bellagiobob
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No different than some people I've seen at the gym.
OT: OT thread number 11 | No More Bad News PLEASE!
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No different than some people I've seen at the gym.
Behind Enemy Lines
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bellagiobob
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bellagiobob
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Can you not stay logged in? I just have a bookmark on the Oilers page, andI pretty much never have to login, and the odd time that I do, it’s always from the Oilers page.
harpoon
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- Dec 23, 2005
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Yeah, I probably could do that.
I’d just rather not.
Website should not force you to their top page.
Stoneman89
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So, you're saying you're going to continue to bang your head against the wall and wonder why it hurts.
Drivesaitl
Finding Hemingway
tbh not understanding this one. That is an immediate multiple that is simple to do in your head. Took me two secs and I'm not good at math.
Ritchie Valens
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Ritchie Valens
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No kidding, 300 x 4, 12x4, add the answers. Two seconds. Just don't let the powers that be see this as it'll somehow get into the curriculum next year.
bellagiobob
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It’s for people that can’t multiply 2x2.
. All kidding aside, there are a lot of people who wouldn’t have a clue how to actually use basic multiplication skills to figure it out, so this gives them a simplistic way to at least get the answer.
yukoner88
Registered User
It’s for people that can’t multiply 2x2.
never thought i'd ever see an excuse on this site, to post this song, but here we are
bellagiobob
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Fourier
Registered User
I think this was targeted at young kids. Visual things like this can help to explain what is going on.
Fourier
Registered User
What you wrote is a lot more sophisticated than it seems. You are using the distributive law implicitly which is not something that is at all obvious when one is first learning to multiply. It is actually a rather advanced concept.
Drivesaitl
Finding Hemingway
tbh I didn't follow it at all. I find the multiplication in the head easy. I saw the demonstration as totally odd and a classic instance in which problem solving is made much more difficut than it needs to be.
Maybe it makes sense for some. Most kids hate math. I think one of the reasons they learn to dislike it is they're given less efficient tools and much more steps in solving a problem. Kids typically lack the focus to follow or be interested in several steps to solving easy problems.
Its something my dad taught me when I was 6yrs old.
Conversely I have no idea what is being shown as a technique in the video. With the inane distractive audio along with no explanation of what was occurring it made zero initial sense to me. But it confirms I have ADHD as the audio completely overrides. I have to turn it down. Then is made some sense.
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Fixed to Ruin
Come wit it now!
i like that the swan just casually walks away like nothing happened.
Fourier
Registered User
There are no extra steps in this demonstration from what one would do to do the multiplication in the way I am sure you would. The order is a bit different, but it is really just a visualization exercise for the standard way we multiply. In fact, it is actually the distributive law in pictures.
Actually, it is not true that most kids hate math, at least not when they are young. Kids attitudes to math are often directly connected to their immediate success, as well as to the way their teachers approach the subject. Unfortunately, all it takes is one bad teacher to destroy a kid's confidence and/or to convince them that it is too hard for them. And I don't say this to downgrade teachers. I have great respect for teachers and the many challenges they face in their jobs. Most are very dedicated and committed to their students. But attitudes to the subjects they teach often reflect their own experiences. And it is well known that many elementary school teachers have challenges with and fears of mathematics that impact the way they communicate the subject to their kids. Addressing these issues is a complex problem but a lot of effort is going into this right now.
Math is not inherently harder than any other subject. But it is cumulative in nature so if there is a problem at any point along the way it can cause big issues going forward.
I don't want to offend you with this comment but while you may have been able to multiply when you are six it seems likely that you may not have had a very solid understanding of what you were doing. I say this because of your reaction to the video. But that is perfectly reasonable as that same statement applies to the vast majority of people. We tend to teach math in extremes. Either by wrote or by something like inquiry-based learning. Both have value. But one without the other leaves holes in a person's knowledge base.
There is much more to mathematics than algorithms. But not being able to perform algorithms accurately and confidently typically prevents someone from doing much at all.
Drivesaitl
Finding Hemingway
Disclosure that I probably do have ADHD. My bro probably had it too. Seemed endemic back in the day in the schools we went to. Maybe it isn't true that kids learn to dislike math now but it sure was in our schools back in the day. The bolded is I agree especially important but also such a tragedy with how math was taught when I was in school. The teacher would be up at the board making a 16 step equation to a problem that could be solved in far fewer steps and peoples eyes would roll around in their heads. There were complete math classes where I would just tune out and just wasn't there. I learned to tune out math in Grade 8 and prior I was reasonably good at it. I played Chess at a high level too and was school champ so it wasn't an issue of acuity. I hated the boredom of math. In division one and division 2 Math instruction they carefully tie in math instruction as a means to solve real world problems. Math is described in those terms. But math abstraction occurs heavily by Junior high. It goes into areas without disclosing the applicability of those areas, or at least it did at the time here.
