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My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

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Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#141

Post by tptacek »

girvo wrote: post #95
ygra wrote: post #31

I don't recall similar homework loads (Germany, school being 10–20 years ago), but that might be due to laziness on my part or simply the fact that it wasn't a good time for me anyway. By the later grades (11th and onwards) it definitely wasn't as much. I liked what our math teacher said regarding his homework: It's for practice and not strictly needed and thus voluntary. If we feel confident doing the homework ad-ho…

Homework for me (I'm 22) while at highschool was mandatory and contributed to your overall mark. I never did mine. Like, at all. Luckily for me, I had the highest grades across my entire year, and did so well that they bent the rules for me and ignored the fact I never did my homework. Still not sure if that was a good thing or not to be honest, our workload wasn't that large, and it took me a while to build a work e…

I did no homework at all in high school. Jesuit college prep, high workload, homework part of the grade. I got bad grades across the board, and, in math, that was in part because I wasn't practicing the skills they were testing; I left high school with subpar math, which still haunts me.

Bad grades kept me (pretty much) out of college, which in my case was fortunate, because I graduated high school with a couple years in which to warm up for the first dot-com bubble, which was lucrative for me.

I too feel like I had to learn a work ethic "in the real world", which is less forgiving than school, and I think I would have been modestly better off had I done the homework --- except that I might have ended up in college.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#142

Post by Tichy »

ronaldx wrote: post #101
Tichy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do calculators even routinely work with infinite precision (like (sqrt(2) x sqrt(2) = 2)? I guess you could achieve some results with Mathematia or something like that, but I have my doubts about the average calculator. Sometimes it is still useful to do calculations by hand, also to understand what is going on. (Edit: just tested the OS X calculator, sqrt(2) x sqrt(2) works out by chance, but sqrt(200) x sqrt(200) f…

A current-generation Casio scientific handles this well - the display shows exact numbers such as 1+√(2) which suggest it's doing the precise calculation where reasonable.

The problem is that something like sqrt(2) can not be represented as a number in a calculator. So as long as the calculator only operates with numbers, instead of doing algebra, it will do it wrong. In the case of sqrt(2) x sqrt(2), most calculators will convert sqrt(2) to an approximation of sqrt(2), then multiply those approximations. If you are lucky the result will be rounded to 2, but you will not always be lucky.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#143

Post by Tichy »

dsego wrote: post #129
Tichy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The driving factor for mathematics is laziness. I didn't even memorize the basic multiplication table (1-10) for a long time, but I remembered some shortcuts (like multiplying stuff by 9 was easy) and got by.

The multiplication table really bothers me. It's considered to be the least a child can learn in elementary school. And kids that haven't learned to do math mentally just memorise it like a poem. I really don't think this is the correct approach.

I feel a bit bad for not memorizing it, to be honest. Not sure if there is any other way for learning to multiply?

How do you "understand" that 6x 8 = 48?

With bigger numbers, then you can apply a system. And as I mentioned I also "cheated" a bit with the basic table. For example I would have remembered that 5 x 8 = 40 and then calculated 6 x 8 = 5 x 8 + 6 in my head, because the multiplications for 5 are easy (half the other factor x 10 +/- 5). But there might not be a cheat for every point in the table?

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#144

Post by Tichy »

m_mueller wrote: post #102
Tichy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do calculators even routinely work with infinite precision (like (sqrt(2) x sqrt(2) = 2)? I guess you could achieve some results with Mathematia or something like that, but I have my doubts about the average calculator. Sometimes it is still useful to do calculations by hand, also to understand what is going on. (Edit: just tested the OS X calculator, sqrt(2) x sqrt(2) works out by chance, but sqrt(200) x sqrt(200) f…

Edit: Sorry, I just noticed that actually I was missing the point - I thought your comment was in response to vacri. Leaving my comment here, just in case. I think your comment misses the point. It's important to learn when to use a calculator and when to simplify the equation instead. Your example obviously should be simplified first on paper, resulting in 2. This can easily be enforced by requiring the intermediate…

I agree that probably training too much manual addition and multiplication is a waste of time these days. However, a bit of it still seems to be useful. For example I am often able to calculate the bill in a restaurant (not always, though). And sometimes it is just faster than going to the calculator, depending on the situation. Also a lot of the process of addition and multiplication might also be good practice for arithmetics?

