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Calculus they won't teach you [video]

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Re: Calculus they won't teach you [video]

#11
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, ditto. I don't think I got any new info that I didn't get in high school calculus, but it is a well done review of things I hadn't seen in a couple of decades

Another possibility is that mathematics education has gotten worse since you were in high school.

Yea, it has gotten worse in the US thanks to the common core bullshit. My daughter’s math education has been eroded with shitty ed tech apps like the ones from MHM[0]. I’ve been able to support her but there’s many kids that are not so fortunate.

[0] https://www.hmhco.com/

Re: Calculus they won't teach you [video]

#12

I.e. mathematical history. I think one power of calculus (and everything else) is that you don't need the history. The same way I don't need the history of the hammer to use a nail. What drives my interest is the examples. At the end, the book author talks about students not paying attention until the teacher starts talking about examples. To me, that suggests you should first contextualize and create a need for the…

Learning names for the sake of learning names is never helpful. However the history of mathematics can help to contextualise the material and its motivation. For example, group theory has myriad modern applications. It can be (and usually is) presented in the standard mathematically-polished form, beginning with the axioms and perhaps using matrix groups or simple geometric symmetries as examples. For many learners this is a perfectly sensible way of approaching it and they wouldn't be interested to know more, yet I found it rather clinical and dry.

As I'm sure you know, group theory arose as a novel yet natural way of investigating the conditions under which polynomials can have closed-form solutions, and when Galois began to sniff this out it allowed him to get to grips with the impossibility of a closed-form solution to the general quintic polynomial: a problem which had beguiled mathematicians for centuries, solved by a theory which crystallised a more structural way of approaching abstract mathematics. Even though Galois theory is a relatively niche topic within the broad context of academia, for me it draws out the true character of group theory in a way that matrix groups don't, and neither do contrived examples formed from the natural numbers under various quotients. And it clearly solves a problem that required a new way of thinking.

There's certainly a balance to be struck here. If you fixate on historical origins then you aren't engaging with the reasons why the topic is still relevant today, so you risk missing the point. It also slows down the pace at which you can absorb the tools needed for applications. But if you only engage with the modern approach you risk building a disconnected, lifeless archipelago of knowledge, unable to see the beautiful links that unify so much of mathematics.

Re: Calculus they won't teach you [video]

#13

I.e. mathematical history. I think one power of calculus (and everything else) is that you don't need the history. The same way I don't need the history of the hammer to use a nail. What drives my interest is the examples. At the end, the book author talks about students not paying attention until the teacher starts talking about examples. To me, that suggests you should first contextualize and create a need for the…

I disagree. The biggest thing that can help you learn something complex is by introducing it as it was discovered, and making someone feel like they could have come up with it on their own.

Re: Calculus they won't teach you [video]

#14
post #13

I.e. mathematical history. I think one power of calculus (and everything else) is that you don't need the history. The same way I don't need the history of the hammer to use a nail. What drives my interest is the examples. At the end, the book author talks about students not paying attention until the teacher starts talking about examples. To me, that suggests you should first contextualize and create a need for the…

I disagree. The biggest thing that can help you learn something complex is by introducing it as it was discovered, and making someone feel like they could have come up with it on their own.

Things were usually discovered in a confusing way that kind of made sense at the time, but had false starts and conceptual limitations driven by people still being in an older mindset when they were trying to discover it. A good teacher sands off those edges, leading to an oversimplified history, but not starting from the firm conceptual footing we only got later on still makes things overly difficult to grasp. Good teaching builds on concepts, even if history took a messier route.

Re: Calculus they won't teach you [video]

#15
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comparison between a hammer and math doesn't make sense, math is much more than a tool. Personally, I'm able to learn best when I understand the context and the "why" questions that people had which led them to the answer. I know other people learn differently so to each its own. Also, I agree with you in that the traditionally-taught history is awful because it lacks relevance. It's now about "how is this useful…

I think the dual role of means (tool) and end in itself is part of the reason mathematics is so difficult to motivate. There is this constant tension within the pedagogy between the desires to teach the beauty and the practicality of mathematics. From what I’ve seen, the beauty side tends to come from mathematics teachers and professors who have developed a passion for the subject and genuinely want to share that pas…

Another thing that makes calculus hard to teach today (and not unrelated to the points being made) is that while a couple generations ago, every calculus student also took calc-based physics, that is no longer true today. With the way we compartmentalize teaching today, it's hard not to teach entry-level math abstractly, and that's only going to work for a small subset of students.

Re: Calculus they won't teach you [video]

#17

I.e. mathematical history. I think one power of calculus (and everything else) is that you don't need the history. The same way I don't need the history of the hammer to use a nail. What drives my interest is the examples. At the end, the book author talks about students not paying attention until the teacher starts talking about examples. To me, that suggests you should first contextualize and create a need for the…

[deleted]

Re: Calculus they won't teach you [video]

#19

I.e. mathematical history. I think one power of calculus (and everything else) is that you don't need the history. The same way I don't need the history of the hammer to use a nail. What drives my interest is the examples. At the end, the book author talks about students not paying attention until the teacher starts talking about examples. To me, that suggests you should first contextualize and create a need for the…

> he same way I don't need the history of the hammer to use a nail

This has to be the world's worst analogy ever used.

Re: Calculus they won't teach you [video]

#20
post #14
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The biggest thing that can help you learn something complex is by introducing it as it was discovered, and making someone feel like they could have come up with it on their own.

Things were usually discovered in a confusing way that kind of made sense at the time, but had false starts and conceptual limitations driven by people still being in an older mindset when they were trying to discover it. A good teacher sands off those edges, leading to an oversimplified history, but not starting from the firm conceptual footing we only got later on still makes things overly difficult to grasp. Good…

>> Things were usually discovered in a confusing way that kind of made sense at the time, but had false starts and conceptual limitations driven by people still being in an older mindset when they were trying to discover it

To know this gives us some perspective on our own biases/limitations and not take things as gospel.

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