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'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

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Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#371

Post by nordsieck »

oasisbob wrote: post #268
bradlys wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t generally transfer for Ivys. Running start is something you do if you have no intention of going to prestigious private universities as it’s completely pointless (credits don’t usually transfer) and they don’t have a great process for evaluating such students into their programs. You’d only do it if you plan to go to a school in your state since transferring credits out of state isn’t always easy going.

Running start credits, being based on community college credits, don't even transfer cleanly to state schools. When I did running start, this was the cautious advice. There are plenty of other reasons to do running start, aside from transfer credits. Access to higher level subjects you wouldn't have access to otherwise. Personally, I traded high school PE for scuba and yoga, a full year of A&P, college calculus, and…

> Running start credits, being based on community college credits, don't even transfer cleanly to state schools. When I did running start, this was the cautious advice.

My understanding is that there are been a number of reforms to WA community colleges that mean that a larger portion of community college credits transfer to public universities now. Of course, going out of state is a roll of the dice as always.

> Transfer credits had very little to do with it - it was just a more fulfilling curriculum.

Very true. I loved taking Microbiology as a HS student. Def something I wouldn't have gotten the chance to do normally. And CC offers far more advanced math than HS.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#372

Post by foldr »

replygirl wrote: post #369
bb010g wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False & racist. Please see https://youtu.be/UBc7qBS1Ujo for an extended explanation of why this is a horrible position. We don't even have strong scientific evidence that Spearman's g factor is more than a statistical convenience.

Can you summarize this three-hour video?

Not the OP, but it's a debunking of a fairly long book (and associated claims by one of its authors), so probably not. While threads like this reliably attract HN's substantial contingent of so-called 'race realists', the consensus among experts is that Murray is wrong. Therefore I really think we should be putting the burden of proof on people who think this consensus is false.

Murray's claims should be evaluated independently of his personal flaws, but you can also get some idea of where he's really coming from by checking out his Twitter feed. As a commenter on the video perspicuously puts it:

> The best argument against people who claim that the Bell Curve isn't racist is the fact that Murray isn't some incorporeal being who manifested out of thin air, wrote the book, and returned to the ether. He's a real person with a Twitter account, and oh boy.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#373

Post by brianwawok »

com2kid wrote: post #267
40yearoldman wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's a much worse outcome from an equity lens Bingo, that is the issue, everybody is worried about equity. You can't have it, we need meritocracy, equity is just cruel and unusual punishment to future. It is a recipe for driving society to the lowest common denominator. You should demand proper education or your money back. (Side note, this is what we will get 10x with free college, and the guaranteed loans have…

Growing up in Seattle in the 90s, the school district was obviously racist and classist. Advanced programs were in the richer (whiter) neighborhoods and poor kids got to go to schools with police wagons out front. The district charter use to have a line in it saying they had to offer each kid the best education possible. My mother used that line to force the school district to send a taxi to every day to take me up t…

> There is some fair arguments to make that mixing kids of different backgrounds together improves outcomes, if you take 1 kid from a poor background and surround that kid with a culture of success, there is a very large chance the kid will pick up on that culture of success and start doing better.

My understanding is research shows this "evens" outcomes. The worst students do better (Teacher has more time to pay attention to them), the best students do worse (can not get into the really hard stuff, get bored).

If you are in the bottom 25%, you WANT integrated classrooms of all levels.

If you are in the top 25%, you WANT an elite classroom with ramped up work and less distractions.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#374

Post by brianwawok »

pfannkuchen wrote: post #244
nordsieck wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I live in Seattle Luckily, everyone in the area gets access to Running Start[1]. Doesn't address the earlier years of schooling, though. If your children are in HS, I'd really recommend sitting downing with a HS councilor to make sure that your kids take the classes that are required by the district for HS, but aren't required for a college degree (I'm thinking of speech here, but there may be others) in the first…

I found the actual impact of AP credits disappointing. I ended up with no gen ed classes and started off in sophomore classes for math and physics. AP doesn’t count towards college GPA, and it turns out that others ended up with GPA padding that I missed out on. Still turned out fine overall, the GPA padding thing just didn’t occur to me in high school and no one pointed it out.

Who do you tell your GPA to? I stopped listing GPA after my first job. When I get a resume from someone that went to college 10 years ago and lists a 3.245 GPA, I laugh.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#375

Post by pandaman »

Cymrukicks wrote: post #350
ALittleLight wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, equality of opportunity is cruel and counter productive for exactly the reasons you mention. You cannot realistically achieve equality by elevating everyone, which means you need to focus on taking away from people. The moral and practical thing to do would be focusing on improving objective outcomes. Focusing on equality degrades objective outcomes in favor of moral perversion - taking away from some to make oth…

To answer your question first you make sure that child has the same education resources available that the professors child does throughout all aspects of their life. You also make the professors available to children from those inner city areas widening the networking effects that the children of the professor gets. they won't be as good but you open them up. Improving objective outcomes is some Krypton level shit,…

The child of the professors has the parents who are supposedly smart and teach him or her all the time at home, how exactly do you make this available to children from those inner city areas?

