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posted by Fnord666 on Monday February 05 2018, @05:36AM   Printer-friendly
from the common-sense dept.

Mathematician Keith Devlin writes about how the capabilities to work with maths have changed since the late 1960s. He summarizes what he considers to be the essential skills and knowledge that people can focus on as more and more is turned over to software.

The shift began with the introduction of the digital arithmetic calculator in the 1960s, which rendered obsolete the need for humans to master the ancient art of mental arithmetical calculation. Over the succeeding decades, the scope of algorithms developed to perform mathematical procedures steadily expanded, culminating in the creation of desktop and cloud-based mathematical computation systems that can execute pretty well any mathematical procedure, solving—accurately and in a fraction of a second—any mathematical problem formulated with sufficient precision (a bar that allows in all the exam questions I and any other math student faced throughout our entire school and university careers).

So what, then, remains in mathematics that people need to master? The answer is, the set of skills required to make effective use of those powerful new (procedural) mathematical tools we can access from our smartphone. Whereas it used to be the case that humans had to master the computational skills required to carry out various mathematical procedures (adding and multiplying numbers, inverting matrices, solving polynomial equations, differentiating analytic functions, solving differential equations, etc.), what is required today is a sufficiently deep understanding of all those procedures, and the underlying concepts they are built on, in order to know when, and how, to use those digitally-implemented tools effectively, productively, and safely.

Source : What Scientific Term or Concept Ought to be More Widely Known?


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  • (Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday February 06 2018, @12:47AM

    by crafoo (6639) on Tuesday February 06 2018, @12:47AM (#633564)

    Asks about scientific terms and concepts then goes on a mathematics rant.

    Really spreading any scientific concept at all would be a good start. Maybe the scientific method? Maybe start with highschool science teachers who actually seem to be loser arts students who couldn't hack it in the job market... teach them the scientific method? Sprinkle in some critical reasoning and maybe for shock and awe, teach it in the social sciences and history classes! The madness that would ensue. I know this would conflict with indoctrinating with the current PC culture experimentation on our youth. I think it's worth it in the long run though. Having citizens that can autonomously reason and draw conclusions based on facts and sound critical thinking skills.

    As far as math skills go - Understanding comes through practice and effort grasshopper. Now more than ever the fundamental, face-in-the-mud math skills need to be taught. You don't obtain a "deeper understanding" without first building an absolutely solid foundation of the "boring and tedious" fundamentals. So many dumb monkeys using Matlab and scipy these days.

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