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From: ThinkTank on 4 May 2010 05:08
> On Tue, 4 May 2010, J. Clarke wrote:
> > On 5/4/2010 4:40 AM, William Elliot wrote:
> >> On Mon, 3 May 2010, Transfer Principle wrote:
> >>
> >>> The one question that I have never seen answered
> is why don't
> >>> the _Asians_ complain that they are required to
> learn more
> >>> math than is required in the real world. If
> Americans don't
> >>> like that the little math that they are forced to
> learn isn't
> >>> used in the real world, then Asians, who have to
> learn much
> >>> more math than Americans, have more right to
> complain -- and
> >>> yet we don't hear about such complaints. If
> Asians only had
> >>> to learn as much math as they need in the real
> world and not
> >>> one iota more, then there would no longer be a
> gap between the
> >>> math curricula of the two continents.
> >>>
> >> Because the Asians know that the real world is
> scientific and that math,
> >> real math instead of USA play at math (as stated
> by a Vietnamese
> >> immigrant) is science. The America view of real
> world is media myopic
> >> commercialism. In short, Asians don't complain
> because they're
> >> not lazy and fat like Americans.
> >
> > Math is not science. Math is a tool of science.
> >
> > As for the Asians being so brilliant, when they do
> something that the US
> > didn't do 40 years ago, other than produce consumer
> products for cheap, get
> > back to us.
> >
> They're not brilliant. They work hard. Americans
> don't want to work hard,

I disagree. Americans work very hard. We just work very
hard at things other than mathematics. The reason that
the Chinese are so good at math is because they are
disciplined, not because they work hard. There's a
significant difference. The Chinese are more disciplined
because they live in communist country, and that is
simply the nature of communism. Capitalism has more of a
free spirit, more of a creative side, but it is quite
lacking in discipline. The competitiveness of
capitalism, however, can more than make up for this lack
of discipline. Capitalism is generally better able to
regulate resources. The problem is that cultural
cohesion in America (Blacks, Latinos, Asians, WASPs,
etc...) creates segregation and makes the allocation of
resources in education system inefficient. America is
like a Ferrari with half its spark plugs missing, and
China is brand new Ford Model-T modded for racing. If we
would just fix our broken system, China would be eating
our educational and technological dust.

> out-source their economy to Asia and open their
> boarders for hard working
> workers. As for producing consumer products for
> cheap to lazy Americans
> who can't make anything for themselves anymore,
> they've now enough of our
> money to buy America while America is going broke.
> Get back to me when
> America is no longer so dumb as to pay with
> everything on maxed out credit.
From: J. Clarke on 4 May 2010 11:08
On 5/4/2010 8:12 AM, Helmut Richter wrote:
> On Mon, 3 May 2010, Transfer Principle wrote:
>
>> The point that I was trying to make is that there are so many
>> Americans who believe that any math beyond the bare minimum
>> needed to survive in the real world (arithmetic cf. Clarke's
>> post) shouldn't be taught.
>
> Is it not so that most of what school teaches serves other purposes than
> survival in the real world? At least, I have learnt there geography,
> biology, history, 3 foreign languages (including the one I am using here
> -- call that the real world if you will), physics, chemistry, arts, music, ...
>
> The amount of math needed to survive in the real world is minimal. Enough
> people survive without being able even to do calculations beyond the level
> needed to count the money in their wallet. How many people cannot answer a
> question like "if it costed $17.30 yesterday and $19.10 today, how many
> percent increase is that?" Don't they survive as well, some of them even
> making good money? Quite certainly, basic calculus (derivatives and
> integrals) is not needed in the real world. The few who have thoroughly
> learnt it in school have forgotten it soon afterwards unless they became
> engineers.

Most engineers forget it too. Remember, pocket calculators are capable
of symbolic calculus today.

