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

Stop teaching calculating; Start teaching math

computerbasedmath.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 80 posts

Re: Stop teaching calculating; Start teaching math

#21

Post by hybridthesis »

I noticed a few of articles on Hacker News has been about math recently. According to Google Trends, math is also rising in popularity, especially in US.

I think math is even more appealing to programmers. You are allowed to assume that certain things happen. You may define a set on the fly and all of a sudden, the set is populated without pressing a single key. Let me try, {prime numbers}. There, I got an infinitely large data structure. I hope HN doesn't crash after posting this comment.

As programmers, we put abstract ideas into implementations. Math seems to forgo all of that. Everything just happens magically as long as your mind can wrap around it and you have a precise definition for it. No debugging. Isn't this a dream?

So I am wondering if there's a community of programmers who have turned to devote their time to math. Like the video said, computer frees you from computation. Hence, it makes sense for math's popularity to rise, especially since we got more people interested in programming. Math seems like the natural next step. I don't have any hard data about this, just my intuition.

Re: Stop teaching calculating; Start teaching math

#22

Post by dubya »

magice wrote: post #19

This is sad. Really sad. My personal opinion is that Americans just dislike academic matters so much that they are incapable of forming a coherent solution for their children's schooling. Let me tell you some personal anecdotes. I moved to Minnesota during my High school senior year from Vietnam. It sucked: I couldn't hold on to conversations, and people couldn't understand my pronunciation; so I was bored and very l…

This reminds me of http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/Opinion71.html, where a number of prominent mathematicians and computer scientists are traced to an Israeli mathematical magazine for young people. These are certainly not kids who had no calculation skills. They wrestled with difficult problems and developed great problem-solving skills that have served them in their careers.

Incidentally, Zeilberger is definitely an advocate of more computer use in math, but not in the same way. See almost any of his Opinions: http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/OPINIONS.html

Re: Stop teaching calculating; Start teaching math

#23

Post by v0cab »

magice wrote: post #19

This is sad. Really sad. My personal opinion is that Americans just dislike academic matters so much that they are incapable of forming a coherent solution for their children's schooling. Let me tell you some personal anecdotes. I moved to Minnesota during my High school senior year from Vietnam. It sucked: I couldn't hold on to conversations, and people couldn't understand my pronunciation; so I was bored and very l…

The corrollary is, you need a way to force the kids to do stuff they don't want to do. That's what corporal punishment was for.

Re: Stop teaching calculating; Start teaching math

#24

Post by rimantas »

babarock wrote: post #16
vph wrote: post #9

Of course, his main point is to advocate for using computers to teach and learn math; he's selling Mathematica/Wolfram Alpha. But this is dangerous and a little shallow. And here is why. Math is the language of science; just like a C -- or any other programming language -- is a language of computing; just like English is a language of humans. There are many ways to learn a language, but I think they all have somethin…

I do not disagree with you, but this is not answering his arguments. Math is the language of science[...]. There are many ways to learn a language, but I think they all have something in common. You have to spend a lot of time learning, reading and writing. The writing is quite important. You have to write the language to be good at it. He's not arguing that scientists should drop writing math altogether (although yo…

  > but is it so far fetched to imagine that in few
  > generations, all text will be filled with metadata
  > and tags?
Yes, I think it is.

Re: Stop teaching calculating; Start teaching math

#25

Post by p4bl0 »

abecedarius wrote: post #20
p4bl0 wrote: post #12

I remember reading an article about almost the same topic by Felleisen, maybe Flatt, maybe Culpepper and some others from the PLT group, it was about using DrRacket to teach maths, there was an example involving the take-off of a rocket iirc. Is anyone able to find it? I don't remember the title nor where it was published.

Sounds like http://world.cs.brown.edu/

Thanks but no, it was an article not a book, I think it was in a PDF that I read on scribd or Google Docs Viewer.

edit: I feel like the title was something a little disruptive.

