[TheForge] Re: Another Long rambley YAK

[Andy Vida]

Mike Spencer wrote:

> Math is math is what the teacher said.  Feh.

	This is the old "there's only one right way to do 'X'"
	syndrome.  There is some legitimacy to it, but I find
	that it is taken to the logically absurd extreme, most
	often to the detriment of the student.  Some of it
	seems to be because the concepts are difficult to convey
	and let's face it, there are a lot of lazy people who
	just don't want to take the time and make the effort to
	find an analog that will cause a student's light to go
	on and say "OH... I GET IT!"  I also believe that kids are
	somewhat tacitly taught to be afraid of math from an 
	early age.  It's an expectation built into our culture that
	says math is hard and only brainiacs REALLY get it.  Great
	way to set kids up for success, eh?

	A big problem in colleges is that the many of the brilliant 
	mathematicians cannot teach to save their lives.  They are
	absolultely horrible at it.  They vomit out theorems and
	forms and if the student doesn't get it, tough rocks.  They
	need to be locked away in their closets to theorize and
	discover new and wonderful constructs and methods and leave
	the teaching to those that are trained to effectively convey 
	what is in their books and heads into the heads of the students.

> A lot of mathematicians believe, "If You Can Visualize It, It Isn't
> Math." 

	They are narrow minded idiots and ought not be allowed
	anywhere near a classroom full of students.

> At least one recent proof in topology (which I don't even
> halfway understand) was done with computer graphics, proving this
> abstract thing could exist by drawing a picture of it.  Those IYCVIIIM
> guys were really PO'd.

	I took a topology class at UC Davis.  It bent my brain just
	as badly as my studies in particle physics.  Those disciplines
	are the lairs of the insane.  Fabulous constructs, but so
	oblique in some ways that my understanding stopped abruptly
	once I grasped the generalities.  Solving specific problems
	was just this side of impossible for me.  Needless to say I
	didn't belong.
	
> 
> >    the best place to see them.  Nikola Tesla is arguably the
> >    greatest technical genius thus far in human history.
> 
> In the era when everybody including Edison knew for a fact that AC
> motors were obviously impossible, Tesla *visualized* the AC motor in a
> reverie during a walk in the park, went home and built one that worked
> on the first try.

	He was the profound genius that Edison could never have been.
	Edison's one virtue was his stick-to-it-iveness.  I will give
	him credit as due, but otherwise he was less than shit as a
	human being.  A thief, a bully, and murdering bastard, but
	let me not go on. :)
> 
> I had a math prof once who would respond to, "I don't understand that"
> by repeating exactly what she'd said before, but pressing harder on
> the chalk as she wrote on the board.  If the student persisted in not
> getting it, she would end up *GRINDING* the chalk into dots under each
> bit of the blackboard equations.  She was incapable of seeing how the
> student might be seeing it and reframing her explanation.

	She was a lousy teacher.  I had my share.  One of the most
	indescribably idiotic things I ever heard about was the
	policy of the math department at Steven's Tech in NJ.  Stevens
	is one of the top engineering schools on the planet.  They
	have designed every 11.5 meter America's Cup yacht for at least
	the past 100 years.  The policy of their math department, at
	least as of about 15 years ago, was that 25% of EVERY first
	semester calculus class HAD TO BE FAILED, even if every student
	got 100% on every test.  When I asked why this was so, I was
	told to the effect that the policy was intended to maintain
	the school's image of being "tough".  One can only wonder how
	many young and otherwise bright futures were wrecked by such
	imbecilic reasoning.  What a terrible thing to do to young people
	just starting out.  If anything, I believe you start out easier
	and get progressively tougher as one progresses through the
	divisions.
> 
> A couple of years later I dropped out of school and got a job as the
> janitor in that building.  Every night I had to scrape the puckers of
> chalk of the blackboard under things that her students hadn't
> understood.  She was still doing it.

	That's pretty sad.