But the chief problem is math being cumulative in nature. But this does make the subject matter harder. Once you miss the train for awhile its hard to get it back. My Math knowledge as an adult is probably impaired by finding it completely uninteresting in grade 8 and 9 and its also possibly an interplay of adolescence. I know in education theres debate on how generally predisposed youth are to learning in Junior high years. Hormones really impact and distract. Did for me. For two years my grades went down in some subjects and by highschool came back up. But I always had trouble getting good marks in math in Highschool, and by university I was lost.
This last part is that Math needs to be paced to students. I knew all multiplication by the time I hit school. By the time I started. So the pacing was wrong for me. By Grade 6 we were covering what my parents already taught me. I needed more at the time. More challenging. I wish they would have introduced more mathematical concepts at an earlier time because I was more preprepared in Elementary to learn them than I was later in Junior High.
You are correct that my learning the multiplication tables preschool, was mostly rote learning. It was simply memorized recall mostly. Except in say 8,9, 10, 11, 12 tables where there are other pattern ways to come up with the answer.
No offense taken. Math can be a wonderful subject and I tend to like quantification. My math impairment also held me back in areas of Physics or Chemistry and I would otherwise be very interested in Chemistry. I wish they started Chemistry earlier in school too. In our curriculum Biology was taught in Jr high but not Chem or Physics. I wonder why. It makes me sad at times I am not better at these subjects. I adore education so I consider these to be holes in my learning. Conversely though is its made me more inclined to linguistics. For better or worse. heh
This is a nice read that captures some of my views.
Math Class: The Champ at Slowing Down the Fast Learners (Opinion)
The only way to close achievement gaps is to slow down the fast learners, Doug Green writes in a guest post.
www.edweek.org
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Fourier
Registered User
If you want a local success story on how to bring math to a wide audience I will direct you here:
Some History
The first SNAP type math fair was designed by Mike Dumanski and Andy Liu in 1997-1998. Mike was vice-principal of Our Lady of Victories Elementary School, and Andy was a professor in the Math...
www.mathfair.com
This is a wonderful program that was started by Andy Lui at the U of A and a local teacher, and was carried forward by a group of very dedicated individuals. The premise is non-competitive math fairs. The non-competitive part is important because the goal is broad participation including kids who "are not good at math".
I have a colleague at Mount Royal in Calgary who an incredibly creative teacher. He does not give "tests". He gives "celebrations of learning". Sounds a bit corny and fluffy but it is anything but. He is very demanding of his students who take an extremely active role in their learning. His classroom typically has no one sitting as everyone is at the board either working on something or explaining concepts to one another. No one sits around and watches him drivel on.
There is a fellow at SFU who advocates for Vertical Classrooms for Math education.
The Vertical Classroom Project Begins
In This Article The inspiration for the Vertical Classroom Project My first VCP lesson General and specific observations Questions, concerns and ponderables The next step Materials The Inspiration…
jennvadnais.com
You may well have thrived in such an environment. Again, no sitting around and listening to someone else drone on. Math is simply not a spectator sport. But it is often treated as such. Nor is it antisocial, but again it is often taught in a way that makes it feel that way. I teach in a program for in-service math teachers that I started about a decade ago. I once had a teacher tell me that he never lets his students talk to one another when working on problems or discuss their solutions in any way. He said math is something you have to do on your own. And yet as a research mathematician my best work is collaborative.
Drivesaitl
Finding Hemingway
If you want a local success story on how to bring math to a wide audience I will direct you here:
Some History
The first SNAP type math fair was designed by Mike Dumanski and Andy Liu in 1997-1998. Mike was vice-principal of Our Lady of Victories Elementary School, and Andy was a professor in the Math...www.mathfair.com
This is a wonderful program that was started by Andy Lui at the U of A and a local teacher, and was carried forward by a group of very dedicated individuals. The premise is non-competitive math fairs. The non-competitive part is important because the goal is broad participation including kids who "are not good at math".
I have a colleague at Mount Royal in Calgary who an incredibly creative teacher. He does not give "tests". He gives "celebrations of learning". Sounds a bit corny and fluffy but it is anything but. He is very demanding of his students who take an extremely active role in their learning. His classroom typically has no one sitting as everyone is at the board either working on something or explaining concepts to one another. No one sits around and watches him drivel on.
There is a fellow at SFU who advocates for Vertical Classrooms for Math education.
