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Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

theguardian.com

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Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#101

Post by p3rls »

emmelaich wrote: post #60

What a fantastic quote.. > You had to admire these folk singers,” he says on the live LP. “It takes courage to get up in a coffee house or a student auditorium and come out in favour of the things everyone else is against, like peace and justice and brotherhood, and so on.” It's pretty much my reaction to every protest or social concern story in the media.

Yeah when I gaze out into the sea of salty and stultified faces at these protests "what brave souls" is what runs through my head too, if only the state wasn't so finnicky about creating martyrs, their courage would surely triumph in the court of public opinion. Alas.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#102

Post by stogot »

dekhn wrote: post #29
walterbell wrote: post #10

Around age 70, "A Conversation with Tom Lehrer", https://web.archive.org/web/20210307035012/http://www.paul-l... > This winter I'm just going to do a math course. I'm doing a three-unit, as opposed to five-unit course on infinity, which I've never done before. I'm planning to study like crazy. It's for non-math majors. I'm trying to bring in the fact that infinity is when things get complicated. In calculus, algebra,…

I took this class (in '97 IIRC), it was called "Nature of Math". I took it because I loved his songs and wanted to take a few math classes that weren't very hard. (from a comment I made a few years ago on a previous thread: Wonderful course and his delivery was excellent. I almost ended up being the TA the next quarter. It was my introduction to many things, including birthday paradox and analytic solutions for terti…

Is this class online somewhere? Did a brief search but his “new math” song is all I found

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#103

Post by 082349872349872 »

InfiniteRand wrote: post #100
CuriousCosmic wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New math was actually pretty successful at the lower grades. The issue was that when it came to rolling it out to middle and high schools, they just kind of said "here's the textbook, figure it out" instead of going through a coordinated process of teaching the teachers while helping them develop their new curricula (which they did for elementary school). So you had this really ugly failure of teachers not really nec…

I have a theory that the enthusiasm of teachers teaching the material is a far bigger factor in the effectiveness of learning than the methods. So much so that any advantage from better methods gets quickly nullified without teacher buy in

I have an anecdotal theory that most people who came prepared to a STEM programme in the States last century did so despite, not due to, the modal 7-12 teaching. (if true, I hope it no longer is?)

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#104

Post by OskarS »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #94
OskarS wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, ultimately it's the same algorithm, it's just a question of what are the details of the procedure, which makes it confusing if you've learned one way and not the other. The whole point of the song is that Lehrer thinks this is a new, less good way of doing subtraction. Look at this video if you haven't already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA The first way he does it seems INCREDIBLY confusing to pe…

> the sentence "8 from 4 is 6" is nonsensical to most such people Anyone who understands "7 from 3 is 6" must necessarily also understand "8 from 4 is 6". Nobody learns how to subtract from numbers that have digits of 3 without simultaneously learning how to subtract from numbers that have digits of 4. > I do think this is a rare case where Lehrer is just wrong, the "borrowing" style is a much better and clearer way…

> But I already pointed out that the steps aren't different. They're the same style. Whether you use the term "carry" or "borrow" makes no difference to anyone.

Obviously, it does. Like, that's what the song is about. You're not just disagreeing with the other commenters, you're disagreeing with the concept of the song itself.

It's a different way of doing it, even if the underlying principle is the same. This stuff matters a lot in pedagogy, even if there's no difference in the underlying mathematics. I could say this: "you subtract two decimal numbers a_n a_n-1 ... a_1 and b_n b_n-1 ... b1 by successively calculating c_n = a_n - b_n - K_n-1 if a_n >= b_n, where K_n is the carry from the nth digit, or c_n = a_n - b_n + 10 - K_n-1 if a_n < b_n, and you set K_n to 1" or whatever. That's the same method, but it's a TERRIBLE way to teach a child how to do subtraction.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#105

Post by ghaff »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #58
petsormeat wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have lingering bitterness for the irresponsible New Math experiment in my elementary education. I couldn't tell time on an analog clock until I was 12, thanks to the blithe dismissal of "rote" multiplication tasks.

Just out of interest and if it's not too personal, what's your age/generation? I'm in my mid twenties and I don't have any peers that couldn't more or less always read analog clocks as far as they remember. edit: I just googled it and apparently New Math was during the 1950s-1970s. This confuses me even further since reading an analog clock seems even more important in those times?

