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Math from Three to Seven

thepsmiths.com

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Re: Math from Three to Seven

#191

Post by dxbydt »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #187
dxbydt wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does anyone have good experiences with keeping kids math-interested as they get into their teens? The first step would be to get them into a math circle. There are 100s of them https://mathcircles.org/map/ . I run a math circle as well, and work with a bunch of teens/preteens. I've had a lot of success with them. AMA.

Unfortunately there are not enough. For example UCLA math circle is very exclusive and there’s effectively no admission in elementary school if you miss enrollment or don’t do well on their kindergarten test. Is there any alternative?

> Unfortunately there are not enough.

Totally agree with you. That was the case in my area in the midwest as well. That's why I started my own mathcircle. Its not as hard as you might think - you just need a few interested students, a few textbooks, and plenty of time.

We focus entirely on competition math - so mathcounts, amc 8/10/12, aime/jmo/imo. The material gets real hard real fast, so kids will drop, new kids will join etc. The ones who stick around benefit immensely. I've had 11-12 year olds in my group qualify both for the AIME (one of 6000 kids in the usa) as well as mathcount nationals (one of 200 kids in the usa).

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#192

Post by nerdponx »

jameshart wrote: post #190
nerdponx wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 25137+1486 problem off by adding six and seven to get three and carry the one… are missing out on a deeper intuition about numbers, because they only think of those numbers as sequences of digits. This is precisely the dichotomy that is bogus according to the article. 25137 = 20000 + 5000 + 100 + 30 + 7 and 1486 = 1000 + 400 + 80 + 6, then you add (7 + 6) + (30 + 80) + (100 + 400) + (5000 + 1000) + (20000 + 0) to g…

No but that’s actually exactly what ‘new math’ was about. The thing Tom Lehrer was lampooning was all this talk of the ‘tens place’ and the ‘hundreds place’ rather than just plugging and chugging the digits, you know; Seven plus six is thirteen carry the one leaves three, four plus eight is twelve carry the one leaves two, two plus four is six, five plus one is six, two six six two three… Seeing that as a decompositi…

Yeah but what's to lampoon

For the student who doesn't understand, one rote algorithm is as boring and stupid as any other. That student is plugging and chugging all the same, whether or not they have heard of a "tens place".

For the student who does understand, the "new" algorithm at least is elucidating and actually makes sense as a direct application of the basic principles of our number system. The "tens place" is in fact a real thing, regardless of what you call it.

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#193

Post by nerdponx »

jameshart wrote: post #189
drivebyhooting wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1500 take away 14 is presupposing commutativity. This very book argues against teaching these tricks without allowing the student to discover it themselves. Why is 4 + 7 = 7 + 4? Is it a general phenomenon?

I’m not remotely arguing against encouraging kids to discover the mathematical principles themselves. I’m also not advocating teaching swapping + (1500 - 14) into -14 + 1500 by a careful application of the laws of commutativity. I’m saying that having a comfort and confidence with what summation is is way more valuable than learning that addition is a procedure applied to digits.

So what "is" summation in your opinion? How does the 1500-14 trick relate to it?

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#194

Post by tightbookkeeper »

082349872349872 wrote: post #169
tightbookkeeper wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re missing a lot of historical context. If by “intellectual” you mean cosmopolitan university professors and government administrators then yes. This also closely associated with internalization, relativism, and Jewish culture. If by “intellectual” you mean learning, reading, thinking, then no.

That's a novel thesis; do you have historical examples to provide a basis for believing it? (Starace, above, is already an obvious counterexample)

[dead]

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#195

Post by gradschoolfail »

082349872349872 wrote: post #181
gradschoolfail wrote: post #70

Peripheral, but not totally irrelevant: Psmith was an Edwardian dandy of PGWodehouse’s imagination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psmith

8 billion people in this world, yet Jane Psmith and John Psmith have oddly familiar voices: the μορφή of their writing brings to mind some ὕλη of yesteryear...

https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-the-spirit-of-the-mounta...

ὕλημπίλιες?

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#196

Post by gradschoolfail »

generationP wrote: post #163
gradschoolfail wrote: post #70

Peripheral, but not totally irrelevant: Psmith was an Edwardian dandy of PGWodehouse’s imagination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psmith

And I thought it was a pun on p-zombies...

