Comments on: We should drop arithmetic

By: McChuck

McChuck — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 11:42:45 +0000

Education should not begin until age 8. Let the kids play and learn from their parents. Then standard education should be complete by age 13. Five years, beginning at an older age, should be enough to teach the average child all the basics they will need to know.

After that, begin apprenticeships or specialized education. Not more than 15% of kids should be entered into college prep.

By: McChuck

McChuck — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 14:57:35 +0000

Experiments in India with a touch screen computer mounted on the side of a building show kids eagerly teaching themselves and each other, using a language none of them knew when they started.

By: Felix

Felix — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 01:21:14 +0000

The implication here is that you can take a bunch of (JR?) high school kids – right now – who are way, way behind in math and get ‘em up to speed pronto if only they do it right.

Forget the IQ thing, too. Numbers and such are not rocket science.

Anyway, this seems something cheaply verifiable.

By: Felix

Felix — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 01:01:25 +0000

@CLVR “standard words” : Nope. Just avoided them to emphasize the meaning. Ambiguously, in the case of power, apparently. :)

“parse the order” : Parens, my friend, parens. (Parenthetically, I often use parens in programming, even when not needed because different languages have different operator precedences. So why remember those language details?)

“equivalence?” : Beats me. — (minus/minus, maybe?) BTW, speaking of equal signs, an ASR 33 rendered underscore as a back arrow. It was a sad day in the life of humanity when two such wonderful symbols had to fight to the death. And back-tick. watching from the sidelines, survived. Jeez. Life is not fair!

“implicit mult” : Ooops. Comment system didn’t like open/close angle bracket together. Forgettable note to self: Never include Visual Basic code in a comment.

“factorial” : Power. Some language’s ^ (hat character – capital 6). Or Python’s ** (star/star). Both of which are probably nicer than my oddity. My oddity emphasizes that order matters by being unsymmetrical.

By: Aretae

Aretae — Thu, 24 Jan 2019 00:51:21 +0000

Read that. Did the experiment.

Interested 14-year-olds require about 40 hours of instruction across one year to go from “What’s 6+7?” to starting algebra.

Six years is a complete waste.

By: Bomag

Bomag — Wed, 23 Jan 2019 22:36:33 +0000

Three of the most prominent mathematicians in history — Galois, Ramanujan, Grothendieck — had scant mathematical training in their early years.

Thomas Hobbes had almost no exposure to math, but picked it up at a high level circa age 40.

By: Ezra

Ezra — Wed, 23 Jan 2019 18:02:40 +0000

Arithmetic has been done away a long time. Perhaps in a figurative sense much more than a literal but try to get some kid at a fast food register to make simple change without using the register or a calculator.

By: Bob Sykes

Bob Sykes — Wed, 23 Jan 2019 17:26:13 +0000

Why don’t we race-norm mathematics. Blacks would be taught to count and do simple additions. Hispanics might get all the way to multiplication. Reserve arithmetic and other forms of mathematics to Whites, Asians and Jews.

Or better yet, race-norm our schools. Have one set of schools, possibly going through third grade, but not beyond, for blacks. Another going to, say, sixth grade for Hispanics. And the complete El-Hi for Whites, Asians and Jews.

We would save a lot of money, and blacks and Hispanics would not be harassed by having to go to school for years on end.

By: CVLR

CVLR — Wed, 23 Jan 2019 16:46:25 +0000

>[ 123 34 ] is 123 together with 34

Are you also doing away with standard words like “addition”?

>123 ][ 34 is how far 123 and 34 are apart

Now how are you going to parse for order of operations?

>123 34 is 123 scaled-by 34 or 123 duped 34 times

What is the rational for using an implicit operator for multiplication?

>123 == 34 is 123 split into 34 equal pieces

How do you propose to evaluate equivalence?

>123 >* 34 is 123 recursively replicated 34 times

You mean, like a factorial with a base?

By: Peter Whitaker

Peter Whitaker — Wed, 23 Jan 2019 15:17:31 +0000

Excessive drilling instills learned helplessness.