Fun Stuff > CHATTER
Can't Think of a Breaking Bad Pun For the Title: Let's Do Some Math!
Skewbrow:
Logic? Lost me there. It was very popular at ND in the late 80s (and presumable before and after that), but I never caught the bug, so there's a Gödel size hole in my education. Peasant's logic is good enough to get a PhD, so...
Mind you, topics like that are popular here, too. More than half the research done at our math department is on problems that originated from computer science. We do not even seek to cover all of what is known as Core Math in US grad schools. I'm not at all sure that it is a good thing.
GarandMarine:
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=uc3Pv5Q_AdA
Well I tell y'all what. I might just be a dumb jarhead who ain't had much use for learnin these many years, especially that there "arithmetic" but even I can tell you that that's pretty stupid.
Barmymoo:
She's explained it in a ridiculous way, but that's how I add. It's not stupid, it's true - it is easier to add 10 and 5 than 9 and 6.
Carl-E:
Barmy's absolutely right, the common core is all about the way we think about math to actually learn it. Well, the way people who are fairly comfortable with math think about it - I liked it when the reporter mentioned that she had to "just memorize it". Memorization works to some extent, but memorization backed by some understanding is easier, faster, and lasts longer.
As far as explaining it, I get the feeling the teacher was trying to explain it at a meta-level. As part of a news report, I get the feeling this was aimed at adults who are getting confused (and frustrated) when they see all this Common Core stuff that they never had to do.
The other (and much bigger) problem with the transition to the Common Core is the same one that killed New Math in the 60's - the teachers. They're doing a much better job educating the teachers on what they need to do, but a bad implementation (locally) of a good idea is just going to be a mess.
A quick example; subtraction in the common core is initially taught by "counting up" from the smaller to the larger number. That's the way most of us actually learned it, and I know several adults who are embarrassed that they still use that trick. But it works...
So I saw an example the other day in some course materials I was reviewing that took the example of 57 - 22, and counted up.
By 5's.
Now yes, you can land exactly on the result that way, but dammit, it's easier to go by 10's, it always is, it's a base 10 system! Then do the last bit, the extra 5. This is exactly the sort of crap that really makes a mess of things - it's not the common core itself (the ideas), it's bad implementations by teachers who aren't thinking about the math they probably learned through memorization! And to top it off, they're often not flexible enough to see it any other way. The same materials insisted that visual representations products always be row x column, so that
......
......
......
......
is 4 x 6, but
....
....
....
....
....
....
has to be 6 x 4!
As someone who has always looked at things sideways, I pointed out that they damn well better accept both answers for both arrays, you never know what a kid's going to call a row!
It's become another slow motion train wreck. Toss in the whackos claiming it's federal mind control at work, and you've got a system doomed from the outset.
Hell, why change anything, ever? "It were good enuf fer mah semi-literate grampa, it's good enuf fer me (and mah kids)!"
[crawls back into his hermit-hole, muttering and cursing the whole way]
GarandMarine:
Because government education is a waste of tax dollars at it's finest, and why let the market deliver efficient systems when we can waste time and money?
--- Quote from: Barmymoo on 05 Sep 2014, 14:15 ---She's explained it in a ridiculous way, but that's how I add. It's not stupid, it's true - it is easier to add 10 and 5 than 9 and 6.
--- End quote ---
Goodie for you? Meanwhile 6+9 is 15. Want to have a brief race on simple addition and subtraction? Why weaken children by teaching them poor methods that require more work?
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