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I can do arithmetic--add and subtract, multiply and divide numbers in my head. I actually enjoy doing that.
But I cannot learn Algebra. That part of my brain just does not work. I have taken remedial courses, and I just cannot retain it. That's what I mean when I say I am not able to do math.
Interesting, DewDropInn, about the new math. I wonder which I learned, and what the difference was.
I do know that I was out sick for more than a week when we learned the 9s times tables. I always had difficulty multiplying by 9 until I realized I could just multiply by 10 and then subtract the number. So, for example, to get 9 X 6, I just do 10 X 6 = 60 then subtract 6 and get 54!
In an example of one pathetic case, my friend called to tell me her neighbor called to ask her if she had a 3/4 measuring cup because she needed 3/4 of a cup of something for a recipe. My friend said, "Just use 1/2 cup and a 1/4 cup." Her neighbor was silent for a moment and then said, "ARE YOU SURE???" This was a grown woman in her thirties with children.
I completely dislike this misnomer in our society that people use over and over.
"well I am not good in Math."
"I am no mathematician."
"Well Math is no my thing."
Amen
Quote:
Originally Posted by boxus
You are incorrect. There are plenty of people who have rather average or below math skills who excel at all of those fields. There are programmers who struggled through a college calc I class, yet excel at programming.
If they struggled in calc I, they washed out, completely, in calc II. Calc III and diff eq tend to be easier, but a programmer won't make it through their major if they struggle in calc I.
[/quote]
Quote:
Originally Posted by jayrandom
I was disappointed at your text after seeing the title of your thread.
I also dislike when people say "I am not good at math" but for a completely different reason. I think people use it as an excuse to not learn math. While some people are inherently better at math, I think that almost anyone can become proficient given time, effort, and good instruction. We don't let educated people say, "well, reading just isn't my thing" as an excuse for being illiterate. I don't think we should accept some false-notion of inherent mathematical disability as an excuse, either.
Well said.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mathguy
I don't really care if someone is good at math or not, it doesn't really affect me and they may have a genuine learning disability with regards to that.
It affects you tangentally when the people with whom you must interact are not math proficient.
Quote:
The OP's general massacre of the english language throughout this thread would be an indication that while they are obviously educated that maybe they have some areas they aren't the greatest at either.
Oh, dear. You may want to be careful on that particular criticism with the errors in your own writing.
Interesting, DewDropInn, about the new math. I wonder which I learned, and what the difference was.
It lasted just two or three years in the school district I was in. All I remember was the large decimal chart that they put up on the wall and a lot of talk about sets and placeholders. None of us, including the teachers, had a clue about how it actually worked.
It was a complete and utter fiasco. Though it did get a lot of parents involved in the PTA because they were all demanding we be taught things like long division.
The school board's next venture into progressive teaching was sex education. Which made the New Math debacle look tame by comparison.
It lasted just two or three years in the school district I was in. All I remember was the large decimal chart that they put up on the wall and a lot of talk about sets and placeholders.
I remember the New Math also, as well as everyone's parents complaining about it.
Found this: "Students would take a set of four items, and add it to another set of five. Yes, the result was still nine, but the emphasis was on the concept of addition, rather than the answer per se. Using this technique, students were hoped to discover that the sets would yield the same number regardless of their order (the commutative property), and that taking one original set from the combined set would yield the other original set, thereby discovering subtraction, the inverse of addition. Other aspects of the new math including using number bases other than base-10 and.." http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1529/what-exactly-was-the-new-math
It lasted just two or three years in the school district I was in. All I remember was the large decimal chart that they put up on the wall and a lot of talk about sets and placeholders. None of us, including the teachers, had a clue about how it actually worked.
It was a complete and utter fiasco. Though it did get a lot of parents involved in the PTA because they were all demanding we be taught things like long division.
The school board's next venture into progressive teaching was sex education. Which made the New Math debacle look tame by comparison.
I remember references to "new math" but I never understood what it was or how it differed from "old math". My parents weren't the type to go to PTA meetings or monitor what we were doing in school in general, so it was only on the periphery of my consciousness.
I do remember getting some kind of sex education in eighth grade, so the same thing probably happened where I lived.
