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Don't force your kids to do math

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Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#111

Post by lukan »

guerrilla wrote: post #109
lukan wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different point of view: do you consider hunting in the wilderness to be difficult? I do, it requires being still in miserable conditions for a long time, being cold, wet, mosquitos, and then usually still no success, but frustration. But to my knowledge, no savage kid is in need of being forced to learn it. "children sense your true passions and naturally want to join in" And that is my experience as well. But if yo…

> But to my knowledge, no savage kid is in need of being forced to learn it Uhh then your knowledge is very limited because that is rather well documented. Also, why are you saying "savage" like an 18th century racist? Is that in fashion again?

Oh, I am obviously a racist, by glorifying indigineous teaching methods.

But otherwise can you show, where this is documented? The natives tribes where I have some knowledge, don't force their kids to learn in the sense that is talked about here. No need to - the whole culture is about becoming a good hunter (for male individuals). So indeed lots of peer pressure, but no individual forcing.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#112

Post by pipes »

somenameforme wrote: post #98
sublinear wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The semantic meaning of a blank is much better understood to everyone than an arbitrary letter like 'x'. People just want to know why it's x and not something else or how a letter can have value. They might even think how can 24 + 2 = 5? They just want something to grab onto and nobody is really teaching the concept of a symbol in a math class.

This becomes even more true in higher level maths where programming language style functions would make everything vastly more clear, and easily typeable, than the traditional Greek symbols. sum(x+3, 1, 4) is just so much more clear (and consistent when generalized across other operations) and practically as concise as the mathematical way of expressing that which I cannot even type. Multiple variables would be a bit…

Thanks for this comment. My secret shame as a programmer is that I haven't really learnt much maths, stopped at 16 in school. Writing out the sum function like you did makes perfect sense to me immediately.

What I should really do is create myself a cheat sheet of symbols to code...

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#113

Post by ozgrakkurt »

WalterBright wrote: post #63

> Without realizing it, he was doing algebra. A friend of mine taught remedial math at UW to incoming freshmen. She would write: x + 2 = 5 on the blackboard and ask a student "what is the value of x?" The student would see the x, and immediately respond with x means algebra, algebra is hard, I cannot do algebra. So she started writing: _ + 2 = 5 and ask the student to fill in the blank. "Oh, it's 3!"

There are two sides to this. The system or method might be bad but also a determined person can go all the way and perform at a decent level if they put in enough time.

Even if the system was better the person still has to be able to motivate themselves and put in the time.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#114

Post by seethedeaduu »

laurent_du wrote: post #102

Very poor take. The author clearly has very limited experience with raising kids. Most kids won't do difficult things if you don't push them. Playing music, learning to spell correctly, doing mathematics, and so on. A very small minority of kids will do all of that easily and for the fun, but you can't rely on it. If you don't push your kid to do their 20 minutes of piano every day, they will half-ass it and will sto…

Oh yeah let's turn otherwise fun hobbies into a forced chore, that will surely be great for the kid. Forcing kids to learn to spell when they have learning difficulties (eg dyslexia) doesn't usually go well either it's just causing suffering for the kid.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#115

Post by sssilver »

seethedeaduu wrote: post #114
laurent_du wrote: post #102

Very poor take. The author clearly has very limited experience with raising kids. Most kids won't do difficult things if you don't push them. Playing music, learning to spell correctly, doing mathematics, and so on. A very small minority of kids will do all of that easily and for the fun, but you can't rely on it. If you don't push your kid to do their 20 minutes of piano every day, they will half-ass it and will sto…

Oh yeah let's turn otherwise fun hobbies into a forced chore, that will surely be great for the kid. Forcing kids to learn to spell when they have learning difficulties (eg dyslexia) doesn't usually go well either it's just causing suffering for the kid.

