Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by n1 on Saturday July 22 2017, @04:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the math-is-hard dept.

Algebra is one of the biggest hurdles to getting a high school or college degree — particularly for students of color and first-generation undergrads.

It is also the single most failed course in community colleges across the country. So if you're not a STEM major (science, technology, engineering, math), why even study algebra?

That's the argument Eloy Ortiz Oakley, chancellor of the California community college system, made today in an interview with NPR's Robert Siegel.

At American community colleges, 60 percent of those enrolled are required to take at least one math course. Most — nearly 80 percent — never complete that requirement.

Oakley is among a growing number of educators who view intermediate algebra as an obstacle to students obtaining their credentials — particularly in fields that require no higher level math skills.

Their thinking has led to initiatives like Community College Pathways, which strays away from abstract algebra to engage students in real-world math applications.

-- submitted from IRC


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by arcz on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:17PM (10 children)

    by arcz (4501) on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:17PM (#543014) Journal

    As a computer science student and the inventor of the monoque (a data structure similar to an SRA, also one you've probably never heard of), I believe that algebra skills are not quite as important as they may seem.

    First, my experience in undergrad is that much more math is imposed on students than they actually need in order to grasp the concepts. One thing we need to be aware of is the difference between the concepts which mathematics teaches, which are important, and the formal human-developed notations for expressing and proving those concepts, which are not important to anyone who doesn't intend to become a professor.

    Essentially, we focus too much on formalism (such as "proofs") and not sufficiently on whether or not someone understands the underlying concepts.

    As long as you understand the rules in general, you can use a calculator to solve most problems. I think basic algrebra (think, equalities, addition, division, subtraction, etc.) are important. But you don't need to know the difference of cubes or the quadratic equation in order to be a journalist, for example. It's true that there are situations where that information is needed, but that's why people specialize. You probably wouldn't say that you need to know the difference between federal question jurisdiction, supplementary jurisdiction, and diversity jurisdiction, between in rem and in personam jurisdiction, or the difference between your right to remain silent and your right not to self incriminate. Even though you might be sued or charged with a crime, you can retain a lawyer if that happens. And if you really need to solve a math problem, you should be able to get help from a mathematician. We specialize because that is more efficient. I don't see why anything other than basic algebra is considered important enough that everyone needs to learn it.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +4  
       Insightful=3, Interesting=1, Total=4
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:41PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:41PM (#543031)

    > you don't need to know the difference of cubes or the quadratic equation in order to be a journalist

    But it would be nice if journalists understood dimensional analysis and had a working knowledge of physical units (including prefixes like milli- and giga-) so that comparisons made sense. Also, a better idea of ratios so they didn't confuse "percent" and "fraction" quite as often as they do.

    Unless, of course, you believe that the purpose of journalists is to scare people...

    • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday July 22 2017, @10:47PM

      by kaszz (4211) on Saturday July 22 2017, @10:47PM (#543136) Journal

      The purpose of journalists is to make people believe what the hand with the paycheck wants them to believe.

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by jelizondo on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:58PM (1 child)

    by jelizondo (653) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 22 2017, @06:58PM (#543039) Journal

    Perhaps I’m misreading your position, but I recommend that you read “A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper” by John Allen Paulos [wikipedia.org] to get an idea of how badly journalists misinform the general public precisely because of their innumeracy.

    I concur with the majority here: If you want a High School Diploma, you should have at least a basic understanding of mathematics beyond simple arithmetic.

    Your example of getting a lawyer and consulting a mathematician is flawed. When I’m in trouble with the law I know I need a lawyer but I might be ignorant enough to know that I need to consult a mathematician to understand the Bell curve and its implications as demonstrated by Paulos’ column “Who's Counting: Testing and Hiring Disparities Need Not Imply Bias” [go.com]. Think how many newspaper articles have been written about racial bias without understanding the concept of the Bell curve.

    Cheers

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @07:18PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @07:18PM (#543048)

    As a computer science student and the inventor of the monoque (a data structure similar to an SRA, also one you've probably never heard of)

    You reinvented Boost static_vector [boost.org] ?

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @09:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 22 2017, @09:43PM (#543113)

    I don't know what courses you attended that proofs somehow become "formalisms", proofs are about structured reasoning, learning how to carefully argue a point, starting from a clearly stated set of assumptions and coming to a conclusion. While the of course use mathematical terms, many proofs are just plain written text. If there is any formalism, it is about how you clearly state what you are proving and why you assume for that, but that's it.
    It is one of the few skills taught in university that have actual use for a programmer. Understanding your assumptions, and from them proving and disproving things with JUSTIFIED confidence is of use whether you are implementing a complex algorithm or you are just debugging a mysterious issue.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by cafebabe on Sunday July 23 2017, @01:26AM (2 children)

    by cafebabe (894) on Sunday July 23 2017, @01:26AM (#543200) Journal

    inventor of the monoque

    We're a tough crowd on SoylentNews but the monoque appears to have been added to Wikipedia six days ago [wikipedia.org]. If your data structure involves doubling allocations then it is at least 50 years old. If it involves Fibonacci numbers [wikipedia.org] then you'll be following Donald Knuth [wikipedia.org]'s memory allocation best practice from 1968 [wikipedia.org].

    --
    1702845791×2
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @01:44PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 23 2017, @01:44PM (#543354)

      And non-notable original research does not belong on Wikipedia. Exaeta is tempting fate.

      Here's the reference implementation: https://github.com/Exaeta/monoque [github.com]

      Some benchmarking: https://github.com/Exaeta/monoque/pull/1 [github.com]

      Benchmarking shows a monoque is better than a vector and worse than a deque.

      It looks like a niche solution in search of a niche. Golly I wonder if Exaeta could sell the rights to Facebook.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @06:16PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 07 2017, @06:16PM (#550095)

        It's better for some things and worse for others compared to both structures.

        SRA is a singly resizable array. It's not quite the same thing though, but I wont get into details.

        It is niche, but it has application as a backing for a realtime priority queue, which it can do better than either deque or SRA. I never said it was an important data structure.

  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday July 25 2017, @07:30AM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday July 25 2017, @07:30AM (#544059) Journal

    As a computer science student and the inventor of the monoque

    Well, at least language doesn't seem to be your strong point. The term "monoque" does not make any sense for this data structure.

    "Deque" is short of "ddouble ended queue". A queue, also known as FIFO, is a data structure where you push data in from one side, and get it out from the other side. The deque allows doing that from both sides, therefore the addition "double-ended". It also allows efficient indexing, which strictly speaking is not a requirement for a queue, and didn't enter its name.

    Your data structure is not a queue at all, since you cannot efficiently remove data at the opposite end of adding it. Therefore it makes zero sense to end it in "que". Your data structure is useful to implement a LIFO (that is, a stack), but not a FIFO (a queue).

    And even ignoring that, prefixing "mono" makes no sense either. "mono" means "one". A "monoque" would be, logically, one queue. Well, how many else? Note that the analogue to "deque, but with only one end" would be "seque", "single-ended queue". Not that this would describe your data structure correctly; nothing ending with "que" will.

    (a data structure similar to an SRA, also one you've probably never heard of)

    Neither has the internet as a whole, it appears. But then, SRA is obviously an abbreviation, and it might be an uncommon one. Maybe if you would tell us the actual name of that data structure? Or do you have a specific reason to hide that from us?

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.