Yeah. My pchem classes were calculus based, but I took a spectroscopy seminar later and was all “What the fuck are these boxes of numbers?” I think the math goes better with the boxes rather than the calculus. Wish I’d taken linear algebra. Barely anything I learned in multivariable calc applied to the chemistry I learned. You have to know how to integrate 3D stuff and handle some spherical harmonics, but that’s it.
My baby sister says linear algebra was super easy, so maybe I’ll just grab a textbook some weekend and learn it.
And re: other posters. Ahem. “Cubes and air-rods”. Get it right
The problem with math as opposed to English is that in English you learn the grammar and the spelling and stuff, and at the same time you learn the literature - you learn the building blocks and you learn what it’s used for.
By the time you get to “what it’s used for” in math you’re in grad school. I spent my whole “math career” on the math equivalent of spelling, right? So I see why they tried that whole New Math thing. (I hadn’t thought about “SMSG” for ages and now I remember it so clearly - I never got the point, is all. It was just like the “old math” in that there was no answer to “why are we learning this?” except that the “old math” would at least teach you how much to tip.)
We went to new math when I was 6th grade. I went from an A student in “arithmetic” to a D student overnight. I recovered slightly in high school Algebra and Geometry, but never really matered any higher concepts.
And if the absolute value of -1 is 1, why the hell do we bother with -1?
My youngest kids are learning this and I can’t help them with math homework. I learned New Math in the sixties and seventies. We also had the Metric Battles then, so don’t even ask me how many pints are in an ounce. I do make a mean Venn Diagram and my Base Six is impeccable.
My grown son was secretly taught phonics by a brave veteran teacher in the “Whole Language” nineties, even though it was officially against school policy. Most of his generation cannot sound things out, and guess random wrong words when they first encounter a new word. My youngest kids are being taught “Whole Language” too, but the school system now allows a dash of phonics. Spelling and handwriting are no longer taught.
Not sure what you’re saying here. Is absolute value a New Math concept? And absolute value is a useful concept. A simple example is you’ve walked four miles forward, then one mile back. You’ve gone 3 miles from your starting point (4 + (-1)), but covered a distance total of 5 miles (4 + abs(-1)).
Whoa. I’m happy with looking at new ways to solve old problems (more than one way to skin a cat and all that), and the answers are the same in the old long division way and the Everyday Mathematics way, but I can’t wrap my mind around how that can be perceived as easier. Are there actual real-world studies out there that support the idea that this is either practically or conceptually better for students? Because I can’t see how it is.
I can understand the intent. Find a way to help students “capture the essence” of math instead of just memorizing the mechanics in hopes that it’ll eventually lead to technological advances that’ll help the U.S. surpass the Soviets both economically and in international prestige.
In other words:Build a better Gauss-trap, and the world will beat a path to your door.
Nope, it’s the other way around. They used to teach things like “ph” is pronounced like “f” and an e at the end of a word following a consonant would make the vowel a long sound; e.g., mat vs mate. Thank god I was still taught in phonics so I could sound things out in my head.
Do you ever really “sound things out” while reading?
I don’t think I do. And I don’t think I did as a kid, except as a school exercise that, it seems to me, had less in common with reading than it did with a decoding puzzle.
Not the second time, but I dont know how else you would deal with a word you hadn’t seen before. Somehow phonics did not hurt my reading skills, nor the millions of people taught that way before whole language was foisted on us.
I was struggling along with basic math and doing ok. Then all of a sudden in the third grade, we started learning “new math.” I was lost at that point, and the nuns that were teaching us did not seem to understand it well enough to answer the questions we were asking.
Anecdote ahead: It seems like the kids that were able to grasp these new concepts on their own went on to do well in math. Those of us that had trouble understanding it ended up having trouble with math from then on.
As other said, functions, set theory and other bases covered most of it.
But it’s truly funny how many people got scared off by these concepts.
Then again I know people if I said
9 + Y = 15
Solve for Y
They’d be stuck forever
Yet if I said, “You have nine apples how many more do you need to have 15 apples total,” 99.9% of all people would give me the answer in under five seconds.
We had the School Mathematics Project here, which was very similar. They were very hot on matrices, and Critical Path Analysis, and a bunch of other stuff which I can’t recall ever using since. Normal probability distribution and Gaussian curves and stuff, which I do occasionally meet still, waited until ‘A’ [for advanced] Level Maths (always with a s on the end, please).
Absolutely. There are some rules, knowing them helps to understand how the word probably sounds, simple as that. Not sure why anyone would eliminate that, but it certainly won’t help too much with meaning.
