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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?

#91

Post by arcticfox »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #82
randycupertino wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love his Harvard fight song. So genteel! Impress them with your prowess, do. Hurl that spheroid down the field! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27PSHASlGUU He nails the Boston Brahmin accent so perfectly lol. And of course the elements song is a total banger. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2cfju6GTNs

> And of course the elements song is a total banger. That's an odd one to mention; he has nothing to do with its musical qualities. He didn't compose it.

But he did an excellent job of pairing the elements to the song.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#93

Post by andrepd »

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…

Amazing how this comment is diametrically opposed to the truth :) It's in fact the very contrary! "Drilling maths" into kids is how you get everyone except the most pre-disposed to "hate maths" with a passion. Because they grow up thinking mathematics is deathly boring busy work of repeating the same busy-work ad nauseum. Teaching rote memorization is useless and wastes time that could better be used exploring ideas and concepts and abstractions and all that makes mathematics beautiful.

I recommend reading "A Mathematician's Lament" https://maa.org/sites/default/files/pdf/devlin/LockhartsLame...

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#94

Post by thaumasiotes »

OskarS wrote: post #87
thaumasiotes wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "right" way that he presents at the beginning of the song is a way that I've never encountered anyone doing. It's actually fairly interesting: > "Three from 2 is 9, carry the one"; it seems to be a completely algorithmic way of doing the calculation, where you end up with the right answer at the end, but it's completely detached from what's actually happening. I can't understand what you're trying to say. The o…

Yeah, ultimately it's the same algorithm, it's just a question of what are the details of the procedure, which makes it confusing if you've learned one way and not the other. The whole point of the song is that Lehrer thinks this is a new, less good way of doing subtraction. Look at this video if you haven't already: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIKGV2cTgqA The first way he does it seems INCREDIBLY confusing to pe…

> the sentence "8 from 4 is 6" is nonsensical to most such people

Anyone who understands "7 from 3 is 6" must necessarily also understand "8 from 4 is 6". Nobody learns how to subtract from numbers that have digits of 3 without simultaneously learning how to subtract from numbers that have digits of 4.

> I do think this is a rare case where Lehrer is just wrong, the "borrowing" style is a much better and clearer way to explain subtraction. It is just as fast, and it gives you a much better intuition about what's actually happening, instead of just learning the steps by rote.

But I already pointed out that the steps aren't different. They're the same style. Whether you use the term "carry" or "borrow" makes no difference to anyone.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#95

Post by andrepd »

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.

They don't have to "work" as in "be an efficient pen and paper algorithm", because the far more efficient algorithms is "use a computer"! They have to be good to build understanding and intuition, and e.g. presenting subtraction as "distance on the real line" is an excellent way to do this.

I did not expect this short-sighted way to look at maths education here in this website.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#96

Post by thaumasiotes »

arcticfox wrote: post #91
thaumasiotes wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And of course the elements song is a total banger. That's an odd one to mention; he has nothing to do with its musical qualities. He didn't compose it.

But he did an excellent job of pairing the elements to the song.

Is that what we're appreciating when we call the song a "banger"? Most people who like the song don't know the words.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#97

Post by andrepd »

pdonis wrote: post #51
jrockway wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that a bad thing? I don't make a lot of arithmetic errors in M-x calc or whatever.

> Is that a bad thing? It's a bad thing if you never learn how to actually get the right answer. Which unfortunately seemed to be a common consequence of the New Math as a teaching method.

Why? The objective is understanding, not getting the rightsl answer, because you will never do a long multiplication in your life since a 3$ chip does it in a tenth of a microsecond

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#98

Post by sp332 »

bitwize wrote: post #23
space_oddity wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I saw that video back then my jaw dropped.Was fascinated by it

Radcliffe's geek cred was a factor in his casting as the title character in Weird:The Al Yankovic Story .

He said it was this specific performance that convinced Weird Al that he was the right guy. Also the movie is great.

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#99

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Why did Tom Lehrer swap fame for obscurity?

#100

Post by InfiniteRand »

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #54
aebtebeten wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, New Math is a perfect intro to graduate-level* maths; it's just a poor fit for people who (because they don't have calculators? or even slide rules?) would like their children's maths courses to cover arithmetic. (I had a geometry teacher who had been excited because his daughter wanted him to sign something saying she'd be allowed to take "Sets Education". Imagine, finally sets being introduced at the Jr…

New math was actually pretty successful at the lower grades. The issue was that when it came to rolling it out to middle and high schools, they just kind of said "here's the textbook, figure it out" instead of going through a coordinated process of teaching the teachers while helping them develop their new curricula (which they did for elementary school). So you had this really ugly failure of teachers not really nec…

I have a theory that the enthusiasm of teachers teaching the material is a far bigger factor in the effectiveness of learning than the methods. So much so that any advantage from better methods gets quickly nullified without teacher buy in
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