What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming • Hacker News Board

Re: What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

#91

Post by mcguire » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 4:57 PM UTC

Jacqued wrote: post #66

Retric wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you can teach useful levels of Critical Thinking without a solid understanding of Math, Science, and Human behavior. But, programming can also help people think more deeply about problems. There is this huge realization that computers and by extension reality does not care about what's in your head only what is. You can argue that Math has similar levels of precision, but once people start getting parti…

I think you're employing an extremely narrow definition of critical thinking. The ability to question everything you read, hear and learn in search of the truth (what is ), or, most likely, of more accurate or useful representations of it, is not dependent of your math or even science knowledge. At the end of the day, intellectual curiosity and a willingness to understand things are what you need to get ahead.

I know many people who question everything. Unfortunately, since they only accept answers that they come up with themselves or that match their other opinions, they tend to wind up having odd pseudo-conspiracy theories like denying global climate change.

Re: What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

#92

Post by XorNot » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 4:57 PM UTC

wil421 wrote: post #51

Delmania wrote: post #16

What the next generation really needs lessons in: - Humility - Empathy - Patience - Self restraint and control - Mindfulness/Awareness - Disappointment - Resilience - Communication - Listening - Learning - Financial independence and literacy - Critical thinking - Problem solving - Self acceptance Then we can focus on what area the person can best contribute in. Not everyone is going to suited for a job in programming…

>Financial Independence Do other countries teach much about personal finance in High School or even College? I think this is one area that is lacking in US curriculum, at least when I graduated high school a decade ago. Sure I could budget a project but was I able to make informed and responsible financial decisions in my early/mid 20s? Students need to know the burdens that student loans are going to put on them aft…

Except it really doesn't matter. You have a degree. Your parents probably had degrees. Your employers and co-workers have degrees. And they all expect you to have them when applying for jobs.

Even the Silicon Valley startup crew tend to pivot wildly away from their "any one can make it" mentality once they start growing to "well, I want someone with a degree".

Hell, my current company is hiring a nightshift person and the main requirement seems to be "Linux knowledge, has a degree". This is a job which basically burns people out after a year guaranteed.

Re: What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

#93

Post by kevin_thibedeau » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 4:57 PM UTC

totalrobe wrote: post #60

Delmania wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is why I mentioned financial literacy and financial independence. The economy is a huge system with many moving parts, so while I do agree with your statement, I think you'd get a better ROI by teaching people how to manage money. I'm a huge fan of "Your Money or Your Life" and by extension the Financial Integrity program, which advocates for people to rethink their relationship with money as well teache…

Money management only really works when you make more than enough to afford the basics...half the population struggles just for housing, food, healthcare, and transportation.

Many of whom are burning piles of money on $75/month smartphones and television subscriptions (with HBO so they can keep up with the Jones' who are also underwater).

Re: What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

#94

Post by yummyfajitas » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 4:58 PM UTC

Jacqued wrote: post #66

Retric wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you can teach useful levels of Critical Thinking without a solid understanding of Math, Science, and Human behavior. But, programming can also help people think more deeply about problems. There is this huge realization that computers and by extension reality does not care about what's in your head only what is. You can argue that Math has similar levels of precision, but once people start getting parti…

I think you're employing an extremely narrow definition of critical thinking. The ability to question everything you read, hear and learn in search of the truth (what is ), or, most likely, of more accurate or useful representations of it, is not dependent of your math or even science knowledge. At the end of the day, intellectual curiosity and a willingness to understand things are what you need to get ahead.

I don't think that's right. I read a lot of people who can spout off lots of pretty words on a topic, yet they can't actually begin to reason about it. E.g., lots of people will wax poetic about "critical thinking", yet they can't actually describe a way to determine whether someone lacks it or not.

Math and science are, like it or not, the most effective tools we've cooked up to understand the world.

Re: What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

#95

Post by eropple » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 5:01 PM UTC

veddox wrote: post #37

> Today, we can get away with ‘knowing’ how Google works without understanding what a ‘principal eigenvector’ is. Tomorrow, we need to absolutely know that. Part of the advancement of technology is that fewer and fewer people actually understand how stuff works. What percentage of the population has any notion of how a computer works under the hood? How many people understand how our national power grid works? Our se…

> What percentage of the population has any notion of how a computer works under the hood?

Tangential, but I'm starting to ask that question about developers. And it does get rather important when you have to debug their code because they can't.