> So it is an art not like driving cars but more like designing
> cars.
>
> The cattle on the range learns biology to the extent needed to survive in
> the real world: which herbs are tasty, barely edible, or poisonous. We
> could, of course, take that over as a criterion.
>
> Now, if you have not the cattle attitude but want to teach cultural
> knowledge, how would you proceed?
>
> The basics is always the "real world" of mathematics, that is, structures.
> No abstraction is possible unless you have seen concrete things:
> No mathematics is possible unless you have seen problems to solve with it;
> no group theory is possible unless you have seen lots of groups; no logic
> is possible unless you have seen lots of theories. *That* is a good reason
> to start with the concrete, a better reason than that only the concrete is
> food for the math cattle.

This is a very good point.

From: William Elliot on 5 May 2010 00:35
> America is like a Ferrari with half its spark plugs missing, and China
> is brand new Ford Model-T modded for racing. If we would just fix our
> broken system, China would be eating our educational and technological
> dust.
>
The fix is in and it's privatization.
Only privatized kids will be educated.

From: Tim Norfolk on 5 May 2010 18:02
On May 5, 12:35�am, William Elliot <ma...(a)rdrop.remove.com> wrote:
> > America is like a Ferrari with half its spark plugs missing, and China
> > is brand new Ford Model-T modded for racing. �If we would just fix our
> > broken system, China would be eating our educational and technological
> > dust.
>
> The fix is in and it's privatization.
> Only privatized kids will be educated.

When will that start? The real grade inflation in our area began in
the private schools and colleges.
From: spudnik on 5 May 2010 18:24
the three Rs merely create learning disorders, since
they are essentially cognate to the fuller acquisition
of language (around puberty, ~5th grade). so,
teach the quadrivium, hands-on, no writing!...
(that is to say,
*mathematica*, not Mathematica (TM) .-)

and, I say this, as a product of the New Math
in the public schools: set theory in 3rd grade!
(NB, Harry Potter schools in England, used
to be called Public Schools, because
of their institutional affiliation --
not, "no reason, we're just British,"
as all of the Subjscts seems to say .-)

> When will that start? The real grade inflation in our area began in
> the private schools and colleges.

thus:
like I always say,
"global" warming is almost entirely a)
computerized simulacra, and b)
very selective reporting (and c)
the latter is based upon "practically nil" historical data
for the vast majority of glaciers e.g.).

thus:
I've written to Dudley about one of the "proofs"
in his book, in the Fermatistes Chapter;
he replied quite cordially.

anyway, it was obvious from his write-up,
that he did not actually read the small "vanity press" book
that the dood put out, but just jumped
to the penintimate chapter & couldn't follow it ... but,
neither could I, and I read the whole thing, and
it's really a humorous book, and
the guy was a student of Prandtl at Gottingen. (Dudley seemed
to agree, that that was his own MO .-)

anyway, the dood thought that he'd found the proof
of Fermat; that is to say, his method. it was all,
quite elementary, using Ore's _Numbertheory and
Its History_, and only ommited stuff that
was supposedly in a monograph on trig series
by Vinogradov (I usually lose the track,
when ever "big Oh" comes over .-)

there was one other "proof" in _Cranks_,
that seemed somewhat plausible, two.

thus:
you can get rid of phase-space ("spacetime")
with "movies" (or flip-books), becuase
it is totally useless in a non-mathematical-formalist sense,
"visualization" e.g. -- death to the lightcones!... and,
it gives you an extra spatial dimension to play with.
as for the idea of using two quaternions
for "in & out," I don't really see, why it'd help,
since you can use the same quaternion coordination
for both, unless there's some dimensional analysis
that needs a pair of them. (see Lanczos'
_Variational Mechanics_, Dover Publ.,
for his treatment of SR -- good luck .-)

thus:
the second root of one half is just the reciprocal
of the second root of two -- often obfuscated as
the second root of two, divided by two -- but
the rest is indeed totally obscure or ridiculous.
since Fermat made no mistakes, at all,
including in withdrawing his assertion
about the Fermat primes (letter to Frenicle), all
-- as I've popsted in this item, plenty --
of the evidence suggests that the "miracle" was just
a key to his ne'er-revealed method, and
one of his very first proofs.
(I wonder, if Gauss was attracted to the problem
of constructbility, after reading of the primes.)

thus:
so, you applied Coriolis' Force to General Relativity, and
**** happened? > read more »

--Light: A History!
http://wlym.TAKEtheGOOGOLout.com
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