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'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

joannejacobs.com

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Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#131

Post by bobsmooth »

Mike_12345 wrote: post #76
NotYourLawyer wrote: post #15

Turns out math isn’t actually white supremacy. To the surprise of absolutely no one.

Math is Arabic and Islamic supremacy. "The word algebra comes from the Arabic: الجبر, romanized: al-jabr, lit. 'reunion of broken parts,[1] bonesetting[2]' from the title of the early 9th century book ʿIlm al-jabr wa l-muqābala "The Science of Restoring and Balancing" by the Persian mathematician and astronomer al-Khwarizmi."

Pretty sure they're talking about articles like this

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/modern-mathematic...

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#132

Post by b59831 »

praxulus wrote: post #32

I live in Seattle, not San Francisco, but we have some similar issues with our schools. I'd really prefer to send my son to our local public schools, but if they aren't challenging him appropriately then my wife and I obviously aren't going to just give up on his education. We'll either pay for extracurricular enrichment like the person in this article, move to a wealthy suburb, or send him to a private school instea…

And the kids who's families can't afford to move/go to private school pay for the rich family's idealism.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#133

Post by readthenotes1 »

Not surprised that not teaching doesn't help.

In contrast, a relative got into the special ed group for smart kids.

During orientation, the moderator said that it is just as silly to put kids in the top 2% in a classroom with everyone else as it is to keep the kids who can't tie their shoes on their own in that same classroom.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#134

Post by testfoobar »

praxulus wrote: post #32

I live in Seattle, not San Francisco, but we have some similar issues with our schools. I'd really prefer to send my son to our local public schools, but if they aren't challenging him appropriately then my wife and I obviously aren't going to just give up on his education. We'll either pay for extracurricular enrichment like the person in this article, move to a wealthy suburb, or send him to a private school instea…

Wealthy suburbs are cutting advanced classes too. Palo Alto Unified School District is dropping dual-enrolled Multivariable Calculus and Linear Algebra (classes taken after AP Calculus BC).

https://www.paloaltoonline.com/square/2023/03/29/cancellatio...

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#135

Post by ekidd »

theGnuMe wrote: post #68
zdragnar wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Memorizing things like SOHCAHTOA and FOIL may not be a vital life skill for everyone, but everyone can benefit from the base logical thinking required to identify a variable, break a problem down into steps, plan and execute a solution. At a bare minimum, the basics of algebra (and to a lesser extent precalc, such as understanding limits and differentials) foster a type of abstract thinking and skills that pretty muc…

Except that the traditional way of teaching the subject does not reason from first principles which is what you are advocating. The new math stuff does... I think parents hate it cause we don't understand it and it screws up the college pipeline. To illustrate my point of the uselessness of our conventional mathematical training. ChatGPT gets a 700 out of 800 on the SAT Math section, but ask ChatGPT a reasoning quest…

ChatGPT 4's math abilities are really hit or miss. I asked it to act as a "Socratic tutor" for the de-biasing terms in exponential moving averages. And it walked me through the problem, and it actually pointed out errors in my derivation (even though I was using a half-baked mix of Unicode and LaTeX). That was honestly pretty impressive.

On the other hand, GPT 3.5 is painfully bad at basic arithmetic. Apparently it can add long numbers, but you actually need to explain the addition algorithm and give it some examples. Then it can walk through the process step by step, just like an elementary school student.

In a lot of cases, I suspect ChatGPT 4 is pulling from a tiny corner of the training distribution. It has seen most of the web, and it doesn't need to see things often to talk about them. I've seen it successfully summarize the contents of obscure personal blogs, or of a very minor news story that was current for a week in 2009.

So it wouldn't surprise me if GPT 4 performs well on tasks that are mentioned on a half dozen obscure web pages, or something like that.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#136

Post by macspoofing »

pigsty wrote: post #106
macspoofing wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the fix? It’s not the system. If you have parents that are involved in education and engage in the kind of child-rearing, that is conducive to education - it doesn’t matter the kind of system you’re operating under (keep in mind, our bar for success is very low - we want kids that graduate high-school to be functionally literate with basic arithmetic and basic general knowledge). Put another way, if a child gr…

My parents were straight D/F students and never helped me with classes at all. I would’ve appreciated help that would’ve let me go farther, but that’s at a point well past algebra. Parents are part of the problem, but it seems like we’re just desperately trying to pin the responsibility on one specific person in the child’s life and put it out of their personal responsibility. That’s not the case. Some kids get every…

Today we are graduating an unacceptably large numbers of functional illiterate kids from high school. If a kid graduates high school and they are functionally illiterate, that illustrates neglect by parents over many years. It has nothing to do with the academic background of said parents or whether they themselves can read or write. It has nothing to do with the state of public education, or the quality of teachers - the public system is good enough to teach literacy over 15 years of schooling. The quality of the public system may be important for the last mile of education (where you’re trying to provide kids a richer educational experience), but our bar for success is much much lower.

Put another way, you cannot convince me that the parents are not at fault when a kid can’t read or write after 15 years of education (after having sampled many many teachers and teaching styles, including summer school and remedial education, during that time).

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#137

Post by CydeWeys »

thr0waway001 wrote: post #121

> San Francisco Unified decided in 2015 to delay algebra till ninth grade and place low, average and high achievers in the same classes. Ugh, I couldn't imagine being a high achieving student and having to be lumped in with people who don't give a shit about their education.

Hell, I took honors history instead of AP history my junior year (it was the only class I took that was "merely" honors; everything else was STEM magnet/AP level). And that class sucked, and was way too dumbed down, and was full of people who (comparatively) didn't care about their education. God forbid I would've had to take a normal level class at any point; the boredom might've killed me.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#139

Post by Mike_12345 »

bobsmooth wrote: post #131
Mike_12345 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Math is Arabic and Islamic supremacy. "The word algebra comes from the Arabic: الجبر, romanized: al-jabr, lit. 'reunion of broken parts,[1] bonesetting[2]' from the title of the early 9th century book ʿIlm al-jabr wa l-muqābala "The Science of Restoring and Balancing" by the Persian mathematician and astronomer al-Khwarizmi."

Pretty sure they're talking about articles like this https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/modern-mathematic...

I am quite aware of that. That's what I'm making fun of.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#140

Post by testfoobar »

foolfoolz wrote: post #14

math is just the beginning of these backwards policies. public schools in california have been removing advanced classes in the name of “equity” for years. the racial enrollment in those classes did not reflect the racial enrollment of the school. the result? parents moving kids to private school. at the school nearest me they kindergarten enrollment is dropping. they are likely going to only have a a single class in…

Honors English has been removed from many schools in the name of equity. Kids barely read novels for school anymore. Writing assignments are often limited to two page essays. Anything more significant requiring research, drafts and multiple revisions is not done.
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