Mathematician's Lament: An essay on math education and on how we view math

I will have to read the paper in more detail, but I have an extremely simple reason why math education in the US is so hard: We use the English system of measurement. Most students in grade school associate math with this horrific measurement system, and once that happens, there is almost no chance to engage students in what math is really all about.

You want people in the US to embrace math? Then start on a campaign to scrap our horrific measurement system, a system to which logic and simple math can not be applied. In the metric system all you need to know is it is base 10. With the English system you must know that there are 12 inches in a foot, and that there are 3 feet in a yard. How many feet in a mile? There is NO WAY to logically derive this information, one must KNOW it! How may teaspoons in a tablespoon? Can math help us with that? Nope, one must know the answer.

Sorry, I hope I am not ranting, but this has been a burr in my side for years. Yet it seems that no one ever talks about this aspect when talking about why people in the US are so adverse to math. I guess I should just write my own article about it…

Re: Mathematician's Lament: An essay on math education and on how we view math

#6

Post by MartinMond » Sat, Jun 20, 2009, 10:31 PM UTC

lr wrote: post #5

This is the comment I just left on the blog: I will have to read the paper in more detail, but I have an extremely simple reason why math education in the US is so hard: We use the English system of measurement. Most students in grade school associate math with this horrific measurement system, and once that happens, there is almost no chance to engage students in what math is really all about. You want people in the…

I think you are doing exactly what Lockhart talked about. It doesn't matter what system one needs to memorize (although only knowing the metric system I can imagine the English system being harder to learn) what matters is that students are given the intellectual freedom to develop their intuition and reasoning capabilities, while current math education is all about needless, rigid formalism that needs to be learned by heart, then applied. Even the few proofs that are shown are presented in such a formalized way that they are a big turnoff.

Neither the English nor the metric system allow you to logically derive much about it (maybe Hertz = 1/second), the metric system is only more consistent and therefore easier to learn.

At least that's my take on that.

Re: Mathematician's Lament: An essay on math education and on how we view math

#7

Post by catherinej » Sat, Jun 20, 2009, 11:38 PM UTC

Excerpt from Paul Lockart's _Lament_:

"At no time are students let in on the secret that mathematics, like any literature, is created by human beings for their own amusement; that works of mathematics are subject to critical appraisal; that one can have and develop mathematical taste. A piece of mathematics is like a poem, and we can ask if it satisfies our aesthetic criteria: Is this argument sound? Does it make sense? Is it simple and elegant? Does it get me closer to the heart of the matter?"

I remember once in some math class at Berkeley doing a sloppy rush job on a proof assigned as an exercise. The TA grading the assignment gave me credit, but wrote: "Isn't this using an H-bomb to kill a fly?" I was embarrassed, but also kind of glad to know that elegance (or lack thereof) did matter.

Re: Mathematician's Lament: An essay on math education and on how we view math

#8

Post by timwiseman » Sun, Jun 21, 2009, 12:19 AM UTC

lr wrote: post #5

This is the comment I just left on the blog: I will have to read the paper in more detail, but I have an extremely simple reason why math education in the US is so hard: We use the English system of measurement. Most students in grade school associate math with this horrific measurement system, and once that happens, there is almost no chance to engage students in what math is really all about. You want people in the…

While I agree that the US would be better served moving over to the metric system, this has nothing at all to do with the article.

The article was about focusing on math as art and on problem solving, not on any particular system and not on rote memorization.

Re: Mathematician's Lament: An essay on math education and on how we view math

#9

Post by kragen » Sun, Jun 21, 2009, 12:23 AM UTC

switchOver wrote: post #3

The scenario at the beginning is real - at least in Germany

Nobody in Germany listens to or plays music until grad school?

Re: Mathematician's Lament: An essay on math education and on how we view math

#10

Post by Eliezer » Sun, Jun 21, 2009, 12:59 AM UTC

"Math" is the activity you perform when you don't know what to do next. If you already know what to do next, it's arithmetic.