More Smutty Than You: TSR's Hall of Shame

[rum nate]

That is why all my teachers always said you need to learn to count change and all that. That way if things like that happened, we would know what we should get and all that. I remember have worksheets were we looked at a real ad from the paper, were given an amount to spend, we had to spend as much of that as we could, and then figure out the change we would get. Now, they don't teach this stuff because we have computer and calculators.

If anything, we need to know how to do this math without technology because, at least in the US that is, because the IRS employee manual has provisions in it on how to collect taxes in the aftermath of a nuclear war.

[neriana]

Meh, I've worked lots of retail, and I've panicked when the register's broken before. You're in a daze, bored out of your mind, with a smile frozen on your face, being extremely nice to a bunch of people who are rude and insulting to you for hours on end, doing dull menial chores, and then the machine you interface with all week, and even have goddamn dreams about, breaks. Especially as a teen at your first job, having been on your feet for 7 hours, this can easily send one into brain fart mode.

[CatOfWar]

Kids are being allowed to not learn multiplication because they have calculators?  I may stop reading this thread, it's way too depressing.   We had calculators in school.  We weren't allowed to use them until we learned to do everything they did.  They are a time saving device, not a substitute for knowing math.

Could someone explain this "new math" to me?  How are people being taught multiplication without memorizing tables?  How is memorizing tables supposed to interfere with understanding the theory?  I memorized 8 * 7 = 56.  I can also add 7 eight times if I have to.  7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56.  Or add 8 seven times, 8, 16, 24, 32, 40, 48, 56.  There's some different way to learn 8 * 7   Like what?   4 * 2 * 7?   10*7 - 2*7?

I know there's some clever tricks, like products of 9, that we can do in our head without memorizing tables.  Is that the "new math"?  Can't be, since I was taught this stuff.

9 * N  is always   10*N - N,  or  10*(N-1) + (10-N)

Or if you're in elementary school, you do it on your fingers.  9 * 3.
Hold down your third finger.  Count fingers up to the down finger, 2.
Count fingers after the down finger, 7.
9 * 3 = 27


5 * N  always ends in  5 or 0

N is even
5 * N = 10 * ( N/2 )

N is odd
5 * N  =  10 * floor( N/2 ) + 5  or  10 * floating point ( N/2 )

Oh gods, I'm such a computer scientist.  I have to specify in my head whether I'm doing integer or floating point division.  Must sim more, code less.

If kids aren't being taught stuff like this, what are they being taught?  I'm so confused.

Wow.  The IRS has procedures for collecting taxes after a nuclear war.  I didn't know.  I'll take that as a hopeful sign.  The IRS must think the economy won't completely tank if we get nuked.

[Pescado]

5 * N  =  10 * floor( N/2 ) + 5  or  10 * floating point ( N/2 )

Noob. You should have just written it as (N/2.0).

[Eskimo Pie]

 I have worked retail and have freaked over a broken register. NOt because I could not count back change but because I now had to write everything down by hand to keep a record of inventory. It takes more time, and people are unforgiving and get pissed. So you get flustered because you feel all these eyes starting at you wanting to rip out your throat because they need to stand in line and extra 2 minutes. Even at Starbucks we need to write everything down if the cash goes out and no one likes to wait for their coffee. I never been so abused by the public until I worked this job ... and I use to be a prison guard. I rather babysit criminals then serve the idiots at starbucks! lol

[ferncapel]

Kids learn multiplication as well as all other sums at schools in the U.K without use of calculators. My children at 8, 10, 13 all had to learn how to do the sums  and show their working out so they couldnt cheat with calculators even if they wanted to...even homework they have to show the working out, how they arrived at the answer...they cant just write the answer down like you would using a calculator. My eldest is allowed to use a calculator...but she never takes it to school and still works sums out the 'old fashioned' way...they arent encouraged to use calculators at school and certainly are not allowed to use them in any exams. I dont know if all schools in the U.K are the same...i can only go by the schools my children attend.
Theyre also encouraged and it is essential for them to learn to be more creative and descriptive in their writing...my 10 year old can be too literal. They have to learn nouns, pro nouns, adverbs, verbs, adjectives etc and use them. Mobile phones, games consoles are all banned and are taken away from the child if caught using.
Schools in the U.K i suppose do not dwell on the athletics as much as American schools ( i have limited knowledge on that...so apologies if incorrect!)... but athletics are part of school life but not at all the main focus, academic eduacation is the main focus.