If.. they are commenting on Marxism* but occasionally review philosophical books (e.g., by the inventor of the Lanczos) … quite reasonable to assume its a job title, imho

*/Martianism aka Gyorgy-Marxism

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#197

Post by myth_drannon »

082349872349872 wrote: post #127
myth_drannon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, people had a lot of time for hobbies. Reading, writing poems, electronics. Sometimes I watch old interviews of people on the streets and compare with the interviews they do on the streets now. It's night and day. Even people, like working class, drunk in a bar in the end of 80's collapse were more well spoken and intelligent then the people now. Either it's Putin, emigration or capitalism or whatever but there i…

According to Zoya, Birkins, boob jobs, and Jaguars are the current topics of conversation? (that said, museums did see an uptick of entries when they offered reduced rates for patrons wearing Louboutins) I blame Катя Кузнецова (1986); she wanted the red sports car with the radio and the little dog, after all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvdlAgreRug&t=4574s Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgdP5U28jHc

No, that movie is about a subset of society that always existed in different forms, even in the 50's. I don't think it was showing the first shoots of degradation.

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#198

Post by eru »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #183
vundercind wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The early years of computer programming were dominated by women, yet nowadays, women are proportionally uninterested. We eliminated the job women were dominating (programmer) by combining it with the one men were dominating (analyst). At the same time law and medicine were seeing huge increases in the proportion of women practitioners, so the status thing doesn’t make a ton of sense as an explanation. Besides, it w…

I communicated that badly. It doesn't matter so much how things are seen outside the workplace, but within it. Programming is definitely considered high-status in a software firm: ever heard of the concept of a "rockstar programmer"? Low-status tasks (e.g. vital, but "unpromotable" ones) are delegated to women, and tasks that are associated with femininity are considered low-status. This is a well-documented ( https:…

For a counterpoint: a friend of mine works at Google, and as an excellent SRE who also happens to be female she's steadily getting opportunities thrown her way; especially invites to speak at external conferences and other internal events. She's also gotten promotions.

It helps that she's very competent, but she didn't have to work extra to be noticed by the organisation.

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#199

Post by 082349872349872 »

gradschoolfail wrote: post #195
082349872349872 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 billion people in this world, yet Jane Psmith and John Psmith have oddly familiar voices: the μορφή of their writing brings to mind some ὕλη of yesteryear...

https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-the-spirit-of-the-mounta... ὕλημπίλιες?

> ...which is most unusual because it isn’t a book about hill people, but a book by a hill person. These are rare. Formal education isn’t highly valued in hill people cultures, and giving away information about your tribe is practically taboo.

Rory Miller is unusual because most people who do applied violence ("corrections") don't also have the temperament to theorise about it, or if they do, little inclination to thereupon write it down.

> She gains the courage of the fatalist

Compare Epictetus, or even "Pluggers"?

EDIT: for that matter, Cassandra in particular, and the trojan women in general

> no comparative analysis of the Mongols and the Comanches

I did run across one of these a while back: a blog post, not a book, but still an analytic comparison nonetheless.

EDIT2: thinking of my locals: our origin stories are as a hill people (armor doesn't work well when it can't manoeuvre, in the XIII as in chechnya) but somehow we've picked up a hefty memeplex of conflict resolution skills on the way to the present?

Re: Math from Three to Seven

#200

Post by 082349872349872 »

myth_drannon wrote: post #197
082349872349872 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Zoya, Birkins, boob jobs, and Jaguars are the current topics of conversation? (that said, museums did see an uptick of entries when they offered reduced rates for patrons wearing Louboutins) I blame Катя Кузнецова (1986); she wanted the red sports car with the radio and the little dog, after all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvdlAgreRug&t=4574s Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgdP5U28jHc

No, that movie is about a subset of society that always existed in different forms, even in the 50's. I don't think it was showing the first shoots of degradation.

Are there any movies that might?

[I'm guessing unlikely, due to the censorship? Yes, Белое солнце пустыни (1970) actually has a villain and even an on-screen shootout, but the underlying vibes are still a far cry from Брат (1997)]

FWIW, Lavrov still seems to wax poetic from time to time (although I haven't read anything of his since «Нет, ничто в этом мире не ново...»).

Shnur obviously has something to say (although in the last few years* he seems to be saying it less clearly and more cryptically), but he's not any more the man in the street than Lavrov.

Also, I'm not sure (a) how serious you were about this thesis, nor (b) if the degradation to which you allude significantly overlaps with what I might assume to have been degradation...

* which produced their own emigration wave? looking at israel these days I wonder if much of that has become "out of the fire, into the frying pan"?

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