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Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

theguardian.com

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Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#71

Post by giantg2 »

coryrc wrote: post #69
bitwize wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Math was a response to the Soviet lead in the space race. It was thought that introducing more abstract concepts, like different bases and set theory, would help kids grok math more. It was a fool's game. Just like every other "innovation" in mathematics education since, up to and including Common Core (one of which you probably encountered). At the elementary school level, the only way to increase math proficien…

> Just like every other "innovation" in mathematics education since, up to and including Common Core Have you actually looked into it? I was skeptical too, but then I saw they were trying to teach kids the way I do math. For example, what's 4001 - 3989. The old way would be to borrow and carry three times. But change question to 1+4000-3990+1 and the answer is perfectly simple. Kids I went to school with would litera…

The easy ways work for easy problems. But the harder ways work for all problems. I've used a lot of that shortcut math before it was allowed in class. I probably would have been better off just doing it the regular way, especially so I wouldn't get points off for not showing my work or showing the wrong work.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#72

Post by cyberax »

bitwize wrote: post #25
jrockway wrote: post #17

I still have some Tom Lehrer songs in my playlist. They sound like they're a product of their time but are still relevant today. I am also amused that I learned "new math" in elementary school, but I think it's actually different from the "new math" in his song of that name. I didn't hate it, honestly. "Now the book wants you to do it in base 8." This is actually relevant to my day to day work. (Though in base 8, I h…

New Math was a response to the Soviet lead in the space race. It was thought that introducing more abstract concepts, like different bases and set theory, would help kids grok math more. It was a fool's game. Just like every other "innovation" in mathematics education since, up to and including Common Core (one of which you probably encountered). At the elementary school level, the only way to increase math proficien…

> The Soviets were ahead in math and science because they drilled their kids harder. Any kid who didn't want to drill was a traitor to the working class.

That was not how the Soviet schools worked. There was no corporal punishment, and struggling students were given help.

Instead, it was quite competitive. There was a system of academic competitions ("Olympiads") that went all the way up from schools to the international level. Students were encouraged to compete.

At the same time, school sports competitions were pretty much absent.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#73

Post by contrast »

petsormeat wrote: post #49
bitwize wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Math was a response to the Soviet lead in the space race. It was thought that introducing more abstract concepts, like different bases and set theory, would help kids grok math more. It was a fool's game. Just like every other "innovation" in mathematics education since, up to and including Common Core (one of which you probably encountered). At the elementary school level, the only way to increase math proficien…

I have lingering bitterness for the irresponsible New Math experiment in my elementary education. I couldn't tell time on an analog clock until I was 12, thanks to the blithe dismissal of "rote" multiplication tasks.

I’m fascinated - I’ve never thought of reading the time as a maths skill. How does it depend on learning multiplication?

(non-American here, I may be lacking context that makes it obvious)

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#74

Post by 082349872349872 »

123894893 wrote: post #68
RheingoldRiver wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait is he actually criticizing it in this song? I always thought that he was mocking people who didn't understand borrowing by sounding disbelieving about it, when it's in fact obvious how & why it works

Yes, he's mocking the idea of teaching borrowing. He gives the way he thinks subtraction should be taught in the intro. It's a way that, as far as I can tell, hasn't been taught in America in over half a century. After the intro, he goes on to mock the concept of borrowing, which was (apparently) part of New Math. Then in the final verse he mocks the idea of teaching bases. Here's a good animated version of the song…

The "right" way to make borrowing complex is to teach it as a special case of cocycles in group cohomology: http://timothychow.net/mathstuff/jdolan.pdf

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#75

Post by MrJohz »

giantg2 wrote: post #71
coryrc wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just like every other "innovation" in mathematics education since, up to and including Common Core Have you actually looked into it? I was skeptical too, but then I saw they were trying to teach kids the way I do math. For example, what's 4001 - 3989. The old way would be to borrow and carry three times. But change question to 1+4000-3990+1 and the answer is perfectly simple. Kids I went to school with would litera…

The easy ways work for easy problems. But the harder ways work for all problems. I've used a lot of that shortcut math before it was allowed in class. I probably would have been better off just doing it the regular way, especially so I wouldn't get points off for not showing my work or showing the wrong work.

At least in the UK, where we also learned these sorts of arithmetic tricks, we still learned the "harder ways". The point of these techniques wasn't to replace long multiplication or something, but more as shortcuts so we didn't have to do it if we didn't need to, and we could simplify problems if we saw a better way to do them.

