana vs. ball classifier can only represent "roundness" and "yellowness", the bias will prevent it from seeing a yellow cube as anything but a banana. (If you really dig in, I find this…
Right here. I taught myself programming and I got pointers (references, same difference) within the first week I started reading about php. I enjoy learning new concepts except for math. I really want to learn math but I am so afraid of just opening a math book and not understanding anything in it. (Posttraumathematic stress disorder?)
This story is dead on. I know this from personal experience and from teaching my own children. I could not add until I was 10. It was painful. I still remember it vividly. Suddenly everything clicked, and I rocketed through all the material I was behind on. I have six children, five of which are old enough to be in school. We have been home schooling them, I believe I have some creds on this. Two of them (both girls)…
Compared to teaching on arbitrary set of topics at arbitrary times, you should have big gains in learning efficiency and enjoyment, since it is inefficient to spend time attempting to convey a concept the child is not ready for or is uninterested. The child will be spending a greater fraction of the time learning.
Sounds sensible to me.
This story is dead on. I know this from personal experience and from teaching my own children. I could not add until I was 10. It was painful. I still remember it vividly. Suddenly everything clicked, and I rocketed through all the material I was behind on. I have six children, five of which are old enough to be in school. We have been home schooling them, I believe I have some creds on this. Two of them (both girls)…
It sounds like you are suggesting teaching children only the things they are interested in and ready for at the time. Compared to teaching on arbitrary set of topics at arbitrary times, you should have big gains in learning efficiency and enjoyment, since it is inefficient to spend time attempting to convey a concept the child is not ready for or is uninterested. The child will be spending a greater fraction of the t…
That said, I agree with the parent, and the original blog post. Our older son picked up reading and writing quickly (without much prompting from us, but his younger brother is less interested in those things, but is showing greater creative ability, so we're running with that.
This is blogspam. The original article from Psychology Today was already submitted to HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1211198 But I must acknowledge that some searches for submissions of the original article that I just tried on Google failed, although SearchYC works with enough keywords.
I don't think this sinks to the level of blogspam. The OP made a summary of the original and added his own comments. I looked at the first few entries on the home page and most of them seemed to be in this format. There is original content here and the guy writes well. To call it blogspam is (in my opinion) wrong. Note: Wikipedia defines blogspam as "the post of a blogger who creates no-value added posts to submit th…
This story is dead on. I know this from personal experience and from teaching my own children. I could not add until I was 10. It was painful. I still remember it vividly. Suddenly everything clicked, and I rocketed through all the material I was behind on. I have six children, five of which are old enough to be in school. We have been home schooling them, I believe I have some creds on this. Two of them (both girls)…
Then one day, at age 15, a classmate showed me how to do quadratic equations. I have no idea why, but that day a really bright light suddenly switched on for me. I quickly caught up to, and then passed the abilities of everyone else in the class, and then started teaching myself calculus in my spare time. I went on to get a PhD in Pure Mathematics.
I do think I just wasn't ready for a long time.
Can someone tell me WTF "pre-calculus" is meant to mean? AFAICT, it's just a fancy word for algebra.
If I remember, since geometry is such a large topic, pre-calculus also teaches the parts of geometry necessary for traditional calculus study. That way, the geometry course can be made more simple.