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

An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

scottaaronson.blog

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 657 posts

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#461

Post by Dracophoenix »

2sk21 wrote: post #49
jl6 wrote: post #43

Which states are doing it right?

In New Jersey and Massachusetts at least, there is absolutely no move to water down the math curriculum in any way. On the contrary, the schools here compete on how many AP courses are offered.

It depends on the part of Massachusetts. The suburbs close to and beyond the I-95 have astoundingly good public schools. They're also expensive to buy into.

Boston proper and surrounding areas have begun to suffer from the same epidemic of anti-gifted mania that plagues California and is beginning to affect New York City, especially with regards to the exam schools (i.e. Boston Latin et al).

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#462

Post by CryptoPunk »

jollybean wrote: post #387
klodolph wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying it's one of the "most powerful social forces in the US right now"... is there any particular reasoning here? To be honest, it sounds like an extremist take on the nature vs nurture argument which has been playing out for millennia and I don't see a reason to believe that somehow the extreme version nurture side of the argument has become dominant here. If anything, it's easy to remember the pendulum swi…

Yes, it's been going on for a while. Christians are fond if it: "You have an innate, direct relationship with God, in his eyes you are equal to the The King" etc.. But we've only had 'governance' in the broad sense for 100 years. And we've never really tried to apply such principles into education until the 1960s. Now we have actually made incredible progress on social issues, we have our 'wars' in Social Media with…

>>and 'systematic racism exists' - which of course it does

Systematic racism only exists today to positively discriminate against people belonging to so-called disadvantaged races, at the expense of those belonging to so-called privileged races. That's why White and Asian kids are discriminated against in college admissions.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#463

Post by pishpash »

ryandrake wrote: post #301
pishpash wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty simple: - calculus if you want to do engineering - discrete mathematics if you want to do CS You can teach these in university, it's not a problem. Calculus doesn't need to be taught in high school to everyone but it should be available and it should be the goal state in terms of curriculum pace for everyone so that you should have no problem taking it by the time you are 17 or 18 (which is what we're tal…

> - calculus if you want to do engineering > - discrete mathematics if you want to do CS I'd guess the vast majority of software development jobs are like "gluing one API layer to another" and "writing simple-to-complex CRUD apps". Neither calculus or discrete mathematics really helps if your goal is to simply make a computer read data from database X and display it in webform Y. I found all of the math required by m…

We're talking about doing CS as a degree in college, not coding in a job. You don't even need to study CS to get a coding job.

As an aside, those secretarial coding jobs will all go away within 50 years. They are only needed in the transition period where machines still depend on humans to talk to each other.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#464

Post by joebob42 »

civilized wrote: post #82
texaslonghorn5 wrote: post #13

Ultimately the solution is better STEM foundation at the very very early ages. Universal pre school would probably be very useful. Empirically [edit: n = 1 or 2], it seems that drilling basic arithmetic and then multiplication tables early in pre K and earlier elementary will give students a better intuitive math foundation to do algebra very well. That would enable everyone to go into more advanced classes at the sa…

More and more earlier and earlier doesn't comport well with child development and can backfire by making students feel incompetent. We need better teachers, probably by paying more so more talented people join the profession.

I think we could pay more, but only if we could actually get better teachers. So many teachers are bad and not worth even what they get paid (personal experience from a nominally quite good school district). My concern with paying more before figuring out how to weed out bad ones is that it would just be a waste.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#465

Post by 300bps »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #419
300bps wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are quite literally billions of people that are richer, smarter, better looking and/or more physically able than I am. I'm glad for it. I would never want to bring anyone else down to meet me at my level on any metric.

It doesn’t bother you sometimes that some people starve while others hoard wealth that rivals the gdp of entire countries? I don’t want everyone to be the same, but unbridled disparity seems equally as bad to me… especially considering how arbitrary it can be.

It doesn’t bother you sometimes that some people starve while others hoard wealth that rivals the gdp of entire countries?

People going hungry, especially children, is a travesty.

What is your solution to it? We already have food stamps, welfare, fully subsidized healthcare, child tax credits, social security disability, free school breakfasts and lunches, Section 8 Housing, SNAP, WIC, CHIP, Medicaid, churches, charities, social security death benefit and so much more. People are still hungry.

Should we do more? The lesson of Africa says we shouldn’t. Decades of food aid to Africa did little more than make the continent dependent on food aid and drive all the farmers out of business because they couldn’t compete against free.

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/world/americas/14iht-food...

And I haven’t even brought up lthat there simply aren’t enough billionaires to tax to make even a tiny difference in any of this. Even if you took literally their entire net worth, converted it to cash (which is literally impossible) and spent it on the poor it wouldn’t make any difference.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#466

Post by School-Cotton »

Czarcasm wrote: post #359
School-Cotton wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't know the counterfactual, though: how many Americans' talent is wasted because they are forced to sit through watered-down school until age 18 before they can begin serious studies?

This is probably the best counterargument to raise in response to the "late-bloomer" anecdotes that many people raise. For every unit of societal productivity created by a late bloomer that is saved by a common-stream system, I would personally argue that there is an order of magnitude more societal productivity lost by holding back the more typical high performers. Late blooming intellectuals aren't the norm. Most h…

Yes, and it’s not just the high-performers who are being held back in American-style systems, but low-performers too, people who are either unsuited for or uninterested in academic work are forced to waste their time on something that doesn’t benefit them.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#467

Post by xvedejas »

WalterBright wrote: post #432
namelessoracle wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think that but there are work arounds. Yes pretty much every college requires "college algebra". But some schools have "college algebra for stem majors" vs "college algebra for non stem majors". Guess which one is easier, has lots of bonus credit and extra curricular stuff to earn extra credit. (You attended the college showing of "vagely related math movie?! Here's 10 points on your final!") And also grades on…

> pretty much every college requires "college algebra". Caltech didn't. In fact, they expect you to know calculus before entering. I didn't, and that nearly capsized my college career before it left the dock.

They now do have a remedial kind of class, "Math 1d", which is to be taken concurrently with Math 1a. I was placed into it after not trying very hard on my placement test, but they let me drop it when I told them I didn't need it.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#468

Post by strangeattractr »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #322
voz_ wrote: post #26

Quoted post unavailable.

Economic disparity is a more obvious answer with the benefit of being backed by actual data. No need for personal boogeymen based on social mores.

While the original post borders on a cliche at this point, the criticism seems to be correct in this case. Equalising math outcomes by destroying math education for the gifted is akin to levelling wealth by destroying all the houses.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#469

Post by CryptoPunk »

tonguez wrote: post #234
wonnage wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. This is kind of a founding principle of the country, so... 2. This follows from #1, if we rule out nature then it must be nurture. Also, you must not be a parent if you'll accept "some kids are just dumb" as an excuse 3,4. Replace "oppression" with "competition". I think it might sound better to you. But the conclusion is the same. You want to prevent winners from accumulating an advantage, eliminating all others…

“ 1. Blank slate - All humans are of equal ability” “ 1. This is kind of a founding principle of the country, so...” yes those slave owning people really thought their slaves were the same as them, totally dude

The founding fathers almost all believed slavery was wrong but they were born into a society where it was a core institution and it wasn't obvious how exactly to reform it.

Entitlement principles are why the West was the 1st place in the world to abolish slavery and then went about and abolished it throughout the world.

Re: An update on the campaign to defend serious math education in California

#470

Post by pishpash »

taeric wrote: post #418
VirusNewbie wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of MDs are reading charts or diagnosing the flu or allergies or stitching up a wound, why should they understand biochemistry?

This begs the question that they do. Probably safe to assume that most don't. Just like it is safe to assume that most programmers aren't good at calculus. Or discrete math. Or proofs.

There is a move to get basic care into the hands of nurse practitioners and probably similarly most programmers shouldn't bother studying anything. If there is enough consumer demand to fill experience-based jobs then that's the market reality but it doesn't mean doctors who are meant to invent new cures don't need biochemistry or engineers who are meant to design new solutions don't need mathematics.

Most programmers will never design new solutions and are objectively terrible at their job.

Post reply on HN