I was in fifth grade when they introduced New Math in the sixties. A totally ludicrous attempt to somehow outpace the Soviets. My school was filled with the children of real, live rocket scientists and engineers. THEY couldn't understand New Math. They did, however, win the space race.
So, yep. I, like many others who were never taught fifth grade arithmetic, lack a basic understanding of fifth grade arithmetic.
Thankfully all of us who were subjected to New Math can now buy a calculator at Target for less than ten bucks.
lol! That's funny! How did New Math relate to the space race? I've never heard that before. How long did the New Math fashion last in the schools?
And what, exactly, is 5th grade arithmetic? I later found out that the 5th grade math book we had was a 7th-grade book in other schools (some kind of pre-algebra, and calculating from base 10 to base whatever. We never understood what the point was), so I'm not sure I got 5th grade math, either, whatever it is. In 6th grade we got back to normal stuff, like working with really big numbers. Maybe that was what 5th grade normally is?
There are so many different ways that a student can be 'bad' at math. Some struggle with arithmetic, while others can't use algebra to solve word problems. Others can't grasp concepts that they can't visualize in 2 or 3 dimensions, while still others can't pay attention to details. In a classroom setting, it is extremely difficult to diagnose the strengths and limitations of each individual student and offer a unique approach to teaching them.
Recently, I have found that many of my students lack a basic math vocabulary. I don't know if this is because of high school curricular changes or something else, but it makes teaching chemistry a lot more difficult. Mathematics, like many disciplines, has a complicated syntax and vocabulary. Many of the vocabulary words have a math-specific meaning as well as a different meaning in normal speech(map, base, function, set, kernel, basis, range, operator, etc.). Without the proper vocabulary, certain concepts are exceptionally difficult to teach.
There are so many different ways that a student can be 'bad' at math. Some struggle with arithmetic, while others can't use algebra to solve word problems. Others can't grasp concepts that they can't visualize in 2 or 3 dimensions, while still others can't pay attention to details. In a classroom setting, it is extremely difficult to diagnose the strengths and limitations of each individual student and offer a unique approach to teaching them.
Recently, I have found that many of my students lack a basic math vocabulary. I don't know if this is because of high school curricular changes or something else, but it makes teaching chemistry a lot more difficult. Mathematics, like many disciplines, has a complicated syntax and vocabulary. Many of the vocabulary words have a math-specific meaning as well as a different meaning in normal speech(map, base, function, set, kernel, basis, range, operator, etc.). Without the proper vocabulary, certain concepts are exceptionally difficult to teach.
Sounds rough, Chem Guy. You're teaching chem on the college level, and you're saying the students aren't prepared, coming out of HS? That's true of a lot of basic skills, now. University profs have been decrying the abysmal writing skills of HS grads for a very long time. A lot of HS grads don't have basic grammar vocabulary, so foreign language teachers in college have to spend a couple of weeks teaching English grammar. I see universities now require all entering students to take a writing course, no option to test out, even if they had top private school courses that already covered the college material.
I think that if students aren't prepared for your chem class, they shouldn't be taking chem. There are plenty of other science courses they can take that aren't so technical. That wouldn't do much for your enrollment stats, though. But since they're all required to take a math course, maybe a certain level of math proficiency should be a prerequisite to taking chemistry?
Last edited by Ruth4Truth; 09-29-2014 at 03:41 PM..
But since they're all required to take a math course, maybe a certain level of math proficiency should be a prerequisite to taking chemistry?
The successful completion of a course is not a guarantee of proficiency. I have upperclass students with several semesters of calculus who can't add vectors, use logarithms, distinguish between amplitude, phase, and frequency, or even solve a system of linear equations. In general, these students are rare.
First year students who can't do basic algebra and arithmetic are not rare at all. They test into a specific math course, but the test is too broad. We don't have any way of identifying the specific deficiencies of each individual incoming student.
That's funny! How did New Math relate to the space race? I've never heard that before.
"After Sputnik was launched, Americans felt the schools were in crisis. The National Science Foundation (NSF), created in 1950 to promote basic scientific research, was expanded in 1957 and began to examine and promote change in secondary school education in math..." (see link in post #24)
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