slatestarcodex

Probably what *this* should be called.
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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Rylinks » Fri Feb 19, 2021 12:58 am

Starprintsky wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 12:56 am
Rylinks wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 12:47 am the comparison isn't whether more music theory would be more or less helpful than messing around on the margin, it's teaching people music theory for 13 years without ever having them mess around with improvisation once
Don't get this. There's the example of the triangle on page 3, the random page I also read. You figure out an argument that the triangle takes up half the space. Neat!
This is different to all the "modelling and problem solving" questions I did in maths classes how?
can you give an example of one such

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Shiny Days » Fri Feb 19, 2021 12:58 am

here's why you're failing the test. you did the division in your head. we needed you to write the steps you took on the paper here because we have to teach to the stupidest kid in the class

cool cool

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Ashenai » Fri Feb 19, 2021 12:59 am

Jeb Bush 2012 wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 12:57 am now, you might say "ashenai is not american, not knowing about american football does not make him a nerd" but I would remind you that hungarian is a type of nerd

get owned by my Hajduk swordsmanship, decadent western pig-dog

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Starprintsky » Fri Feb 19, 2021 1:05 am

Shiny Days wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 12:58 am here's why you're failing the test. you did the division in your head. we needed you to write the steps you took on the paper here because we have to teach to the stupidest kid in the class

cool cool
I think they encourage communicating your process because it builds good habits and gets you part-marks for when you make a very minor error.

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Starprintsky » Fri Feb 19, 2021 1:10 am

Rylinks wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 12:58 am can you give an example of one such
I can't think of any geometry examples off the top of my head. Every extension (here called "modelling or problem solving") question that was a proof challenged you to play around and come up yourself with the "trick" that unlocked it, however.

There were also many opportunities to apply maths to things as a chance to play with it. One super (surprisingly so) applied example was an assignment that was "do up a budget for living, taking into account that if you borrow money you will need to calculate how compounding interest on this loan will affect you". Or back in primary school they got us extension kids to draw up our own house plans and then calculate the cost of construction using material costs, lengths/areas/etc. Of course, this stuff is all far too practical and not ~beautiful~ enough for Lockhart, so NOT VALID ART and therefore awful mathematics education.

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Rylinks » Fri Feb 19, 2021 1:17 am

i don't hate those, but they are probably not doing math as lockhart describes it. It's not because they are too practical, but because teaching students area formulas and then applying those to a blueprint is not playing with math, it's playing with blueprints.

if the student's werent told the formulas and had to try things to figure it out then i think it is ~doing math~

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Starprintsky » Fri Feb 19, 2021 1:31 am

Rylinks wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 1:17 am i don't hate those, but they are probably not doing math as lockhart describes it. It's not because they are too practical, but because teaching students area formulas and then applying those to a blueprint is not playing with math, it's playing with blueprints.

if the student's werent told the formulas and had to try things to figure it out then i think it is ~doing math~
But does this not expose how stupid it is for Lockhart to come along and say "this tiny piece of what maths is and is used for is the real math, and we should be having our children fumble around in its confines for fun"? Like yes that example is certainly more playing with blueprints than it is playing with math, but it's still a math exercise. It would not be somehow better if we didn't tell them the area formulae first (plus elementary students would never get the formula for a circle). You could describe it as more mathematical, but the educational content is not improved.

And that's the thing with Lockhart. He specifically points out that the triangle example is so beautiful because there is no practical example in mind. His position is simultaneously that we spend so much time teaching people math they'll never use ("most people will never listen to a song"), and also that we need to teach math in a way that's less practically useful.

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Rylinks » Fri Feb 19, 2021 1:44 am

Starprintsky wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 1:31 am
Rylinks wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 1:17 am i don't hate those, but they are probably not doing math as lockhart describes it. It's not because they are too practical, but because teaching students area formulas and then applying those to a blueprint is not playing with math, it's playing with blueprints.

if the student's werent told the formulas and had to try things to figure it out then i think it is ~doing math~
But does this not expose how stupid it is for Lockhart to come along and say "this tiny piece of what maths is and is used for is the real math, and we should be having our children fumble around in its confines for fun"? Like yes that example is certainly more playing with blueprints than it is playing with math, but it's still a math exercise. It would not be somehow better if we didn't tell them the area formulae first (plus elementary students would never get the formula for a circle). You could describe it as more mathematical, but the educational content is not improved.

