An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California • Hacker News Board

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#191

Post by chmod600 » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 7:16 PM UTC

deanCommie wrote: post #112

prepend wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like such a bonehead solution to the problem. Of course if you’re doing poorly in math scores, you can make math easier in the hope to increase scores. It’s sad that the state is proposing these changes. I remember in school there were kids who argued “algebra is stupid, who needs it, why waste time” and there were one or two sympathetic teachers who would respond “well, I rarely have to use algebra to balan…

The person quoted ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Boaler ) is a "Nomellini-Olivier Professor of Mathematics Education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education" who "won the award for best PhD in education from the British Educational Research Association" I'm not saying I agree with the proposed California Framework. As a formerly gifted maths student, I hate it. But let's not dismiss the rigorous work of an a…

The path to hell is paved with good intentions.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#192

Post by throwawayboise » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 7:16 PM UTC

cool_dude85 wrote: post #134

lordnacho wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't you just let everyone take the same class and the same exams, but let the kids who have interest do extra work? Want to do calculus a year early? Here's the book, here's the exercises, why would I stop you?

What you suggest is already the case. The book and exercises are "here" for you to do, nobody to stop you. It's called the internet. The calculus police doesn't come get you if you're reading a calc book in 10th grade. It's just that you don't have any way of getting instruction or school credit - so you are very unlikely to be successful, and not very likely to have your university credit you as having mastered the…

Any high schooler can take the AP calculus test and earn credit, no?

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#193

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 7:17 PM UTC

cwkoss wrote: post #128

kurthr wrote: post #27

From the original letter: While well-intentioned, we believe that many of the changes proposed by the CMF are deeply misguided and will disproportionately harm under-resourced students. Adopting them would result in a student population that is less prepared to succeed in STEM and other 4-year quantitative degrees in college. The CMF states that 'many students, parents, and teachers encourage acceleration beginning i…

Is calculus an important highschool goal? I feel like I may have benefited more if that time was spent on statistical literacy than calculus. I encounter stats very often in my adult life, calculus style problems are rare and I don't remember the formulas offhand, so end up just looking up what I need.

[deleted]

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#194

Post by Jensson » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 7:18 PM UTC

H8crilA wrote: post #159

kurthr wrote: post #27

From the original letter: While well-intentioned, we believe that many of the changes proposed by the CMF are deeply misguided and will disproportionately harm under-resourced students. Adopting them would result in a student population that is less prepared to succeed in STEM and other 4-year quantitative degrees in college. The CMF states that 'many students, parents, and teachers encourage acceleration beginning i…

What does "calculus" here mean? I'm not American, no idea what's included in that word and what's outside, in this context. Does it mean limits, derivatives, integration (Newton), maybe even some high level talk about ODEs for the "very best" schools? Anything more, anything less? Also, in case anyone is also wondering, 8th grade means 13-14 years old.

Yes, they talk about the normal things average high school students learn about derivatives and integrals all over the world.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#195

Post by dymk » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 7:19 PM UTC

cwkoss wrote: post #128

kurthr wrote: post #27

From the original letter: While well-intentioned, we believe that many of the changes proposed by the CMF are deeply misguided and will disproportionately harm under-resourced students. Adopting them would result in a student population that is less prepared to succeed in STEM and other 4-year quantitative degrees in college. The CMF states that 'many students, parents, and teachers encourage acceleration beginning i…

Is calculus an important highschool goal? I feel like I may have benefited more if that time was spent on statistical literacy than calculus. I encounter stats very often in my adult life, calculus style problems are rare and I don't remember the formulas offhand, so end up just looking up what I need.

The abstract concepts of calculus are useful and will shape the way you think about and go about solving problems, even if you don't explicitly employ an integral or derivative. Rates, sums, areas, volumes, etc.