[Andais]

I graduated high school in '93.  Went to Catholic school.  We weren't allowed to use a calculator ever until towards the end of 11th grade when we got to logs.  In college, I majored in math/stats, so I tutored in my last couple years.  Mostly college kids, but we did get requests from parents for grade-school kids at times.  I tutored one such girl and the math she was learning was just so very wrong.  That's always what I think of when I think of "new math."  Can't quite remember what grade she was in, but I think 8th grade or so.  First, they had everything from fractions to algebra to statistics shoved into one book.  How is a kid supposed to really learn useful math when they touch on one small part of it for 2 weeks and then move on?  And what moron decided that statistics was useful in jr high?  Seriously, everything in there was such a mish mash and at such a basic level, not to mention presented in a totally weird way that didn't even make sense.  Some brilliant person somewhere decided that American kids couldn't learn math in the traditional way and started messing with it until you get to today where it doesn't even look like math anymore.  Granted, not everyone is good at math and people don't all learn the same way.  But that's where you teach the teachers how to present a single concept in a couple different ways to reach a broader range of students.

/soapbox off.  The whole math situation just drives me nuts.  Public schools in general are just messed up, especially here in Detroit where they have a huge deficit and are closing schools left and right so that you have 50-60 students in a single class.  I'm not sure what we will do when my nieces start school (they and my sister live with me).

[Darqstar]

New Math  That's about the best explanation I can find for it on the net.  And that's what I was taught.  Not that it was all that important to know that  7 x 7 = 49, but to know why it was 49.  That it was more than just memorization, that it was the act of saying, "I have seven groups of seven items, so how many items do I have all together?"

By the time I got to HighSchool, New Math had been blended in with old math, which brought about the idea of, "Show your work."  Which meant that you didn't just give an answer, you showed how you arrived at it.  So, each question now had to criteria.    The work and the answer.  Usually the work was worth half of the total points for the question.  So, if you had a 100 question test, you got .5 points for the correct answer, .5 for showing what you did to arrive at that answer.

For all the bitching about what a failure it was,  I have to disagree.  Yes, it is great to be able to spout off the multiplication tables, but I think it's just as important to know why.   I learned a lot of poetry in school and have forgotten most of it.  Why? Because there is no motivation to use it.  I'm sure that's why I have forgotten the multiplication tables, because I really don't need them.  For the amount of math I do, I can do it in my head fast enough.  And I've worked jobs where I worked heavily with math.  

It also was a great way to show the teacher where the problem lay.   I had a teacher who discovered that my dyslexia was the reason why I had a miserable time with math, I would transpose numbers.   She came up with a solution, which was an index card, which I would use to cover the digits, pulling it back to see the correct order.  It worked really well, to the point where I no longer needed the card, that I was seeing numbers correctly, not transposed.   Had it just been a case of, "Gimmie the answers, I don't care how you got there," she probably wouldn't have been able to help me, she probably wouldn't have realized what the problem was, just that I always gave the wrong answer.

New Math was considered a failure, but like most failures, there was some good to it, and some of the ideas are still being taught, it just isn't called New Math.

And the calculator thing... I talked to my nephew and he told me that the calculator was allowed to be used in HighSchool, after having proved you already knew how to do it without the calculator.  So, I was mistaken and right at the same time.  Yes, they were allowed to use calculators, but no, they didn't get to use them "instead" of learning how to do it without.    

No matter how much people bitch and whine, each generation has its share of brilliant and stupid and in-between.    The older generation often thinks it is much smarter than the younger one.  In truth, by the time you get past the age of 30, the average intelligence of a group does probably go up, but that's more likely to be because the stupider ones were killed off by their own stupidity earlier.  With kids, the way we've got the world all childproofed and safe and cozy, children who would have probably died of accidents caused by their own stupidity are now alive and thriving and will most likely continue to survive until they get into the real world and find out it isn't quite as padded and that sharp corners exist.  Whether or not this is a good or bad thing, I leave up to the individual to conclude for themselves.  I think that as a whole, it's a bad idea because we don't need to keep stupiding up the gene pool.  However, on a individual basis, it's a good thing, because for a parent to lose a child is horrible.  

[HugeLunatic]

New Math ...which brought about the idea of, "Show your work."  Which meant that you didn't just give an answer, you showed how you arrived at it.  So, each question now had to criteria.    The work and the answer.  Usually the work was worth half of the total points for the question.  So, if you had a 100 question test, you got .5 points for the correct answer, .5 for showing what you did to arrive at that answer...

I have had issues with my son's teacher over this.  He wouldn't show his work but always got the correct answer, because showing the steps always made him screw it up.  He could do it in his head.  It takes me 5 steps, but he can do it in his head.    My son also gets to use calculators for his college algebra and calc classes in high school.

