Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

theatlantic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 183 posts

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#141

Post by Izkata »

BunsanSpace wrote: post #65
Theodores wrote: post #27

How much mathematics is needed anyway? In the day job, how many people have to use maths skills beyond arithmetic? What about trigonometry? Differential equations? Integration and calculus? To be honest, if I am using Boolean Logic then that might as well be 'advanced mathematics', far beyond the comprehension of non-coders. Even simple trigonometry isn't so simple to most people. Clearly we need some people on the p…

1. A lot of math crops up in unexpected ways in everyday life. Trig in construction & wood working, calculus & integration when doing finance, &c. 2. It's not about teaching how to crunch numbers, it's also teaching general problem solving, and using tools to break down complex problems using your various tools to solve it. This translates directly to everyday life. As a programmer we use calculus and integration all…

> A lot of math crops up in unexpected ways in everyday life.

Planning a route through an amusement park or mall to reach the most things in the least time...

There's a lot we don't need mathematical perfection on so it never registers as math, but improved intuition can unconsciously help in completely unexpected ways. Like an understanding of latency for why a line at a convention was set up badly.

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#142

Post by insane_dreamer »

Aurornis wrote: post #50
triceratops wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Read more of his platform documents, including the ones before everything got watered down for his website Do you have links?

It’s been his statement all over: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/nyregion/mamdani-schools-... The phase out starts with kindergarten and “early grades”. In some places he’s said up through second grade which some assume is an upper limit, but really it’s just the natural length of phasing out gifted programs one year at a time over the 4-year course of a mayoral term due to the necessary delays to eliminate the p…

phasing out K-2 gifted programs seems reasonable to me, and in fact beneficial (I say this as a parent of a gifted child)

you're taking a leap to assume that this will lead to the abolishment of gifted programs in the higher grades (where such programs make more sense)

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#143

Post by insane_dreamer »

general1465 wrote: post #82

What if USA would stop treating education like a business - customer paid for degree, customer gets the degree no matter if customer has essential knowledge for the degree?

that's actually more like a business than what it is today

we already have "degree-mills" from which you can purchase a degree; doesn't benefit society in any way

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#144

Post by vacuity »

ajross wrote: post #138
vacuity wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grade inflation seems to be the main long-term culprit. Lowered standards mean that any student that isn't incentivized for some other reason to learn math simply won't learn. I'm less enamored with the other explanations, such as technology distractions or relying on AI, but they probably play a small part too. You and GP seem very sure that, if the pandemic didn't happen, the decline in math skills wouldn't be happ…

> Grade inflation seems to be the main long-term culprit Is it though, or is that just what your ideological sense tells you? Like I'm trying to point out, if you take the pandemic shock out of the data set, there really isn't much to argue about here. US aggregate education results have never been great internationally, but haven't ever been moving particularly fast either and seem not to have been before the pandem…

I can't honestly call myself "anti-woke", nor can I honestly call myself "woke". What a pain. Harping on about either one makes for a dull comment. If anything, I'd probably be considered "woke" by ideological proximity.

> Is it though, or is that just what your ideological sense tells you?

What aside from grade inflation explains why those students in the UCSD report had high grades but had to take remedial math class? The schools I went to had some grade inflation, though perhaps it's not that bad. Heck, Harvard loves grade inflation.

Also, what even is the ideological angle here? I'm the only one talking about grade inflation here (well, one other person mentioned it, but surely not to be "anti-woke").

> but haven't ever been moving particularly fast either

Would it be false that education quality is declining even if it is doing so slowly?

> Teachers have always had funny ideas, and haven't broken kids yet

That "yet" is doing a lot of work, and ignoring the present article. A slow-moving train wreck is still a train wreck.

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#145

Post by insane_dreamer »

Aurornis wrote: post #80
corpMaverick wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO. It is futile to level the field with the wealthy. They will always have the better opportunities, education, connections, etc. They will find a way. But we should keep trying to give more opportunities to the less fortunate. Better education, remedial classes, free school lunches, child credits, etc. We do that by asking the wealthy to contribute more. Not by taking away their advantages.(e.g. Admission tests)

> Not by taking away their advantages.(e.g. Admission tests) Admissions tests are actually not as big of a driver for the academic advantage of the wealthy. Especially at flagship institutions a lot of it is simply traced back to legacy admissions, athletics, and extra-curricular activities. Those latter two are more gamed by the wealthy than anything. Removing admission tests and focusing only on the application is…

I sort of agree, but in my experience, wealthy parents have the money for extra classes, tutoring, SAT/ACT prep, etc., which enable their kid to get a high SAT score. These are resources which the disadvantaged don't have. So while an "average" wealthy kid might score 780 with all the help afforded to them, it would take a truly exceptional poor kid to score 780 since they're essentially bootstrapping from natural talent alone.