And that's the thing with Lockhart. He specifically points out that the triangle example is so beautiful because there is no practical example in mind. His position is simultaneously that we spend so much time teaching people math they'll never use ("most people will never listen to a song"), and also that we need to teach math in a way that's less practically useful.
i think the arguments about practical usefulness are not 'letting kids play around with triangles is more useful', they're 'if you are defending the existing math curriculum on grounds of practical usefulness, the vast majority of it isn't useful, so why not let kids play around with triangles'

they're also not about pure/applied math. Lockhart has 'mathematicians conceived of black holes long before astronomers actually found any' as a positive example, which sounds like applied math to me

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Starprintsky » Fri Feb 19, 2021 1:59 am

Next from Lockhart:

Webpages are art, it's right there in the name, "webpage design"? Yes you can build plain, functional websites but we're not talking about those. We're talking about the beautiful ones, and also how boring it is to learn PHP and CSS! Kids in school computing classes should be inventing their own programming languages, not learning vertical-align: top!

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Rylinks » Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:03 am

i would consider it very bad to lock kids in rooms to learn css yes

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Shiny Days » Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:16 am

Starprintsky wrote: vertical-align: top!
sobbing

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Starprintsky » Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:16 am

Well, yeah probably :supo:
As I said I'm more willing to accept broader points about the structure of schooling.
In this case, I don't think locking them in a room to have them invent their own programming languages for webpages is any better.

Problem is I can't tell if American schools are just that bad or if Lockhart's stuff about e.g. "they will never hear an actual song" is just imagined. As I was saying, I heard lots of "songs" in my math classes. And every exam where I got through all the core content in 25min and then spent the other 65min unsuccessfully scribbling out page after page of meandering trying to figure out the trick to crack the extension proof questions was plenty of opportunity to uninformedly improvise.

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Rylinks » Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:21 am

i don't think i saw a single extension proof section in US schools

we did spend a class period trying to find the formula for the moment of inertia but that was in physics class

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Juri » Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:31 pm

Starprintsky wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 12:42 am
Skeletor wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 12:36 am
Starprintsky wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 12:32 am Why would you be learning the same content in successive years?
I think it's because school sucks
Noticing that all our school-defenders are not American and all our school-haters are American...
I'm Australian and I think school in its current incarnation is Quite Bad, although I'm more biased than someone like Rylinks or Skeletor would be
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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Juri » Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:32 pm

Shiny Days wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:16 am
Starprintsky wrote: vertical-align: top!
sobbing
lol
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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Juri » Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:33 pm

Shiny Days wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 12:58 amwe needed you to write the steps you took on the paper here because we have to teach to the stupidest kid in the class
i dont think this is how it works
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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Shiny Days » Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:36 pm

Juri wrote:i dont think this is how it works
that is how we teach in north america, but it might not be how it works

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Juri » Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:37 pm

Shiny Days wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:36 pm
Juri wrote:i dont think this is how it works
that is how we teach in north america, but it might not be how it works
I'm sure that dynamic is at play in other areas of schooling, I just don't think it's why long division is taught the way it is is all
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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Shiny Days » Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:39 pm

long division defenders

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Khaos » Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:41 pm

teaching the stupidest kid in class is a good thing

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Shiny Days » Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:41 pm

Khaos wrote:teaching the stupidest kid in class is a good thing
eyes narrowing

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Shiny Days » Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:43 pm

that's a relic of our time, though, isn't it? do they even still grade kids? that could hurt their self esteem right

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Juri » Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:45 pm

Shiny Days wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:39 pm long division defenders
arti i dont think much of long division at all!
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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Khaos » Fri Feb 19, 2021 2:47 pm

Shiny Days wrote:that's a relic of our time, though, isn't it? do they even still grade kids? that could hurt their self esteem right
yes they grade them. come on arti

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Shiny Days » Fri Feb 19, 2021 3:21 pm

Khaos wrote: yes they grade them. come on arti
this post hurt my self esteem

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Khaos » Fri Feb 19, 2021 3:35 pm

Shiny Days wrote: Fri Feb 19, 2021 3:21 pm
Khaos wrote: yes they grade them. come on arti
this post hurt my self esteem
i feel like you think the education system here is a parody of what it actually is

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Khaos » Fri Feb 19, 2021 4:07 pm

one thing about that article and letting kids discover elegant solutions... i feel like my university math classes were like that. or rather, they all had that as an element. and that's part of why a lot of people hated university math classes.

people who didnt like math liked the questions where you do what you're taught, and hated the questions where you need to think outside the box.

and then people like us liked puzzling out solutions with intuition

some people don't like puzzles

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by pterrus » Sat Feb 20, 2021 11:59 am

But have you guys considered
IMG_20210219_130016.jpg
IMG_20210219_130016.jpg (3.35 MiB) Viewed 332 times

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Crunchums » Fri Feb 26, 2021 4:52 am

u gotta skate

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Re: slatestarcodex

Post by Skeletor » Fri Feb 26, 2021 5:13 am

I unfollowed everyone on Twitter
this person seems smart
except a handful of newspapers
nevermind
wow, [you]. that all sounds terrible. i hope it gets better for you

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