On 2 Jul 2003 at 21:35, Henry Baker wrote:
In the NYTimes there was an example of one of the problems on the test, which simply asked what the diagonal distance of a rectangular (3D) box is in terms of its sides -- not an especially difficult question for a junior or a senior in high school who has even a smattering of math and/or physics.
I guess this brings up the age-old question of "how much math _should_ the average person who graduates high school should know?" A lot of students think that math is really out of touch with reality. E.g., in today's world of ubiquitous calculators, why waste time on teaching long division?
But this has been happening for a long time --- I'm told that the generation before me learned to extract square roots by hand, but certainly that wasn't taught to us [although we did learn long division..:o)]. And odd skills like interpolating log tables and such seem quaint to have learned [I'm not sure I could FIND my old book of log tables any more]. There are a lot of 'math skills' that different generations learned that are, in retrospect [IMO!], more compensating for the available (or rather _un_available) aids/technology than they are 'real math'. And, indeed, I'd probably say that long-division might well be one of them [OTOH, being able to estimate a division result in your head is *NOT* one of them -- that's an important skill that many folk, even those who CAN do long division, don't do very well]
A more relevant question (which my gardener/landscaper just failed) is "what sprinkler pattern covers the grass best?" (Answer is _not_ a cartesian grid.) So clearly high schools aren't teaching even highly relevant math.
I guess that I'm a bit stumped, too --- there must be something I'm missing about the available patterns and what 'best' means in this context.
The diagonal distance of a rectangular box may not be the most relevant question, but I just met a decorator who flunked the 2D version. Shelves in kitchens are priced by the "linear foot"; how many feet of shelves do you have if the shelves are at an angle? (Dunno.)
We now have a nation full of math idiots!
Just so --- and interestingly I think this has little or nothing to do with knowing the sort of math skills involved in learning long division or knowing the quadratic equation or the like. How would/should we go about teaching folk the *essential* parts of math? What math knowledge should your gardener or decorator have had to help them with their problem? Certainly not how to take a cube root by hand... Much of what I see of the critical/practical parts of mathematics has to do with how one perceives and analyzes the things around them, rather than having to do with specific computational skills. Most of us acquired those analytic skills as a sort of happy-coincidence byproduct of learning a lot of [in fairness!] otherwise irrelevant math. If there were some way to teach the wisdom without the largely-not-useful stuff that generally goes with it, that'd probably be what we need, but I don't know how to do that [wasn't "the new math" an attempt to do that?]
I have a solution: we give a test to everyone who wants to immigrate to the U.S. If you pass the test, you get in; if you don't, you don't. Since the U.S. birth rate is falling (as it is in every "first world" country), at least we can get an educated population through immigration.
But what would you put in the test? /Bernie\ -- Bernie Cosell Fantasy Farm Fibers mailto:bernie@fantasyfarm.com Pearisburg, VA --> Too many people, too few sheep <--