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#376

Post by hardware2win »

Dalewyn wrote: post #370
hardware2win wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were never tasked with solving e.g equations? E.g x + 4 = 13 - 2x? Or using derivatives to find optimal material amount needed? Which would be tricky to memorize 100% Like how could you even manage thru a lot of years and exams purely on memory? You gotta understand somewhat this stuff. Just because you dont know how to reinvent derivatives and integrals then it doesnt mean that there is no logic involved

>You were never tasked with solving e.g equations? E.g x + 4 = 13 - 2x? Sure I was, but what does "x + 4 = 13 - 2x" actually mean? That sheer lack of context is what I hate about academical math. WTF is the point of it all? The answer is there is no point, other than scoring adequately on tests so teachers can collect their paychecks and schools their funding. >You gotta understand somewhat this stuff. I was never ta…

>WTF is the point of it all?

Practice of math and logic.

>That sheer lack of context is what I hate about academical math.

Isnt this beautiful?

Math doesnt need context, especially cultural context.

We dont need examples with apples, cars or money to do the math.

Sure, they are helpful for kids, but at some point they are so used to abstract concepts that theres no need for that.

So not only logic is being practiced, but also abstract thinking.

>still irrelevant in my life to this very day.

We dont do math just to apply some random ass formulas. As ive said it improves logical and abstract thinking. Both of them can make significant impact on someones life.

It can be seen everywhere in real life, especially during arguments.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#377

Post by [deleted] »

brianwawok wrote: post #374
pfannkuchen wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the actual impact of AP credits disappointing. I ended up with no gen ed classes and started off in sophomore classes for math and physics. AP doesn’t count towards college GPA, and it turns out that others ended up with GPA padding that I missed out on. Still turned out fine overall, the GPA padding thing just didn’t occur to me in high school and no one pointed it out.

Who do you tell your GPA to? I stopped listing GPA after my first job. When I get a resume from someone that went to college 10 years ago and lists a 3.245 GPA, I laugh.

[deleted]

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#378

Post by nordsieck »

brianwawok wrote: post #374
pfannkuchen wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the actual impact of AP credits disappointing. I ended up with no gen ed classes and started off in sophomore classes for math and physics. AP doesn’t count towards college GPA, and it turns out that others ended up with GPA padding that I missed out on. Still turned out fine overall, the GPA padding thing just didn’t occur to me in high school and no one pointed it out.

Who do you tell your GPA to? I stopped listing GPA after my first job. When I get a resume from someone that went to college 10 years ago and lists a 3.245 GPA, I laugh.

1. My understanding is that education is much more important in Europe than the US. From what I gather, people with long careers often still lead with their education credentials. Not sure why.

2. I think it really depends on the person's career. If they've had 7 jobs in 10 years, yeah - GPA probably isn't super relevant. But if someone's been at the same place for 10 years, maybe it's not the worst thing.

IMO, the 1 page (with large text) rule is more important. GPA should probably fall off before relevant job related stuff, but there's no harm in keeping it there if the resume has the space.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#379

Post by WillAdams »

bigbacaloa wrote: post #308
jschveibinz wrote: post #2

Argh this grinds my gears. It’s the education SYSTEM that is wrong. We are working with a 150 year old way of educating kids that does not apply to our culture today. Kids aren’t going to work on the farm or in a factory. They need the math!!! For courses like algebra, etc. kids need support at home from parents. When that support isn’t available (for whatever reason), don’t water down the content for goodness sake.…

Kids don't need "support at home from parents". Very few parents are competent to teach kids math properly (even those who think they are). Kids do better learning from someone else, better still if the someone else is a professional. Tutoring rarely helps anyone learn as it almost always consists in heavily guided spoon-feeding. Also there are very few good tutors as those who are adequately trained in math to tutor…

>What kids need is teachers who know math.

I would add, "and how to teach it." to that.

My final "Advanced Math" course in high school was a young teacher just out of college who apparently knew math, but failed completely at teaching anything meaningful to anyone in the class --- this may have been the fault of the textbook being used, but the fact that the school board chose to replace Calculus with this class because they couldn't find a teacher competent to teach it, speaks volumes to my mind.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#380

Post by yakubin »

SideQuark wrote: post #327
staunton wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is what we will get 10x with free college That seems quite different. First, lots of countries have free higher education and seem to do just fine. Second, lowering price of entry is orthogonal to lowering expected performance. Your argument does not apply.

Every free college country sends less of their people through college than the US. Is that the outcome we want? Fewer educated?

Lithuania and Poland say hello: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...>
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