So whether you include SAT scores in admissions or not, it's still heavily skewed.

Also, the problem with SAT scores is that you end up studying to the test. (This is why Chinese applicants do so well on college entrance exams - they spent most of their high school studying for the specific range/type of questions they will be asked on the test.)

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#146

Post by tr45872267 »

in_cahoots wrote: post #85
tr45872267 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do perform better on average >The average private school mean reading score was 14.7 points higher than the average public school mean reading score, corresponding to an effect size of .41 (the ratio of the absolute value of the estimated difference to the standard deviation of the NAEP fourth-grade reading score distribution). After adjusting for selected student characteristics, the difference in means was nea…

Considering private schools cost tens of thousands of dollars and get to choose who they admit, as good (in reading) and worse (in math) than schools with similar demographics seems pretty damning, doesn't it?

Damning for who? Education is just one reason parents choose public schools for their children. Depending on the school (eg. Catholic schools) it may be the last thing they care about. Also you should look at the cost per pupil for public schools. It is very high in many states, with the average being $18,000 per student in 2021.[0]

[0] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmb/public-school...

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#147

Post by franktankbank »

NiloCK wrote: post #48

> “Who is going to trust somebody who got a degree in airline engineering who doesn’t know how to think through a problem without a computer telling them the answer?” Years ago when I was working in education (Canadian public schools) our school board had a conference ahead of the school year. The keynote was an inclusive-ed researcher / consultant / speaker who told an anecdote of how they had successfully lobbied f…

Alternative anecdote. I was a students physics TA which involved lecturing and labs and lots of homeworks and in class work. I had a student who really never seemed to understand algebra and he came and said he couldn't really understand how to do the physics problems very well. I said well its going to be hard without really getting your algebra issues figured out and so he just went and did that. I think having a solid understanding of where it is deeply useful (and math and physics have evolved together forever) can be the spark that lights the fire to build the missing understanding. I can say math was very rote for me until I got into physics and I would never have gotten into hairy math without a physics motivation.

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#148

Post by franktankbank »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #120
giancarlostoro wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more time passes the more I hate publicly traded companies. I feel like the stock market rots companies.

The East India Company set the template for joint-stock corporations, and the model was basically a weaponized extension of post-Norman politics. Its leadership acted like a portable aristocracy. Accountable only upward to investors and the Crown never to the people they ruled. Their mandate was extraction, not participation. Communist regimes are always pointed out, but that pure Free Markets look like the East Indi…

Maybe there should no longer be an effective 0 as far as limited liability is concerned. Fuck Delaware.

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#149

Post by ivansavz »

I never understood why math is such a divisive topic and gets certain people all defensive. Why is the reaction so different from literacy? For example, I have never heard anyone say "I am not a reading person; I don't like to read." but I have head the "I am not a math person" so many times (I'd estimate 30%+ of population around me).

I think bad math teachers (educated in the education department) and bad textbooks are to blame for this collective trauma inflicted on the general populaiton... grown up adults swerving away aggressively at first mention of an formula or algebraic equation.

Chill, y'all. Some of this stuff[1] was know thousands of years ago... it would take you a few months to (re)learn all of high school math and solve all your math phobia issues. You're an adult now, you can totally handle that shit.

[1] https://minireference.com/static/conceptmaps/math_concepts.p...

Re: What happens when even college students can't do math anymore?

#150

Post by Jweb_Guru »

sxzygz wrote: post #112
Jweb_Guru wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never met a single person who wanted to learn advanced mathematics who was prevented from doing this by not getting into the college of their choice, and I know a lot of mathematicians. Do you genuinely believe that people who get an 800 on the math portion of the SATs (which is actually a pretty large number of people) are struggling to get admission to university at all ?

The mathematicians I know wish the were introduced to more material when they were younger so they could spend more time internalizing different concepts before being forced to specialize by the demands of a PhD. The more scientifically minded people I know wish they were introduced to more mathematical concepts when they were younger so they could feel more able applying more sophisticated models to their problem do…

Nobody is saying "don't teach math to high schoolers." My point is that this whole admissions rant appears to be entirely about admission to "elite" schools no longer being fully determined by SAT scores (or whatever--I've never been completely clear on what people are actually arguing for), when anyone good enough at math to get a really high SAT score can easily gain admission to a ton of universities with great math departments. As for the real "gifted" kids, there will always be some middle schoolers taking calculus etc. with or without a structured gifted & talented program. The majority of people in these programs are not so far beyond their peers as you seem to think, and my experience in math departments has been that there's a pretty even mix of kids with precocious math backgrounds and people who developed their skills at a later point.
Post reply on HN