The problem is that it’s extremely difficult for any activity like math, music, or drawing to compete with Minecraft and YouTube shorts.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#116

Post by neom »

I think this isn't quite the same thing, never the less: I have dyscalculia on extreme mode (/dyslexia/autism), and I was forced to do math in the 90s in the UK, rote style. I don't know if they didn't know about dyscalculia, didn't care, or whatever, but holy hell I wish I'd never been forced to do that, it's still today a fairly painful memory and I'm in my 40s now. If you're gonna force kids into math, at least make sure they're not unable to process it correctly.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#117

Post by jpc0 »

lazystar wrote: post #110
QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The formal language of math is intensely optimized for rapidly communicating with yourself 90 seconds in the future, when doing a proof or calculation, turning paper into working memory. It does seem silly to use the same language for communicating with others across unkniwn but deep chasms of context. Its remarkable that it works at all

its silly. itd be like introducing first year programming students to advanced maps/filters/anonymous function syntax, instead of the easier to understand for loops and if/else statements. math's "no true scottsman" approach to teaching only hurts itself in the long run.

I'm not sure if it would be easier to explain a map / filter to a first year student vs implementing the patten manually using a for loop and if statement...

Seems like a pretty easy example to make practically, for map have a collection of things, say balls or black. Pick up each one and do a thing to them, paint them blue for example.

For filter do the same except have two different colour balls, if they are yellow they get thrown away, of they are blue they get put in a bucket.

A for loop doing exactly the same you would need to explain the topic at hand, as well as explain iterating an index etc...

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#118

Post by paganel »

laurent_du wrote: post #102

Very poor take. The author clearly has very limited experience with raising kids. Most kids won't do difficult things if you don't push them. Playing music, learning to spell correctly, doing mathematics, and so on. A very small minority of kids will do all of that easily and for the fun, but you can't rely on it. If you don't push your kid to do their 20 minutes of piano every day, they will half-ass it and will sto…

The world needs less Asian kids being forced to play piano since a very early age and it needs more kids (Asian and not only) that are left to explore the world.

Without that exploration the kids won't make the world their world, at best they'd only make it a bad approximation of what we, our (older) generation, best think that that world should be.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#119

Post by renerick »

somenameforme wrote: post #98
sublinear wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The semantic meaning of a blank is much better understood to everyone than an arbitrary letter like 'x'. People just want to know why it's x and not something else or how a letter can have value. They might even think how can 24 + 2 = 5? They just want something to grab onto and nobody is really teaching the concept of a symbol in a math class.

This becomes even more true in higher level maths where programming language style functions would make everything vastly more clear, and easily typeable, than the traditional Greek symbols. sum(x+3, 1, 4) is just so much more clear (and consistent when generalized across other operations) and practically as concise as the mathematical way of expressing that which I cannot even type. Multiple variables would be a bit…

It's hard to debate that mathematical notation has a lot of room for improvement. High level algebra is very cryptic and often looks like an arcane incantation rather than something comprehensible for an unknowing person.

That said, as a person who moderately enjoyed math in high school and university, this functional notation would make me hate math infinitely more. It's would look like Lisp, which, at high level, looks just as cryptic as algebra. The sheer amount of braces and mistakes that would be made when reading and writing them is nauseating.

Infix notation, for all its flaws, provides important visual aid for understanding the structure of the expression (the sum of two fractions looks very different from fraction of two sums for example). Whereas with functional notation it's like working on linear textual representation of abstract syntax tree. Trust me, nobody wants to read, write or transform one by hand

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#120

Post by procaryote »

somenameforme wrote: post #99

Oddly enough I found a great 'trick' for this. Kids hate doing math tests, but turn it into a competition and game and suddenly they love it. Print out a bunch of remedial problems, perhaps 50. And then give them 1 or 2 minutes to do as many as they can. It's just a contest to improve against your own scores over time, with prizes for the kids who score the highest after a month or whatever. It's still literally just…

clever!

I imagine the part of a test people dislike is failing, and the consequences from failing. Framing it as a game without those emotional stakes fixes that.

If the teaching environment was set up to encourage learning rather than punish not having learnt yet we might not need these tricks, but that culture is slow to change

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