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Contrary to widely-held opinion, taking high school calculus isn't necessary for success later in college calculus—what's more important is mastering the prerequisites, algebra, geometry, and trigonometry—that lead to calculus. That's according to a study of more than 6,000 college freshmen at 133 colleges carried out by the Science Education Department of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, led by Sadler, the Frances W. Wright Senior Lecturer on Astronomy, and by Sonnert, a Research Associate.In addition, the survey finds that weaker math students who choose to take calculus in high school actually get the most benefit from the class. The study is described in a May 2018 paper published in the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education.
"We study the transition from high school to college, and on one side of that there are college professors who say calculus is really a college subject, but on the other side there are high school teachers who say calculus is really helpful for their students, and the ones who want to be scientists and engineers get a lot out of it," Sadler said. "We wanted to see if we could settle that argument—which is more important, the math that prepares you for calculus or a first run-through when you're in high school followed by a more serious course in college?"
The study's results, Sadler said, provided a clear answer -a firmer grip on the subjects that led up to calculus had twice the impact of taking the subject in high school. And of those who did take calculus in high school, it was the weakest students who got the most from the class.
To get those findings, Sadler and Sonnert, designed a study that asked thousands of college freshmen to report not only demographic information, but their educational history, background and mathematics training.
https://phys.org/news/2018-07-mastering-prerequisitesnot-calculus-high-schoolbetter.html
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 09 2018, @11:32PM (1 child)
This was the pedagogical position among mathematics lecturers right up until computer assisted proves forced them to accept derivation is just a more computationally intensive stat based pattern matching algorithm that, despite previous claims to "understanding", merely demands even more practice and memorization before the personal capacity of one's individual genes is met.
A shame von Neumann's generation failed to pass on just how exceptional is the exception to the rule and how the rest of us should stay humble and don't get too proud about deriving a few proves where a true genius would derive a whole new field and will blatantly tell you it's all just raw computations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 10 2018, @12:01AM
Fine. Either you can do that pattern matching, or you can't. What's your point?