

How to solve the British maths problem?  - reazalun
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7435023.stm

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neilk
Is anyone else ever disturbed by the attempts to "make X fun!" by inclusion of
cartoon characters and other inanity? I think it's a distraction; the kids
just pay attention to the cartoon.

I know that some teachers would disagree, but in my experience, most teachers
at the primary level don't really love math. Not the way I do, anyway. At the
very best, you get people who liked doing rote problems, and those sorts of
people just suck. The rest struggle through the lessons as much as their
charges do, and they'd be lost without the teacher's guide.

In my opinion, the way to make math fun is to make the exercise of the skill
itself more fun. Make it part of a game. For bonus points, make the game
complex enough that multiple strategies can work, estimation or direct
calculation or induction. And I'd like some recognition of the fact that some
people are insanely good at this and others will always struggle, so create
teams where different skills are useful (calculation, problem solving, record
keeping, data gathering) but everyone learns the basic lessons.

Sooner or later you're going to be alone with the pencil and paper and Mr. 4
and Ms. 5 are not going to be there to help.

~~~
jodrellblank
"Is anyone else ever disturbed by the attempts to "make X fun!" by inclusion
of cartoon characters and other inanity?"

Yes, Mr Lockhart is -

"A similar problem occurs when teachers or textbooks succumb to cutesyness.
This is where, in an attempt to combat so-called 'math anxiety' (one of the
panoply of diseases which are actually caused by school), math is made to seem
'friendly'. To help your students memorize formulas for the area and
circumference of a circle, for example, you might invent this whole story
about 'Mr. C', who drives around 'Mrs. A' and tells her how nice his 'two
piesare' (C = 2πr) and how her 'pies are square' (A = πr2) or some such
nonsense.

But what about the real story? The one about mankind’s struggle with the
problem of measuring curves; about Eudoxus and Archimedes and the method of
exhaustion; about the transcendence of pi?

Which is more interesting? measuring the rough dimensions of a circular piece
of graph paper, using a formula that someone handed you without explanation
(and made you memorize and practice over and over) or hearing the story of one
of the most beautiful, fascinating problems, and one ofthe most brilliant and
powerful ideas in human history? We’re killing people’s interest in circles
for god’s sake!"

\- <http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf>

(which I originally found linked on HN or reddit, and enjoyed reading ... but
then what? Where is a near layperson to find mathematical writing that walks
the line between Mr C and his two pies, and the impenetrable
mathworld.wolfram.com, neatly skipping the textbooks written to look
comprehensive to school purchasers, rather than to be useful? (
<http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/11/lost-purposes.html> ))

~~~
neilk
That was great. Thanks.

I do, however, take issue with his notion of teaching math for purely
aesthetic reasons. That definitely should be part of the curriculum, but I
personally feel that only a few students are really attuned to that sort of
thing. Others will enjoy the mechanics of calculation, and others will love
reasoning and problem-solving. Some won't like any of this, but not everyone
is cut out for a life where math is a big part.

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DougBTX
The problem is demonstrated by the video in the article. Maths? Here, try some
Long Division. You could get yourself a _maths degree_ without even touching
long division, but it's the example they use to get people to do maths??

~~~
gaius
Well that's the thing: maths as taught in (British) schools is interminably
dull. Kids are told, you need to learn to add up in case, errr, you work in a
shop. Exciting, huh?

It wasn't until I was 18 and in college that I first encountered interesting
maths, linear programming. It was, literally, mind expanding. Suddenly an
entire class of problems that I simply could not think about before were,
well, not _easy_ necessarily but possible. An experience like that is needed
at a younger age.

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vitaminj
A lot of the guys I knew that were good at maths were labelled nerds, so to
admit to being good at maths is to risk being labelled a nerd by association.
On the other hand, to say that you suck at maths implicity says things about
you that avoid this association eg. "I dispensed with my maths education to
hang out with the cool kids". I think most people know this intuitively.

The pride of a self-confessed maths half-wit is anchored in implied social
standing rather than genuine pride in a lack of ability. I doubt anybody is
saying "I can't add or subtract, how awesome am I?"

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Tichy
I think it has to be more obvious how to apply maths to everyday life. Not
sure if it is very easy to do, though.

One problem that comes to mind is understanding mobile telephony costs. I am
amazed how many people really seem to believe that their phone only cost 1€...

Finances (interest rates, economics) would be another area, which could at the
same time help prepare people for life after school.

What about games? I just bought "The Theory Of Poker", perhaps stuff like that
could arouse more interest about maths in kids? They could even play games at
school, imagine that.

Thinking about it, maybe it would be worthwhile to start a web site (wiki)
about applied maths problems. Applied as in REALLY applied, everyday problems
everybody could relate to.

I have a server and would set it up, could anybody recommend a good wiki
package (debian)?

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mynameishere
I looked at the division problem and guessed 472, and got it right. I think
guessing accurately is important. You almost never have time to work things
out. The 4 was obvious, and the 2 was probable--they wouldn't likely require a
remainder from people. And so that left the 7 to guess.

I mean, given a set of problems requiring such division, most could be
acceptably answered by nearly-correct answers. This isn't true in finance, but
for most other things it is.