I certainly learned New Math in the sixties. And neither myself nor anyone else I knew had any trouble with analog clocks which is most of what existed.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#106

Post by ghaff »

andrepd wrote: post #97
pdonis wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is that a bad thing? It's a bad thing if you never learn how to actually get the right answer. Which unfortunately seemed to be a common consequence of the New Math as a teaching method.

Why? The objective is understanding, not getting the rightsl answer, because you will never do a long multiplication in your life since a 3$ chip does it in a tenth of a microsecond

I’m probably not going to multiply two 5 digit numbers together on paper much less do long division but I certainly do smaller scale mental arithmetic all the time.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#107

Post by jmspring »

aamargulies wrote: post #65

I took Nature of Math from Lehrer in the 90s. He said on the first day of class that the class was for non-STEM majors and if any of us were science majors he’d find us and kick us out. I was a science major and I said to myself “Adam, I don’t care what Tom Lehrer says, there’s no way you you’re not taking a math class from Tom Lehrer.” He was bluffing. I stayed and loved every minute of it.

I had his class in the 90s as well. Enjoyed it. UCSC was smaller then and some interesting classes I’m not sure would be possible today. Another I enjoyed was Frank Andrews (chemistry) course titled something like the chemistry of love.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#108

Post by 123894893 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #94
OskarS wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, ultimately it's the same algorithm, it's just a question of what are the details of the procedure, which makes it confusing if you've learned one way and not the other. The whole point of the song is that Lehrer thinks this is a new, less good way of doing subtraction. Look at this video if you haven't already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA The first way he does it seems INCREDIBLY confusing to pe…

> the sentence "8 from 4 is 6" is nonsensical to most such people Anyone who understands "7 from 3 is 6" must necessarily also understand "8 from 4 is 6". Nobody learns how to subtract from numbers that have digits of 3 without simultaneously learning how to subtract from numbers that have digits of 4. > I do think this is a rare case where Lehrer is just wrong, the "borrowing" style is a much better and clearer way…

The whole point of the song is that Lehrer thinks that teaching it as borrowing is so different that it makes it incomprehensible to people.

> But I already pointed out that the steps aren't different.

They are, with borrowing you make the change to the tens place first, "getting" the extra ten ones, then explicitly add it to the ones place, then do the subtraction.

With the old way (Lehrer's preferred method), you don't even look at the tens place, and you do - something. I'm still not sure what they were actually doing with "3 from 2 is 9, carry the one." You could mentally change the 2 to a 12 and subtract three (which would be closer to borrowing, though the steps are out of order), but the fact he doesn't say 12 and says 3 from 2 makes me wonder if this wasn't the case. Because you could also take the tens complement of the number being subtracted and add it to the number you're subtracting from. Or simply memorize a subtraction table, the same way people memorize a multiplication table.

He mentions two ways people are taught to do the next step - the first is that after "carrying the one," you subtract it from the number in the 10's place. This basically creates a situation where subtraction is the same as addition - if you have extra with addition, you carry the one and add it. If you have an extra with subtraction, you carry the one and subtract it. The other way is carrying the one to the number you're taking away and adding it to it. So 4 - 7 in the tens place becomes 4 - 8 when you "carry the one."

[I'm using tens and ones place for clarity, it could also be the hundreds and tens place, the thousands and hundreds place, etc.]

So there are certainly differences. These might not seem like big differences to you, but they're big enough that Lehrer, and apparently others, felt that people couldn't understand it when one was used rather than the other. You see the same thing when Common Core approaches come up - it might be fundamentally the same thing, but the changes in the steps that you take can throw people off.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#109

Post by lproven »

ribs wrote: post #37

Holy crap, Tom Lehrer is still alive!?

Yes he is, and he is with it enough to know about the internet and publishing rights and so on.

So, a few years ago, he put all his lyrics in the public domain, and then more recently, all his original melodies too.

Top man.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#110

Post by konstantinua00 »

OldGuyInTheClub wrote: post #84
Symbiote wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was Harry Potter in all the films, so I assume he's one of the best-known actors in the world.

Ah, thanks. I've not seen the movies or read the books.

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