Learn the nuts and bolts in highschool, use the intuition for the rest of your life.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#196

Post by fartcannon » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 7:20 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #162

zozbot234 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stats requires calculus; you can't even define a probability distribution without some pretty advanced notions of real analysis. Discrete math, linear algebra etc. are viable alternatives.

Is this really true, in practice? For example, given its importance in every day life, I think everyone should understand test sensitivity and specificity, and how these relate to but are quite different from predictive value positive and predictive value negative. All of those topics can be understood with basic algebra. Similarly, I recall my introduction to biostatistics class I took at an Ivy League institution,…

At some point, someone was saying precisely this about literacy. And it was as true then as your comment is now. You only need some range of function around the baseline education to operate in society. But if you want society to progress, then everyone needs to learn to read and write.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#197

Post by pishpash » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 7:21 PM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #154

kurthr wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because, without it you will be at a great disadvantage in entering any STEM undergraduate program in the US.

Maybe for most of them, however i found calculus totally useless for my CS degree (the only time i recall it mentioned was defining big-oh notation). Otoh i liked calculus so still time well spent. Of course, that's not counting "mathamatical maturity" which is super important or if you're doing some specific thing that needs calculus (hello machine learning.)

It's pretty simple:

- calculus if you want to do engineering

- discrete mathematics if you want to do CS

You can teach these in university, it's not a problem. Calculus doesn't need to be taught in high school to everyone but it should be available and it should be the goal state in terms of curriculum pace for everyone so that you should have no problem taking it by the time you are 17 or 18 (which is what we're talking about).

Anything else propagates back to a regressive dumbing down in an earlier year, from an already dumbed down curriculum by international standards.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#198

Post by khazhoux » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 7:21 PM UTC

vkou wrote: post #94

nafix wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like more woke nonsense. Sounds nice and easy to a layman from a super high level but not practical or put through any kind of rigorous rational thought.

> Sounds like more woke nonsense You are right that this is a lot of nonsense. Specifically, 'you aren't good at math/math is hard' is the nonsense meme that gets hammered into student heads so frequently during school that most of them actually start to believe it. It's not some kind of novel woke nonsense, though, it's how math instruction on this continent has been happening over the past X decades. The wokies are…

I don't understand if you're saying that every kid is equally good at math. Or, similarly, that every kid that the same capacity for it or ability to pickup math concepts.

Because it seems to me that if you have experience with any sampling of children where N>1, you'll see that's simply not true.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#199

Post by throwawayboise » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 7:22 PM UTC

adamomada wrote: post #105

Bostonian wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but if you do sort students by academic achievement, you will send a smaller fraction of blacks and Hispanics to academic high schools than whites, and a smaller fraction of whites than Asians, since there are differences in academic achievement by race. I say so be it, but currently many people assume that disparate outcomes prove racism.

The irony of course is that focusing on who they are not what they do has to be more racist by a rational definition

If it's based on ability, it should not matter what percentage of advanced students are white, black, asian, or other. All that matters is that if you're good enough, you get in.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#200

Post by cool_dude85 » Tue, Apr 26, 2022, 7:22 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #133

cwkoss wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is calculus an important highschool goal? I feel like I may have benefited more if that time was spent on statistical literacy than calculus. I encounter stats very often in my adult life, calculus style problems are rare and I don't remember the formulas offhand, so end up just looking up what I need.

Stats requires calculus; you can't even define a probability distribution without some pretty advanced notions of real analysis. Discrete math, linear algebra etc. are viable alternatives.

Not at a high school level. AP Stats I believe does not require calculus as a prerequisite.

Discrete distributions can be defined, even infinite discrete distributions (as sequences and series are taught in pre-calc). Continuous distributions can't be formally defined, but a lot of intuition can be given with hand-waving e.g. the area under this curve. Probably most of the class is spent with counting and probability-type problems, but plenty of actual statistics can be done without calculus - we can learn about distributions, what a statistic is, expectation, sampling, counting, probability... the list goes on.