If you're looking to quash complaints about the analogy, I'd pedantically replace terms with things like "rocket" and "height", then explain that the reason we use these equations at all is because if two systems are described by the same math, then... they're described by the same math. Further, in real life (particularly engineering) extracting the relevant information in a problem can be the most important part. (although some physics undergrad texts have problems exactly like yours). Basic statistics might not be the hill you want to die on in teaching physics 1. Depending on the class, I'm sometimes lucky if they know the difference between velocity and acceleration by the end. If you're new to teaching intro phys, get some beer ready. On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 4:56 PM Brad Klee <bradklee@gmail.com> wrote:
Undergrads in Arkansas apparently are not rated for thinking in terms of analogy, so this problem has been judged inappropriate for a class on physics.
The other difficulties are that they don't know how to fit data, work with error bars, calculate standard deviations, integrate functions, etc.
In this case, adding, subtracting, and function evaluation is too much to ask for, because students (mostly from engineering) expect cookies to be cut in a particular way.
Too bad because I was interested to hear what they think about the Nature article, see also:
https://media.nature.com/original/magazine-assets/d41586-019-03241-9/d41586-...
Anyone here have an opinion about the local extinction data? Or suggestions what to do as a teacher in this situation?
--Brad
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