Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

scottaaronson.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

571–580 of 657 posts

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

#571

Post by WalterBright »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #564
fphhotchips wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, heaven forbid 17 year olds decide they want to take on a career in STEM later in High School. They must be real dummies. REAL engineers decide to be engineers as HS Freshmen and never waver from, struggle on, or doubt the One True Path. Colleges should only admit those who pledge themselves to the Guild of Software Engineering at 13, so we can keep the noble profession of building CRUD apps in JavaScript free o…

Grandparent was talking specifically about Caltech. I don’t see how anyone can go to Caltech without knowing calculus, possibly even linear algebra. This school has tougher admission standards than MIT.

I was rejected by MIT, Hahvahd, and Stanford :-)

The calculus requirement was not listed as an admissions requirement. The other students were astonished that I didn't simply assume it was required.

Fortunately, physics prof Ricardo Gomez invited me to his office for some impromptu calculus tutoring, which saved my bacon. I owe him.

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

#572

Post by WalterBright »

fphhotchips wrote: post #561
WalterBright wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They now do have a remedial kind of class Sad to hear that. It suggests their admissions process has succumbed. When I attended, it was very rare for the admissions people to admit someone who couldn't do the work. I only knew one who couldn't.

Yeah, heaven forbid 17 year olds decide they want to take on a career in STEM later in High School. They must be real dummies. REAL engineers decide to be engineers as HS Freshmen and never waver from, struggle on, or doubt the One True Path. Colleges should only admit those who pledge themselves to the Guild of Software Engineering at 13, so we can keep the noble profession of building CRUD apps in JavaScript free o…

Frankly, a major thing that Caltech admissions looked for is a very strong interest in engineering and science. It's gotta be in your bones, or you ain't going to thrive there. With their limited resources (it's small) it's just not pragmatic to accept those with a more casual interest. And really, why would you want to go there if you weren't? After all, 9 out of 10 classes were 90% math, math, more math, and math.

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

#573

Post by tbrownaw »

fphhotchips wrote: post #561
WalterBright wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They now do have a remedial kind of class Sad to hear that. It suggests their admissions process has succumbed. When I attended, it was very rare for the admissions people to admit someone who couldn't do the work. I only knew one who couldn't.

Yeah, heaven forbid 17 year olds decide they want to take on a career in STEM later in High School. They must be real dummies. REAL engineers decide to be engineers as HS Freshmen and never waver from, struggle on, or doubt the One True Path. Colleges should only admit those who pledge themselves to the Guild of Software Engineering at 13, so we can keep the noble profession of building CRUD apps in JavaScript free o…

There should exist places designed to provide maximum learning opportunity to those who come in already knowing a fair bit. It is a loss to society if such places start disappearing, or perhaps a sign of such loss if the reason is less demand.

This does not in any way imply that those should be the only kind of places to exist.

This does not in any way imply that there's anything wrong with people who started to recently to have relevant background.

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

#574

Post by thaumasiotes »

roody15 wrote: post #352
thaumasiotes wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Equality used to be about striving for equal opportunity. The shift to conflating equality with equalized outcomes simply doesn't work. Note that to the extent there was a shift, it took place in the 70s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact#The_80%_rule

"Note that to the extent there was a shift, it took place in the 70s." This really has ramped up in the last 2-3 years.

I would suggest that in fact it hasn't; it was just as virulent over the past 50 years as it was over the last 3, but you just noticed it more in the last 3 years.

