reluctantly adding my two cents, on this side of the ocean, my wife (psychologist who did non-mathematics type humanities) wonders if it was fair to make her do her last year twice because she failed (only) spherical trigonometry ("boldriehoeksmeetkunde" in flemish). Learn (a+b)*(a-b)=(a^2-b^2) by heart. ok. Same for a^2 +/- 2 a b + b^2 = (a+/-b)^2. But doing excercises (and exams) on 'pattern recognition' on disguised variations of the above are effective screeners for dyslexia. Weed'm out. Same for (strict) orthography. Yes, it's all down to the quality of teachers, their enthousiasm, their didactics. I've had a few good ones (P. Nyns, Van Paemel, Van Boechout, Teugels). Owe them. The real question is: HOW should algebra be tought, and HOW should it be tested in exams. (..waving hands franticly, by lack of arguments ..) W. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gareth McCaughan" <gareth.mccaughan@pobox.com> To: <dasimov@earthlink.net>; "math-fun" <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Sunday, February 05, 2006 11:05 PM Subject: Re: [math-fun] Why learn algebra?
Go *figure*.
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