Asking me questions about the Civil War will produce a blank stare on my face.
Ask me to describe the causes of the Russian Revolution, the fall of the Tsar and the rise and fall of Kerensky instead.
Would you Guinastasia? Please! I’ll trade you that for ‘the Weimar Crisis – Hitler’s personal roll in the 32 and 33 elections, and the subsequent purging of the NSDAP’!!! 
I don’t know about 96 percent being able to calculate pi, but I have a lot of doubts about half the folks I meet at random calculating 96 percent of any number other than 100.
Once again, I point to personal experience. I spent the better part of a year reviewing the written work of degreed professionals reporting data which was expressed in percentages. Half of them were right most of the time. The other half were reliably random in their calculations. Most of them had Master’s degrees.
There is evidently a big wall across the world of knowledge, which runs from fractions, through percentages, and on into proportions. It is amazing how many people cannot get across that wall. Calculate Pi? Ha, without a crib sheet I would be stunned to find a College Algebra class where 96 percent could do it on the first day of school.
Tris
Well, I think the point is who would know off the top of their head a method for calculating pi using long division. In fact, I don’t know one and going to this web site http://gallery.uunet.be/kurtvdb/pi.html that lists 4 methods of calculating pi, none of them involves simply long division (e.g., they all have square roots or arctans or some such). What method were you thinking of, asphodel?
Oh, okay, here is a website with a formula that involves nothing more rigorous than long division: http://www.mathsoft.com/asolve/plouffe/plouffe.html Still, I wouldn’t expect anyone to know this formula off the top of their head.
If I understand it right, the Archimede’s method can perhaps also be done with just long division (and some geometry). Still, I don’t think your average 6th grader will come up with this method. Hell, I’m not sure that your average math major will think of it on the spot.
There’s a website out there somewhere with a God contest.
The basic idea is that various religions’ Gods can enter it; the first one to reliably complete the three standard miracles for the site plus one bonus miracle wins, and everyone has to start worshipping that God instead.
My favorite bonus miracle is something like this:
Pi is an irrational number. However, when calculated out to the thirty-third digit, it is accurate enough to describe the ratio of the circumference of the universe to the diameter of the universe within one atom’s length. Round off pi to the thirty-third digit, such that subsequent mathematic calculations will verify this rounding has occurred. Show all work.
Honestly, I’m better at math than most of my friends (math major friends excepted). I can handle complex logic statements, can estimate large products quickly. And I have no fooking idea how to get at a measurement of pi, except to:
- Draw a circle with a compass
- Drape a string around the circle.
- Hi, Opal!
- Drape a second string across the circle.
- Measure both strings.
- Divide the length of the first string by the length of the second string.
…and I’m guessing this won’t give me a super-accurate calculation. Not past the thirty-third digit, anyway.
This may illustrate some more important questions, however:
-What constitutes useful knowledge today?
-What do we want our school systems to accomplish?
If I had a choice between a school that taught kids to calculate pi out to thirty-three digits and a school that taught kids to understand our system of government thoroughly and completely, I’d far prefer the second school. If the first school just taught kids formulae and dates, I’d be really in favor of the second school.
Daniel
Daniel
Of course, if a third school taught kids not to sign their posts twice, I’d be so there.
Daniel
Daniel
Daniel
Daniel
Daniel
Suprise, and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope?
Slight hijack: I never believe those studies that say things like “74% of high school seniors believe that The Rock, not George Washington, was our first president.”
Come on. If someone ever gave me one of those surveys with ridiculous questions like, “Who freed the slaves? a. Bill Clinton b. Abe Lincoln c. Linkin Park d. Thomas Jefferson”, of course I’m going to put down “C” just to screw with the data.
Well, let’s all remember the most important thing we’ve learned here: We are definetly smarter than high school students. The ignorant little bastards.
In the field of high school kid ignorance, the cultural lack astounds me more sometimes than the academic. I was in a record store one day about the time that Eric Clpaton’s “Tears From Heaven” came out. I was near two teenagers who were looking for the CD that had that song, and one asked the other, “Did Clapton ever do anything else?”
eek!
Well, the Archimedian method is a variation on your circle idea…Inscribing a circle with polygons with a successively larger number of sides and calculating the total edge length of the polygons. Most modern methods rely on some sort of infinite series expansion for pi…some of which can converge quite rapidly. But, yeah, I agree that this is the sort of knowledge one shouldn’t expect high schools students to know off the top of their heads. (Great if they do, but I don’t think it is vital.)
I have a friend from college who says he over heard a part of a conversation that went “I heard Paul Mccartney was in another band before wings” Double eek!
You’re missing the point. High schoolers are not expected to know information like this. However, they are expected to be able to write an essay about it anyway.
It’s all about the fine art of BS.
Dr. J
Y’know, just the other day I had a situation in which I needed to quickly calculate pi to 400 places and all I had was a pencil and piece of paper. Fortunately I had been schooled in the 50’s and 60’s when they taught us those things so I was able to accomplish the task and save the world from the forces of evil.
These kids today, though. Hrumph!
No, wait! All I had was a stick. I had to work it out in the sand.
No, that wasn’t it. I didn’t even have a stick. I had to do it all in my head. Yeah, that’s it.
i think tests tell more about the people that designed the tests than about the people taking them. the testers set the standards to be lived up to. if the tested decide the testers are stupid then the results may be meaningless.
i’m an idiot. i got straight D’s in religion, freshman year in highschool. going to burn in hell too.
Dal Timgar