The Vertical Classroom Project Begins
In This Article The inspiration for the Vertical Classroom Project My first VCP lesson General and specific observations Questions, concerns and ponderables The next step Materials The Inspiration…
You may well have thrived in such an environment. Again, no sitting around and listening to someone else drone on. Math is simply not a spectator sport. But it is often treated as such. Nor is it antisocial, but again it is often taught in a way that makes it feel that way. I teach in a program for in-service math teachers that I started about a decade ago. I once had a teacher tell me that he never lets his students talk to one another when working on problems or discuss their solutions in any way. He said math is something you have to do on your own. And yet as a research mathematician my best work is collaborative.
Still though not every method of instruction is going to work for every student or type of student. It wasn't the teacher at the board, students at desk methodology that did me in. It was the lack of including real world applicability and also utilizing more simple methods of solving problems. In many countries problem solving is stressed more than formulaic rote methods. Students are encouraged to experiment with different methods to obtain the same answer to understand math better. Here those are given big red marks because you didn't follow all the do it this way steps.
For me to learn I need relative lack of distraction. Participatory learning in math would have done me in in a different way. I'm naturally introverted and with ADHD need the quiet of desk learning. But the at the board teaching could have been made more interesting and applicable.
Several other countries also do away with the Geometry-Algebra chunk learning that for 3-4yrs dominates Math instruction alienates the interest level of a lot of students (like it does in NA) Countries that have instruction that introduces all math concepts at earlier age in blended Math instruction have students that perform far better in standardized testing. Thats what I needed. More pacing and more concepts introduced to keep it lively. I needed the curriculum to be better arranged.
I could be wrong but in my experience its Algebra, Geometry, Calculus that results in the loss of most Math students. These each representing stages where students just drop math. Introducing these concepts earlier, and only in degrees would I think obtain greater survivor rates
in student adherence to both taking, and doing well in math. Lumping Geometry and Algebra together in volume in Junior High level seems to me the worst possible curriculum design. Its the bad medicine phase of math that not many like, and occurring at raging hormone times where students are least available to new information.
Fourier
Registered User
You won't get me to argue that what we do in Canada with math curriculum is perfect. Not by any stretch, though it is also true that curriculum and how it is taught varies greatly from place to place and over time. But I have never heard of a country that has done away with algebra in any substantive way. In fact, it would be almost impossible for me to think of a math curriculum that did this. It would essentially kill any chance that a student had to ever go anywhere beyond extremely rudimentary mathematics. You also have to be careful about using standardized testing as the primary metric for success in a curriculum. Some of the countries that historically do the best on standardized tests fail to produce people who can creatively use mathematics.Still though not every method of instruction is going to work for every student or type of student. It wasn't the teacher at the board, students at desk methodology that did me in. It was the lack of including real world applicability and also utilizing more simple methods of solving problems. In many countries problem solving is stressed more than formulaic rote methods. Students are encouraged to experiment with different methods to obtain the same answer to understand math better. Here those are given big red marks because you didn't follow all the do it this way steps.
For me to learn I need relative lack of distraction. Participatory learning in math would have done me in in a different way. I'm naturally introverted and with ADHD need the quiet of desk learning. But the at the board teaching could have been made more interesting and applicable.
Several other countries also do away with the Geometry-Algebra chunk learning that for 3-4yrs dominates Math instruction alienates the interest level of a lot of students (like it does in NA) Countries that have instruction that introduces all math concepts at earlier age in blended Math instruction have students that perform far better in standardized testing. Thats what I needed. More pacing and more concepts introduced to keep it lively. I needed the curriculum to be better arranged.
I could be wrong but in my experience its Algebra, Geometry, Calculus that results in the loss of most Math students. These each representing stages where students just drop math. Introducing these concepts earlier, and only in degrees would I think obtain greater survivor rates
Geometry is not a single concept. What most people refer to when they say geometry is old school Euclidian geometry or perhaps some analytic geometry. Euclidean geometry is all but gone as a standard topic in North American curriculum which some lament. You are right though that one reason for this is that many struggled with the formality of the subject. But geometry is everywhere these days. If a kid likes video games, geometry is an essential component. If you go for a CT scan or if you want to encrypt something you are experiencing two applications of sophisticated modern branches of geometry.
One of the problems with introducing some mathematical concepts too early is that abstraction requires a certain level of maturity physiologically, or it is overwhelming. The research on this is mixed but for many kids without a solid concrete understanding of a concept abstraction is extremely problematic.
As far as applications are concerned that is also a real topic of contention. It is often nearly impossible to give an application of a mathematical concept that is not completely contrived before one has an already firm grasp of the underlying mathematics without really careful preparation. Even at my level, attempts to introduce concepts through "applications" fail far more often than not. Imagine trying to teach someone about addition and multiplication by giving them a tax return form to fill out. It's a pretty extreme example but it does illustrate the core mistake that is often made in this regard. Without prior expertise in either the application or the underlying mathematics conflating the two usually ends up in no learning in either front.
