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You know, sometimes you do simple algebra when you don't even know it.
For example, I asked my son the other day, "If you had three excavators and you wanted to have five excavators (he is three - math is done in candy and excavators), how many more excavators would you need?" He said 2.
My son brought his homework home last night and there are some very simple percentage questions.
What is 40% of 200. Six is 20% of a number. You get the idea...
So he looks at it and says "Dad, can you look at this?" He has 4 pages of notes on how to do simple percentages. Why 4 pages? Because he has to set it up algebraically.
is/of=x/100 so x= you get the idea.
Why do we do this? At first I said okay it's some sort of mental math thing, but after looking at the numbers it would behoove you to have a calculator.
I am an engineer and have always hated what colleges and schools consider applied mathematics. I got into an argument with a professor one day when we were doing ideal gas law conversions because he always loves these long complicated formulas with the units. I said to him "It's plug and chug, there is no need for all this algebra." So he says to me okay, what if your units are different? I said, "I would make sure they all worked out before I started (in this case it was pascals and atmospheres.) Plus, you must have a conversion factor anyway during the problem so why not get all of that out of the way before you start?" Then the professor said. "This is the way they want us to teach it, they want to drill the concepts into your head."
This to me is the problem with math education in this country. We don't teach the easy way first. We have specific rigid operations that we attempt to force a practical application into.
My son did not understand .075 is 7.5% he did not understand that 155% would be 1.55. And I believe this was not taught to him. I get what it's doing but why the long unnecessary baby steps toward something so simple? Give them a large problem to work on, just one. Not 35 not 25 of the same problem with different numbers just one complex multistage problem.
A couple of weeks we were talking about the dangers of tailgating reaction time and distance traveled at 80 vs 65. And a smart guy I know says yeah you travel like 200 more feet between braking at 80 and braking at 60. I said well I agree with the sentiment but the math is wrong." he said no at 80 your traveling like 200 feet a second. I said I think it's more like 120 ft/sec. Then he mumbles some numbers and starts jotting down a algebraic formula and then looks at it confused, erases it and then tries again. I pull out my phone and type and say at the same time 5280x80/60/60= and 117.33 comes up. I said yeah its 117 ft per second at 80mph and he says, no because you did not account for the seconds..... I said "What?, no I'm pretty positive that is correct" At this time he is thoroughly confused. So he goes to the internet and looks it up and I'm right and he says "oh that's what I missed the 3600 secs in the formula" and then shows me a half page of numbers divided and multiplied with cancellations and 3600 sec for 1 hour. I tell you that because it think it's a symptom of a bigger problem in society. When it comes to simple math people are not good at it because what they teach in school is so disjointed from the real world. "Practical applications" most often are not. We are taught from an early to be mathematicians first and problem solvers second.
My point is this: We should teach our kids the easiest way to figure out problems. We are teaching them rigid and overly complicated ways to solve simple problems with specific formulas. The thing that makes me laugh is every newsletter I get from the school repeats the same tag line over and over.
"Education for Creative thinking and life long learning."
Kids don't enjoy or like math because we teach the long way of solving a simple problem. In my opinion every kids has enough knowledge to solve any PRACTICAL problem by 7th grade.
I don't know about anyone else* (*math teachers, we get it, you love math and dream at night about disproving E=mc^2) but could you solve a random CALC II problem 5 years out from the class? I couldn't. I'm still employed regardless of the fact I don't remember anything from CALC II so it's obviously not that important.
Why do we continue to shove algebra and other more complicated stuff dow kids throats and just continue to pass kids though the system when they won't be able to tell you what 7.5% of 200 is when they are 24? The fact that people pay for tip calculator app and that it has over 3 million downloads blows my friggen mind.
...But my sister told me that a nun said to her that "science and religion don't mix"...
I find that hard to believe - some of the most important scientists of all time have been Catholic; Jesuit priests are known for scientific achievement. The scientist who proposed the "Big Bang Theory" was a Catholic priest. In fact, the Catholic Church funds scientific research.
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It's my favorite.
It Could Be Much Worse:
