I've learned a great deal from everyone here. That's why I'm still here.

That and Beer.

Excellent Masque post. Top five, imo. I declare Masque the winner.

That is all.

I meant the ones about other's areas of professional expertise. With those, I have questions and am seeking knowledge. I want to know why the presence of a probabilistic model that works causes physicists to believe that things are probabilistic, or whether that is even a sensible sentence, for instance.

The psych ones are easy to find and I am quite aware of it. I find it strange that some certain others get upset that their initial take is incorrect. How can you learn anything if you don't learn new things?

This thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/ne...ply&p=48141209

This comment pissed me off:

It's not as simple as that. There are good elementary math teachers and bad ones. It usually takes a deal of knowledge and practice to be a good one.

That would be a good opportunity to give me additional knowledge or to correct my inaccuracy.

From what I have seen (I taught statistics* and also remember teachers having a problem with kids not having a good grasp of concepts they should already know) math skills are built progressively.

I think that kids would be better served if they weren't moved on until they have a decent grasp of the current topic.

Wouldn't that solve part of the problem? Too impractical? Wrong? Not even wrong?

*I learned a lot by sucking at it.

Sorry, I meant this thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/47...culia-1393421/

Oh. I stand by the statement if it is in regard specifically to dyscalculia.

It is like teaching a tone-deaf person to sing or a blind person how to drive a car. The skill of the teacher isn't the limiting factor.

Could be. It's moot, anyway, because the specific student I was teaching at that time probably didn't have it.

Good! How did the student end up doing?

It started to click suddenly and then she started catching up and is now back in the mainstream, I think.

I just hope she's able to cope with her rude and ignorant mother, who married her way into a rich family.

What worked?

Difficult to say. She had had a traumatic family experience (bereavement) a few years earlier, and I don't know how this might have affected her ability to learn.

I have a few fun math activities that I've picked up over the years, that I've honed into interesting lessons. Making and drawing stuff, etc. That was one of my points in the thread: just because a student struggles with arithmetic, it doesn't mean you can't teach them other aspects, and develop a better disposition towards the subject in general.

Would you agree that so long as they get the concept of multiplication, they will eventually become proficient at it if you can make math more interesting/fun?

They didn't focus much on arithmetic when I was a kid.

Not intended to provoke discussion of religion, but I found the art here to be fantastic. The sentiment can also apply to any opinion open to interpretation.

I would be inclined to say that more of division, even though x/y simply means what y has to be multiplied by in order to get x.

Biased towards Christianity


I'm a fan of Mohammad Ali.

Were you guys ever explained the algorithm for square roots in order to understand why it is that way or did they teach you just the rule to do it? How about the division itself?
I do not recall being explained to me that the root is based on the idea that eg;

(10x+y)^2=100*x^2+y^2+2*10*x*y= 100*x^2+ (20x+y)*y hence the 20x+y times y rule targets the closer to the remainder thing etc and the blocks of 2 digits are because of the 100=10^2 thing etc.

Basically we learned these things in very early years as rules (before algebra and identities etc) not as something that makes sense to be done that way. And although the major math that explains these algorithms comes later, it would probably still help if someone said that you will one day see why this has to be done that way because this is how people developed it, after they had first learned other things that showed them why it needs to be done that way. It is higher knowledge that gave them the tool. Or maybe they could give an example even geometric one like areas of squares thing eg how you find 12^2=(10+2)((10+2) and then using area of rectangles/squares etc.

That is easy to see the logic where the rule is justified in that case and then the kid imagines it will be like that in other cases too and so the rule becomes more bearable to memorize and justify the action in the hope one day it will be very clear. All education at an early primitive level in a way is like that. Its true justification often comes later and the student initially needs to trust the teachers that they have their best interest at heart. I do not ever recall that bond being explained rationally, only enforced with discipline rather than intuitive acceptance through gradual incremental trust built with simple examples every day that might have won the student faster than the application of discipline. Just find something the children will be curious to focus on because it is out of the ordinary and you can make the point. You win them little by little with such cases until they have finally decided that indeed you are their more experienced friend and are showing them useful things and the things you show them that are more obscure they need to trust you now that it will be revealed later why they need to learn now that way. That can only be done though if at least you have some other examples that it has worked for the kids to trust the rules because it was shown to them at the spot why the rules make sense to be followed. You win more as a teacher by establishing a connection of trust rather than with forced rules and discipline. Of course very young kids need discipline if they do not have it at home because the parents are aholes. But even there there will be a way to win them with a more rational approach.

The Champ! I recently watched a great biography on netflix about Ali and his struggle objecting to the Vietnam war draft. I don't recall the title ATM. Whew, what a time in history.

The clownery really worked. You don't see a phenomenon like that many times in your life.

Sorry. Wasn't particularly clear in what I was asking. I meant it more as a question about the general idea about calculating skill not being the important (correct?) measure of whether a kid is ready to learn other concepts. That along with playing with the new concepts giving the kid the practice needed to be good at arithmetic calculations.

I wasn't taught the square roots algorithm, and am unfamiliar with it to this day. Two algorithms which everyone is taught are those for long division and multiplication. I think there probably would be value in explaining why they work, if that could be done right.

The algorithm reminded me a bit of the completing the square method for solving quadratics (which comes much later, of course). The real good students like this method, in my opinion, while others prefer to remember the quadratic formula and put the coefficients in it. Personally, I dislike remembering formulae, but I'm lazy like that.

Ok basically its this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method...g_square_roots
in the "decimal (base 10)" section.

I am looking forward to developing tricks for cubic roots now lol. Maybe other functions too in certain spots that makes sense now that we know what a rule must be like based on higher math i mean.

There are tricks to find the cubic root of big numbers (ok say up to a million or so although it could go to 10-100 mil too without huge efforts) in literally 4-5 seconds provided the cubes are exact integers like say 50653 is 37^3 can be found very fast by simple rules on the last digit and the basic memorization of the cubes of all numbers up to 9 ie 9^3=729 8^3=512 etc.



That can trick people into thinking you are some fast calculating savant guy when you arent lol.

And this is clear?

You are asking about the correlation between being good at algebra and being good at geometry?

The most sophisticated conclusion I have to offer is that some people "get" maths, and some don't. Which is like calling some people "bright", i.e. not very precise or even scientific.

He did more than just clownery. At first hearing, some of his racial rhetoric at the time seemed very extreme, until you heard him out. Why he called white people the devil is way more important than the fact he did so. A person could understand he spoke like that not from hate, but from the mind and heart. He gave up that kind of rhetoric as the wheels of progress and justice proceeded slowly forward.

On top of all that, he IS the greatest boxer of all time.

Not looking for anything like a correlation. Can you learn algebra (or geometry) concepts while not being particularly proficient at arithmetic calculations?

Does doing algebra (or geometry) make kids better at arithmetic?

Right, but Johnny still being crap at remembering to carry his ones, or hasn't memorized the multiplication table yet is 'not "getting" math?'