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#146

Post by Djehngo »

tptacek wrote: post #124
GotAnyMegadeth wrote: post #120

The Author and his daughter haven't learnt the tricks of the trade. I was set 3+hrs of HW a day, but I certainly didn't do that much. First, they need to assess which teachers "Don't mind" if you don't do the homework. This could mean they stand you up in front of the whole class and shout at you, but if they don't give you an after school detention, don't do it. Getting in the teachers good books previously helps wi…

How caustic a lesson to teach your kid, that they should organize to cheat on homework, so they can artificially inflate their grade. I suppose it does set them up for a productive life of investment banking.

In terms of morality you may be correct, but if the child in the article could skip some rote memorisation or other busy work for an extra hour or two of sleep I would bet on her learning "more" at school.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#147

Post by Tichy »

richardwhiuk wrote: post #131
Tichy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that is also wrong, or at least the .0 shows that the calculator is not doing the equations, it is just calculating. It doesn't know know that sqrt(2) x sqrt(2) = sqrt(2 x 2) = sqrt(2^2) = 2 And that is the kind of thing you get to understand if you do the calculations by hand.

A better way to look at sqrt(2) * sqrt(2) is: sqrt(2) * sqrt(2) = 2^(0.5) * 2^(0.5) = 2^(0.5+0.5) = 2^1 = 2

That's nice, too, although I think the concept of fractional powers was only introduced much later in my school.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#148

Post by ygra »

klmr wrote: post #119
ygra wrote: post #31

I don't recall similar homework loads (Germany, school being 10–20 years ago), but that might be due to laziness on my part or simply the fact that it wasn't a good time for me anyway. By the later grades (11th and onwards) it definitely wasn't as much. I liked what our math teacher said regarding his homework: It's for practice and not strictly needed and thus voluntary. If we feel confident doing the homework ad-ho…

School in Germany also doesn’t last the whole day, it usually ends around 2pm, so even if you have several hours’ worth of homework you can realistically do that before dinner – or, if you prefer, spend the afternoon doing other stuff and then do it after. It was a workable system. Then I moved to France, where school lasts until 5pm and I got home past 6. After a few months spent working until well into the night I…

We regularly had school until past 14, sometimes up until 18. Seven to ten classes a day were more normal than just six (which would have ended at 13:40).

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#149

Post by joe5150 »

rwallace wrote: post #76
Wingman4l7 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hold the opinion that the proper training and education of one's offspring should be a foremost life goal, and that delegating it to the state because "it's easier", "I don't have the time", etc. is an abhorrent cop-out. This is one of the main reasons why I do not (and very well may never) have children; I realized that the commitment to do it properly is just too great for me to make.

I sympathize but would urge you to reconsider. There are activities where "properly or not at all" is a good policy, but raising children isn't one of them; had such a policy been universally applied, nobody now living would be alive. Those who were never born are just as dead as those who were born and then died, and surely your children would be much better off dealing with the imperfections that are an inevitable…

"Those who were never born" doesn't strike me as a concept with much logical positivist value.

Re: My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me

#150

Post by rorrr2 »

tptacek wrote: post #130

Some quick thoughts, as the parent of a high school freshman: * If you anticipate your child being assigned 3 hours of homework in a typical evening, it is negligent to allow them to start that work at 8:00PM. Instead of allowing his daughter to watch episodes of Portlandia on her computer all afternoon, he could consider a rule suggesting homework gets completed before electronic entertainment; that's our rule this…

I never understood how the knowledge of the capitals of states or countries is useful in any way. It's meaningless. It can be easily looked up, if you need that information. I can't even imagine a practical scenario when one would need to know it.
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