FL School Board Member Can't Answer Any Math Questions on FCAT

Great Debates
101

But the colonies are different sizes, and represent a different amount of bacteria, depending on their size. I fail to see the fundamental difference between “each symbol represents 4 trees” and “each square centimetre represents X bacterial cells”. Those square centimetres are going to be arranged randomly, like the symbols in the square on the test, and the correct answer requires the use of the additional information, X number of cells.

It is, IMHO, a fair representation of at least one real-life example.

One thing that bugs me about these sorts of conversations, and I mentioned it above, is the 'I’ve never used this in my life- it’s useless to teach it to kids" attitude some people have.

Just because you don’t use it doesn’t mean that no one ever does.

I’ve probably had to use most, if not all, of the concepts shown in that math quiz at some point in my career, either in figuring out a dimension, reducing a mathematical solution to a simpler form in order to, perhaps, compare it to tabulated data, interpolating between curves, etc. We keep having this dumb-ass idea that “we have computers and calculators for that!!” now, but where on earth do people think the information contained in a computer program comes from?! How do you know if the answer you got makes any sense whatsoever, if you don’t understand how you obtained that answer?

It’s hard, I get it. Sure, someone else has already done the work and put it in a nice table for you. But that’s no excuse for not learning how to do it yourself. Some people struggle with math and numbers, fair enough, but that’s not a reason not to teach it.

I get the weird feeling sometimes that people are proud of not knowing how to do basic algebra. Some people seem proud of never having read a book for fun, or proud of not being able to write in cursive despite having been taught (I don’t want to get into the debate about the value of it!). I don’t understand how people can be (or seem) proud about NOT knowing something. Why take pride in ignorance, when you’ve been given the tools to correct it?

102

While microbiology might be an example, I’m not really clear that it is. This example showed uniform-sized, randomly-distributed clumps of trees with a key. It was a chart that someone else had made to display the data, not the subject of observation itself. And the person who made that chart? That’s the person to smack.

At some point, though, we stop teaching outdated skills. Nobody learns how to multiply Roman numerals, nobody learns how to carve runes into stones, nobody learns how to till a field with oxen, because those skills are no longer needed. We’ve got better, more efficient means of accomplishing the same goals now. And I’d much rather students learn to make a kickin’ spreadsheet than to learn how to do long division or divide fractions.

I’m not calling for students to learn less, in other words: I’m calling for them to learn the most efficient and most powerful math tools available. A hundred years ago, pencil and paper were the most powerful math tools. Today they almost never are.

103

Can you actually point to a question that was actually on the test that involved an obsolete skill? There were no Roman numerals and the students were allowed to use calculators. I’m not clear where a computer will help if you don’t understand Pythagoras when you need to know the length of the third side of a right triangle.

Having a spreadsheet is useless when you don’t the principles you are trying to apply with the spreadsheet.

104

Fair point: I was just responding to the argument, and had strayed from the example at hand. In general, I do think that there’s a time to stop teaching techniques that are thoroughly supplanted by more modern techniques, but you may well be right that this test does not test any outdated techniques.

105

Yeah. I think I’d be hard-pressed to remember all of the Trigonometric theorems that I had to memorize at one time, but the fact that I passed it back then indicates that I had enough discipline to learn them sufficiently, and UNDERSTAND HOW TO USE THEM. If I need one of them today, I can look it up and I should know how to use it. If it ever comes to the point where I need to have them all memorized again, I probably could, and it should be easier this time because traces of the memories are in my brain somewhere.

I had to take a crapload of Calculus in college. How much of it have I actually used in my career as a software developer? Very little, actually. But having gone through those courses does pound a lot of discipline into you, and it helps prove that you can do a wide variety of stuff and can THINK mathematically.

106

I hated that question because it took a concrete example and then had the answer expressed as an irrational number. Knowing that the distance is “5 square root 2” isn’t all that helpful. At some point he’ll need to know that the answer is "a little over 7. If they really wanted to test how to express the square root of 50 they could just have asked that and left all the other crap out.

BTW, I got all 7 answers correct on both tests despite then being badly written. A better test of estimating skills would be something like:

“Sue sees that there is 2 inches of standing water on her flat roof because the drain is blocked. Her roof is about 11’ by 16’. She knows that a gallon of water weighs about 8 pounds and that a gallon container of water is about 5"x5"x8”. Approximately how much does the water on her roof weigh?"

107

QFT. The test shows how well you can apply critical thinking skills to the various pieces of knowledge you’ve been exposed to up to 10th grade. After five years of experience as a working adult, you’ll be exposed to a different set of skills/pieces of knowledge, and you’ll be required to apply critical thinking skills on a daily basis. I don’t care how long ago math class was, any reasonably functioning adult should be able to ace these problems, unless one was trying to get them wrong on purpose.

BTW, here’s the Harvard entrance exam from 1869. (Warning: PDF). OK, granted that having to translate Latin would be tough, but the math/geography/history questions were laughably easy. Clearly, my problem was being born 100 years to late…

108

Really? I bet you don’t know the answer to “Leonidas, Pausanias, Lysander”.

They were all Spartans, but other than that I have no idea what the question is asking for.

109

There was a time when I could answer most of those math questions. Right now I can only answer some of those math questions. None of them are particularly easy to do with only pen and paper, which is how they were intended to be done in 1869.

110

Without looking it up:

Leonidas and Pausanias were Spartan kings.

I believe Leonidas was the commander at Thermopylae and Pausanias
was his contemporary and commander the next year at Platea.

Lysander a Spartan commoner, was an Admiral and principal architect
of Sparta’s final victory in the Peloponnesian war two generations
after Leonidas and Pausanias.

111

If only we could test for your wit, dad! My sinuses are now on full blue Gatorade.

112

Yes, really.

Note that I mean ‘laughably easy’ in the sense of ‘for an entrance exam to a university that is considered one of the best in the world’.

113

So what’s the answer to “Leonidas, Pausanias, Lysander”?

114

Members of The Fosterettes, a hit singing group of the 1860s. Their rendition of “Camptown Races” made all the ladies swoon.

115

That’s not how I have ever seen it done. Each colony represents a single bacteria. The idea is to dilute the sample enough so that there are a manageable number when you incubate them on a petri dish. Each individual bacteria will grow into a colony and you count the colonies to see how you have, then multiply by the dilution factor. Guestimating the number of bacteria in a colony is pointless.