Re: Stop teaching calculating; Start teaching math

#26

Post by UK-AL »

vph wrote: post #9

Of course, his main point is to advocate for using computers to teach and learn math; he's selling Mathematica/Wolfram Alpha. But this is dangerous and a little shallow. And here is why. Math is the language of science; just like a C -- or any other programming language -- is a language of computing; just like English is a language of humans. There are many ways to learn a language, but I think they all have somethin…

Err. This what he saying, you focus more on manipulating equations in the language of maths such as algebra, calculus, and less time on remembering what's the answer to 7 * 8.

Re: Stop teaching calculating; Start teaching math

#27

Post by felipellrocha »

On one end you will hear people equate math to calculating, this is almost exclusively how math is taught in school today, and on the other, people like to talk about math ideas, and how we shouldn't really teach people how to calculate anymore since we got computers for that. Like in many aspects of life, learning math is about balance.

In truth, people should learn from both areas simultaneously, since they are mutually connected. Calculating is a tool that makes you a better problem solver, and being a problem solver will allow you to find new tools to calculate faster. You can't separate either discipline from one another.

In my view, I think students should take one calculation, and one deeper math class a year starting in high school. That wat they could delve deeper in learning how to calculate (learning different methods for multiplication that might come in handy when doing mental math, for example), and start dealing with real, thought-heavy math from an earlier grade (learning about combinatorics, graph, game, and probability theory early in high school, etc).

Re: Stop teaching calculating; Start teaching math

#28

Post by fscof »

p4bl0 wrote: post #12

I remember reading an article about almost the same topic by Felleisen, maybe Flatt, maybe Culpepper and some others from the PLT group, it was about using DrRacket to teach maths, there was an example involving the take-off of a rocket iirc. Is anyone able to find it? I don't remember the title nor where it was published.

I really like the idea of teaching math in tandem with elementary programming. It demystifies writing code and can be very helpful in teaching important math concepts like functions, variables and graphing. At the very least, exposure to programming at an early age will get more kids interested in the subject.

Does anyone know of good examples of schools that are already doing this with something like Dr Racket?

Re: Stop teaching calculating; Start teaching math

#29

Post by jinfiesto »

magice wrote: post #19

This is sad. Really sad. My personal opinion is that Americans just dislike academic matters so much that they are incapable of forming a coherent solution for their children's schooling. Let me tell you some personal anecdotes. I moved to Minnesota during my High school senior year from Vietnam. It sucked: I couldn't hold on to conversations, and people couldn't understand my pronunciation; so I was bored and very l…

Yikes, I completely disagree. There's nothing wrong with hard work, but I definitely think that doing oodles of calculations definitely has a quick point of diminishing returns. I was also raised in a pacific-rim Asian household. Growing up, I spent lots of time doing routine calculation. Looking back, I wonder if that time was really that well spent. In elementary school, I spent an entire summer doing nothing but practicing basic arithmetic from sun up to sun down. Did it take me an entire summer to understand how to do basic arithmetic? Obviously not. Now I think the time would have been better spent tackling substantial problems with what I'd learned, rather than doing routine calculations. Does doing lots of routine calculations have an upside? Certainly. I can factor polynomial equations faster than anyone I know. While that's cool and all, I now feel like calculating speed is of questionable value beyond a certain point.

Now that I do math for fun, I spend most of my time doing recreational math style problems. I can't help but think that these would have been a better way to learn. Since I started, my problem-solving skills have improved immensely, with nary a routine calculation problem in sight.

Re: Stop teaching calculating; Start teaching math

#30

Post by p4bl0 »

p4bl0 wrote: post #12

I remember reading an article about almost the same topic by Felleisen, maybe Flatt, maybe Culpepper and some others from the PLT group, it was about using DrRacket to teach maths, there was an example involving the take-off of a rocket iirc. Is anyone able to find it? I don't remember the title nor where it was published.

FOUND IT! The article was called "Computer Science Doesn't Matter" (ya, a little disruptive, like I said) you can find it here: http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/fk...
Post reply on HN