We also practiced this stuff regularly, and had mental maths quizzes at least once a week. And (at least when we weren't learning a specific technique), it didn't matter how we did the calculations, so if you felt more comfortable with the traditional methods, you could do that, you were usually just slower. (I was one of those slower people very often!)

The point isn't to go "here's how you do maths, it's always like this". It's about (a) helping you do arithmetic more quickly, and (b) helping you understand why numbers behave the way they do, in terms of bases and pairs and factors and other things like that.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#76

Post by mannyv »

gjm11 wrote: post #66
mannyv wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call what he does singing given the normal meaning of the phrase.

That seems unfair. He is (or at least was when he was doing it -- he's 96 years old now) a very competent singer and pianist. He's not particularly trying to make a beautiful sound, but there's more to singing than that .

Even he has said that calling what he was doing 'singing' would be generous.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#77

Post by 082349872349872 »

cyberax wrote: post #72
bitwize wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New Math was a response to the Soviet lead in the space race. It was thought that introducing more abstract concepts, like different bases and set theory, would help kids grok math more. It was a fool's game. Just like every other "innovation" in mathematics education since, up to and including Common Core (one of which you probably encountered). At the elementary school level, the only way to increase math proficien…

> The Soviets were ahead in math and science because they drilled their kids harder. Any kid who didn't want to drill was a traitor to the working class. That was not how the Soviet schools worked. There was no corporal punishment, and struggling students were given help. Instead, it was quite competitive. There was a system of academic competitions ("Olympiads") that went all the way up from schools to the internati…

One thing that struck me as very different in classroom scenes is that we* were always to avoid giving each other help, but I get the impression soviets were supposed to aid each other.

Punchline 1: (little Johnny sent to the principal after making a comment about physical attributes of the teacher instead of Pushkin's next line, says to the visiting teacher evaluators) "Next time, sirs, when you don't know, don't prompt!"

Punchline 2: (a former maths prof turned shipbuilder, trying to coast, read literature, and earn some extra cash in "maths for the proletariat" evening school, is stuck at the brownboard having calculated a negative circumference of a circle = -2πr; his classmate helps) "Psst, colleague, swap order of integration!"

Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VogwWGEO1-c&t=10574s

* I distinctly remember being taught the "right" way to raise hands in 4th grade, and in particular placing one's elbow on the desk and putting a forearm perpendicular to it was "wrong". Imagine my surprise upon discovering, many decades later, that they for sure didn't want us somehow (despite the iron curtain — as if we'd had had a clue anyway) copying soviet classroom protocol.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#78

Post by Symbiote »

OldGuyInTheClub wrote: post #48
lupire wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Daniel Radcliffe sang it on Graham Norton, introducing Tom Lehrer to a crowd who didn't know him. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rSAaiYKF0cs

I acknowledge the effort but this didn't quite land for me. Don't know the performer or the tv show; the lava lamp background was distracting.

He was Harry Potter in all the films, so I assume he's one of the best-known actors in the world.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#79

Post by vintermann »

emmelaich wrote: post #60

What a fantastic quote.. > You had to admire these folk singers,” he says on the live LP. “It takes courage to get up in a coffee house or a student auditorium and come out in favour of the things everyone else is against, like peace and justice and brotherhood, and so on.” It's pretty much my reaction to every protest or social concern story in the media.

Part of the joke is that lots of people are against peace and justice and brotherhood in practice - often the majority.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#80

Post by andrepd »

123894893 wrote: post #64
jrockway wrote: post #17

I still have some Tom Lehrer songs in my playlist. They sound like they're a product of their time but are still relevant today. I am also amused that I learned "new math" in elementary school, but I think it's actually different from the "new math" in his song of that name. I didn't hate it, honestly. "Now the book wants you to do it in base 8." This is actually relevant to my day to day work. (Though in base 8, I h…

The song "New Math" is actually funny to listen to, I think most people don't pay attention to what's happening in it. In the first verse, he's mocking the idea of teaching kids the concept of borrowing, as if it's a bizarre and confusing concept that almost no one would understand. He was completely wrong, of course, and it's the way almost everyone - at least in the U.S. - does subtraction now. The "right" way that…

Which is doubly stupid given that teaching algorithms for arithmetic is a useless skill and has been for 40 years.

Just focus on the ideas, maths is beautiful, pen and paper accounting is not.

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