Morning Metro: More Decatur Car Thefts, Anti-T-SPLOST Rally, and Questioning Alegbra in Schools
Decatur Metro | July 30, 2012 | 10:10 am
- 7 car thefts in 10 days in Decatur [Patch]
- Anti-T-SPLOST rally in Decatur tomorrow [OWSI]
- DeKalb buys land for Oak Grove park [AJC]
- New DeKalb Library to open soon [AJC]
- The Geography of Team USA [Atlantic Cities]
- Is Algebra Necessary? [NYT]
Map courtesy of Atlantic Cities
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Talk about a weird combination of activists- OWSers and Tea Partiers! Could be very interesting viewing on You Tube.
Both the pro-TSPLOST and ant-TSPLOST are having a rally today in Decatur. Am I seeing that right?
Yep.
I hope they carpool.
There’s still time to VOTE!
Re is Algebra necessary? Wow. I’ve forgotten all my Geometry except a-squared + b-squared = c-squared, which I think only applies to triangles with a right angle. I’ve forgotten all my Trigonometry–I can spell sine and co-sine correctly and I vaguely remember what a tangent is but I have never used my Trig outside of academic coursework. Ditto for Calculus. But Algebra and basic Statistics? I use them daily at home and at work. Ok, not quadratic equations, but definitely the basics of algebraic equations and solutions and much of basic statistics.
If there was only a limited amount of math that we could afford to teach kids, I’d make it algebra, the graphic display of data, and the basics of statistics.
You know what also is difficult? Spelling and grammer. Or is it grammar? Kids have troubles putting all these words together in the right order. And does it really matter? As long as you get the gist of what there saying, that’s the important thing. If they need to know how to really write, the job they get out of school will be responsible to teach them. And science, who needs that. Almost know one becomes a scientist. Do I really kneed to know that the Mesozoic Era is made up of the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous time periods? No. I will learn that after watching the same Dinosaur Train over and over with my kids. I bet Scott the Paleontologist wished he hadn’t learnd all that Algebra.
Ok the NYT piece about made me throw up. Thankfully @mathmovesu linked to the Washington Post rebuttal to the NYT piece.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/yes-algebra-is-necessary/2012/07/30/gJQAr6xMKX_blog.html My faith is sorta restored in op-editorialists
Is political science necessary? Is it even a science at all? It seems to me that if we are going to discuss removing subjects from courses of study, we might start with soft subjects like poly sci. (The author of the NYT piece on algebra is a poly sci professor.) That is, unless anyone believes society would benefit from producing ever more politicians and lawyers, since so many poly sci majors go on law school. Anyone? Bueller? (Interestingly, last time I looked, aspiring law school poly sci majors were on average drubbed on the LSAT by math and economics majors.)
The assumption of this article also seems to be that there is some interest served by having kids attend and graduate from college even if they cannot hack it in basic algebra. But maybe we’re making a huge mistake by encouraging those kids to seek higher education as opposed to learning valuable trades.
At Home is right on. The three topics listed are essential practical skills, I think, in the modern world. You know, my wife and I were just on vacation a few weeks ago and we had to rent a car. We had a choice of low daily rate with a mileage limit and high daily rate with unlimited miles. We immediately turned to each other and started “estimating” our expected mileage. We did not a) think to diagram a sentence, paint a picture about our feelings or c) run a lap to burn off steam. No problem with those other activities, but come on, Algebra! What a totally pathetic edition to the NYT.
Oh, DEM, I’m a political scientist. We are all embarrassed by the author. Aside from being silly, it is not helping communicate what we do or what skills are necessary to do, like, er, math.
No hating on the art and science of diagramming sentences! Try it in Latin for twice the fun!
I used to like the old-fashioned practice of parsing sentences and I DO think that it helps with good business and personal writing. All those neat little ruled lines coming off diagonally from the subject, predicate, object etc………… I guess what all of us are saying is that there’s a reason the basics are the basics. It’s good to challenge the established norm now and then but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
Jeff’s point is not that diagramming sentences is useless. His point is that for a common, everyday task, he needed to use algebra (and not the other skills). He’s not saying no common tasks require that skill, simply that there are some common tasks for which the skills Hacker advocates are not useful, while algebra is useful.
Hacker’s argument has lots of flaws, too many to detail in a comment here, and I think it is a serious blow to the NYT’s credibility that they chose to publish it. Beng provocative is not the same as being intelligent, coherent, and provocative. I expect this stuff from CNN, but not from the NYT.