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

#575

Post by [deleted] »

deanCommie wrote: post #551
rayiner wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s tenured Stanford professors in many subjects, such as theology. I’m sure their work is impressive within the context of the field. But that doesn’t mean it’s rigorous or has real world application. PhD publications are supposed to be a serious contributions to the field. This particular work won a major award. Stop it with the accusations of “arrogance” and naked credentialism. Any of the millions of people w…

Arrogance is skimming a PhD thesis in a field wildly different from your own and deciding you are more competent in your ability to evaluate its "rigor" than the dozens or people in that field who evaluated it that had a different conclusion. It's not an original arrogance - it's pretty common amongst the STEM educated to basically consider all humanities, philosophy, social sciences to be not "serious" fields. Just…

[deleted]

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

#576

Post by twofornone »

vkou wrote: post #540
twofornone wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If over twelve years of math instruction you can't figure out how to teach the average child algebra, trigonometry, logarithms, and the very basics of calculus, I would advise the educators to look into why their peers in other countries are managing to accomplish these feats Their peers in other countries are working with culturally and genetically different populations. Intelligence is 70%+ heritable, you do the m…

And what institutions are responsible for spending half of the waking hours of a child teaching culture?

Parents and peers/communities. If the US is any indication, teachers are incapable of instilling appreciation for learning once scholastic achievement is branded "uncool".

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

#577

Post by Idiotfucker »

whatshisface wrote: post #557
Spivak wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet people don’t feel the same way about “Calculus for Engineers” despite it also being a ridiculously dumbed down course full of rote memorization of formulas, “procedures,” and “strategies” with the bare minimum of hand-wavy theory. Compared to the courses for maths students it’s just as much pretending to learn calculus. dae STEM has got to be one of the most exhausting memes on the internet. Hell, I’m 3/4 of…

The theorems they prove in mathematician's calculus are useless for engineers, and they take time away from learning useful tricks for doing integrals, which if not that critical for a world with numerical methods, are crucial for solving problems on future tests.

this would perhaps, idk, also explain why math for artists is also not a super rigourous nor super technical computative class.

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

#578

Post by Siira »

FFRefresh wrote: post #166
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…

I don't doubt that the people crafting these proposals care. I think they truly believe they are doing the right thing. I personally think it's just increasingly popular, mistaken moral beliefs that inform these types of proposals. Some of the underlying beliefs: 1. Blank slate - All humans are of equal ability 2. Any observable differences between humans are merely the result of social factors 3. Any observable diff…

The assumptions above should result in ensuring educational resources are available for people who are struggling. They should also show people in which careers calculus is useful, to motivate people. Making calculus mandatory for everyone might also help on the margin, though this bears empirical investigation.

This is laziness of the moral clowns who know the easiest way to remove a difference in success is to eliminate the successful. As they don’t care about anything but the theatrical performance, they naturally take this route of least resistance.

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

#579

Post by raegis »

canadaduane wrote: post #226
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm certainly very happy that I learned calculus in high school. I then got a 5 on the AP calculus test and tested in to third quarter calculus in college. It was important as an engineer to understand those concepts. I don't use them too often and I forgot a lot of it, but I really enjoyed it and I think it would be unfortunate if other students did not have that opportunity. I agree stats would be great too!

As a software engineer, I wish I had learned stats instead of calculus. Some exposure would have been great, but the high school & university requirements were way off target wrt its usefulness in computer science. It was a painful process of learning, failing, and re-taking calculus, squeaking by, only to never use it again. I was a straight-A student otherwise.

Why is this either/or? I took both calculus and statistics in college. Were you forced to choose one or the other?

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

#580

Post by Siira »

Spivak wrote: post #542
WalterBright wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read the course description, although that wasn't necessary. The title gave the game away. It's like "Flight School for Artists". There's no such thing.

And yet people don’t feel the same way about “Calculus for Engineers” despite it also being a ridiculously dumbed down course full of rote memorization of formulas, “procedures,” and “strategies” with the bare minimum of hand-wavy theory. Compared to the courses for maths students it’s just as much pretending to learn calculus. dae STEM has got to be one of the most exhausting memes on the internet. Hell, I’m 3/4 of…

Knowing the theorems behind calculus is difficult. But they don’t magically make you able to solve limits, integrals, etc. So having different courses that focus on different parts is smart.

E.g., there can be a course on compilers that teaches automata theory. There can also be a course that just jumps in and codes a compiler. Both courses teach different, but valuable skills. Now, having a course “Compiler for Artists” where you’re taught such useful gems as “a compiler translates between human-level languages and machine code,” not so much.

Post reply on HN