Re: What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

#96

Post by innguest » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 5:03 PM UTC

gizi wrote: post #63

jandrewrogers wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All things that exist are mathematical objects and programs. Algorithmic information theory asserts that my cup of coffee is actually a program. While mathematics is important to computer programming, for most practical purposes it is of limited utility unless you are inventing new computer science. Knowing how to use a relational databases correctly requires no formal set theory. Understanding how to build a massive…

> Knowing how to use a relational databases correctly requires no formal set theory. Very true, I guess. But the other way around, someone who has used relational databases, will immediately understand formal set theory and find it absolutely trivial. Another example would be regular expressions. Anybody who has ever used them will immediately recognize what Kleene's closure is about and effortlessly deal with it. I…

Let me virtually shake your hand. I've always been successful teaching first from the concrete and then slowly abstracting - literally "pulling away" in Latin - as that's how I understand abstraction - it is the common ground between concrete things and therefore it was discovered from those things.

To then try and teach students first from the most "pulled away" concept possible to only in the very end try and meet them in the real world - I just never understood that approach. Like you said, the government curricula prescribe an approach that is backwards to what makes sense.

In Plato's Meno dialog, Socrates teaches a kid the abstraction called "irrational numbers" by having the kid draw triangles on the sand and then try and find the square root of 2. By playing with a concrete example (sqrt(2)) the kid learned the abstraction (that there are numbers that can't be shown as a fraction).

This backwards way of thinking we're stuck with today is so pervasive that one approach I was developing to teach monads - by first writing each instance separately and then later "pulling away" to try and see the bigger picture - was recently excoriated in the Haskell IRC channel for not teaching the actual abstraction.

The path is not the destination. You can't pull away (abstract) from nothing.

Re: What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

#97

Post by coldcode » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 5:08 PM UTC

yellowapple wrote: post #81

veddox wrote: post #37

> Today, we can get away with ‘knowing’ how Google works without understanding what a ‘principal eigenvector’ is. Tomorrow, we need to absolutely know that. Part of the advancement of technology is that fewer and fewer people actually understand how stuff works. What percentage of the population has any notion of how a computer works under the hood? How many people understand how our national power grid works? Our se…

I'm suddenly reminded of the episode "When the Bough Breaks" from Start Trek: TNG. Long-lost hyperadvanced planet-society finds itself infertile and unable to sustain its own population, steals kids from Enterprise to teach them how to be a generation of little Mozards and Rembrandts; Enterprise rescues kids and in the process figures out that said hyperadvanced society - having focused entirely on arts and humanitie…

Idiocracy has a similar theme. People forget that you need to water plants if you want to grow them.

Re: What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

#98

Post by murbard2 » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 5:15 PM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #87

cynicalkane wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "decent living" of past generations is still available today, but past generations were poorer than you think they were, particularly for those who don't come from white and privileged backgrounds.

> The "decent living" of past generations is still available today, Not if all your resources are sucked by insane rent / housing prices.

Multiple generations used to share a dwelling, it's still an option.

Re: What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

#99

Post by innguest » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 5:18 PM UTC

joeclark77 wrote: post #20

paulojreis wrote: post #12

I'm going to deliberately try to be controversial, but in order to spur discussion. What the next generation needs is more soft/social sciences, not STEM. tl;dr of my point: we know dangerously more about technology than about people, their needs as individuals and their needs as a society. Somewhere along the line we should stop throwing technology at people just because we can, and start to focus on the right solut…

If by "soft/social sciences" you mean real substantive disciplines like history, philosophy, civics, and the arts, I agree with you. Currently "social studies" in school is a bit of a trash bucket into which gets thrown every personal ideology and pet project that some teacher got her feminism or social work or grievance-studies BA in. It's the worst subject in most curricula, even worse than English. The problem is…

You're very right.

History, Philosophy and Civics are still in their pristine condition.

However, psychology, sociology, economics, anthropology and especially communication have been systematically taken over, and have demanded self-censorship of those fields. When a field self-censors it can no longer be considered to be doing intellectually honest work. So they are dismissed as not Science.

Re: What the Next Generation Needs Is Math, Not Programming

#100

Post by torinmr » Fri, Jun 12, 2015, 5:19 PM UTC

PSeitz wrote: post #18

Why do I need to know tomorrow what an ‘principal eigenvector’ is?

According to the author, you need to know this in order to understand "how Google works," because the PageRank algorithm is described in terms of finding the principal eigenvector of a particular matrix.