In the old days we use to teach things like Kelper's laws in Calculus. If you asked students what they wanted more of in the class, they would say "more applications". If you then asked what they would get rid of they would list all the actual applications covered in the course.
I have a colleague who teaches math to high level policy makers at the Kennedy School. Her students are basically running parts of the world. During the pandemic she showed them how very basic concepts from Calculus and statistics could be used to visualize the consequences of various key decisions in policies. These are brilliant people, and she is a great teacher, but they still struggled with even the very simple mathematics required to do this because they lacked background.
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Drivesaitl
Finding Hemingway
I didn't state that any countries have done away with Algebra. I've cited that other countries have done away with a large chunk of Algebra/Geometry dominating instruction for a period of years in the curriculum here.
This is problematic because Geometry and Algebra can be alienating subjects and are lumped in here dominating the curriculum in Junior High. Other countries that perform better integrate and BLEND Algebra and Geometry throughout the 1-12 grade math instruction thus spreading out the unpopular "Geometry Sandwich".
Math scores stink in America. Other countries teach it differently - and see higher achievement.
U.S. schools teach math differently than other countries, which has led to low scores. These schools steal teaching tricks from around the world.
www.usatoday.com
Maybe students just hate Calculus. I can't comment much because it was a foreign language to me. I never connected with it. But there is high correlation with Calculus success in University and whether or not students took it in High School. I wasn't good enough in Math to be in the Calculus stream. Only one Calculus course existed in my highschool and only 30top math students in it. Trying to learn Calculus in University was daunting as several other subjects dominate your time. Would be better to have students have more exposure to it prior to University.
Finally. the entire trigonometry instruction here was rote learning. It was entirely non conceptual and to this day I don't know what Trigonometry is actually about. Most people don't This fairly dooms somebody to not comprehend Calculus. You mentioned correctly that Math concepts are very buidling block. But not a good job is done explaining those blocks here. All trigonometry was for me was Sine Cosine Tangent plug and play formulas. I didn't understand one iota of it. Even told to stop trying to comprehend it, just do the calculations. Thats silly imo.
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Aerchon
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- Jul 20, 2011
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Holy shit there is a lot of back and forth on this. I don't have ADHD and there is no way I am reading all those walls of text.
Some people are not good at math.
Answering that questions within seconds accurately is incredibly easy for some/most/many?
It always surprises me when people struggle with what I consider simple math like the example. I find grammar harder than basic math/physics.
People think differently.
The end.
Fourier
Registered User
Most students who struggle with Calculus don't actually struggle with the concepts in Calculus itself, they struggle with algebra. At its core Calculus is actually pretty simple conceptually. If a kid knows how to do a little basic algebra and knows how to find the slope of a line, I can teach them enough Calculus to pass any basic first year class regardless of their background. MATH 31 for example is actually significantly easier conceptually than MATH 30 which has a variety of topics that one could argue are more complex than anything in MATH 31.I didn't state that any countries have done away with Algebra. I've cited that other countries have done away with a large chunk of Algebra/Geometry dominating instruction for a period of years in the curriculum here.
This is problematic because Geometry and Algebra can be alienating subjects and are lumped in here dominating the curriculum in Junior High. Other countries that perform better integrate and BLEND Algebra and Geometry throughout the 1-12 grade math instruction.
Math scores stink in America. Other countries teach it differently - and see higher achievement.
U.S. schools teach math differently than other countries, which has led to low scores. These schools steal teaching tricks from around the world.
Maybe students just hate Calculus. I can't comment much because it was a foreign language to me. I never connected with it. But there is high correlation with Calculus success in University and whether or not students took it in High School. I wasn't good enough in Math to be in the Calculus stream. Only one Calculus course existed in my highschool and only 30top math students in it. Trying to learn Calculus in University was daunting as several other subjects dominate your time. Would be better to have students have more exposure to it prior to University.
As far as the article you posted is concerned, there is some accuracy to it and some stuff that is pretty easy to debunk. I have no issue with a more spiraled curriculum. But one also has to ask...what achievement are we trying to measure and when do we stop trying to measure it. The US for example does very poorly on many of these tests. But they also have the best top end mathematics students in the world. The only country that is close is China. As I have previously said other countries that tend to do very well on such tests perform poorly in terms of producing mathematically sophisticated people, the real problem solvers so to speak.
What I personally believe we need is balance. When the pendulum has swung far in the direction suggested by the article you quote teh result is often equally as disastrous.
Lots of people are not good at math. Far fewer need be.
Jaime Escalante - Wikipedia
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