[neriana]

No matter how much people bitch and whine, each generation has its share of brilliant and stupid and in-between.    The older generation often thinks it is much smarter than the younger one.

The supposed degeneracy of the younger generation was a HUGE topic in the late eighteenth century U.S. Much more than it is today; it rivaled the griping of conservative elders in the late-1960s.

Shakespeare wrote, "I would there were no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting."

I think all the griping about "kids these days" has always been largely based on envy. I remember old ladies glaring at me when I was a teenager, going about my own business. We talk about the worship of youth in our society, but there's also an undercurrent of hating teenagers. They have their whole lives ahead of them, they haven't had the time to develop adult judgment, and they're raised differently these days than we were in those days. They have very little actual power; old people hold most political power. It's okay to bitch about teenagers, as it isn't to bitch about almost any other group.

[Skoria_Bay]

I graduated High School in 1980. It was a private high school here in the US and the only time I ever used a calculator in class (and it was required for the class) was my senior year of Trigonometry. We needed it for sign, cosign and tangent so we needed on the Texas Instrument calculators that were really good. I used that until I got married to balance the checkbook and then it died. I still miss that calculator.

I wish that schools taught the "whys" of math. When I was in college learning to be a teacher, the class I took to teach elementary school math used concepts to teach kids about numbers and what they meant. If I went to teach a school now, I know they would want me to teach the "garbage" they try to make kids learn now.

[rum nate]

There are some teachers out there that will teach the "whys" in math, but it not required, and they usually are not in the job for long. But my brother is 4 years younger then me, and his math classes are just stupid, stupider then mine were. I took algebra in 8th grade. When we started to do graphing, my brother, who was in the 4th grade, was doing the same damn thing. Our worksheets were almost the exact same thing. And then when most the kids in his grade couldn't figure out how to do it, the state started feeling the teachers weren't doing their job right. Some of the stuff that is being taught in grade levels below 9th grade is what I thought was high school content, or at  least that was where I was when I did it.

Kindergarten for me, they made sure we knew what different shapes and colors were. Calender things, simple reading, and simple math. 4 years later however, they are learning dinosaurs, testing them on their names, starting multiplication (but thats not what they are told), writing paragraph stories and reports. I have even heard teachers complain that student get rushed. Because if you don't learn a concept in the given time (usually less then 2 weeks, some as low as 1 day), there is no going back to learn it, and then the teacher is made out as not teaching the student correctly. 

[Pescado]

The supposed degeneracy of the younger generation was a HUGE topic in the late eighteenth century U.S. Much more than it is today; it rivaled the griping of conservative elders in the late-1960s.

Shakespeare wrote, "I would there were no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting."

It's been a downward trend throughout history. As you've neatly indicated, the evidence is clearly documented. We can therefore clearly determine that each subsequent generation has gotten steadily worse overall. It's simple math: If A > B, and B > C, then A > C.

[neriana]

The supposed degeneracy of the younger generation was a HUGE topic in the late eighteenth century U.S. Much more than it is today; it rivaled the griping of conservative elders in the late-1960s.

Shakespeare wrote, "I would there were no age between sixteen and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting."

It's been a downward trend throughout history. As you've neatly indicated, the evidence is clearly documented. We can therefore clearly determine that each subsequent generation has gotten steadily worse overall. It's simple math: If A > B, and B > C, then A > C.

 

The "evidence" clearly doesn't indicate that at all, any more than the fact that most white people thought black people were inferior in the 19th century "proves" that black people were inferior in the 19th century. All the evidence that I have studied shows, is that throughout history at least since Shakespeare, in England and America, a certain part of the population has enjoyed putting down the next generation. Evidence further shows that this panic about supposed degeneration happens more loudly around big changes in society -- the Revolutionary War and its attendant ideals of equality, the 1960s with its huge youth population and the fruits of post-WWII education, and the 1990s and the information age, for example. Tudor England was a time of pretty immense change as well, as the provincial island backwater started to become a major world player, as people were trying to figure out what religion they had to be this week to avoid getting their heads chopped off, and as a massive amount of wealth and economic control was being redistributed from the Catholic Church to the Tudors' friends.

[CatOfWar]

Darqstar, thanks for the link.

I think my husband's college linear algebra book was influenced by New Math.  It actually said things like "How do you *feel* about the number 15?", I kid you not.  What this had to do with linear algebra, I'm not sure.  Maybe the book should have said "imagine" rather than "feel about"?

Does anyone else here think numbers have colors or sounds?  While not on drugs, I mean.   Darqstar's story about using an index card to get the order of the digits right despite dyslexia got me thinking about how people imagine numbers.  Some folks imagine numbers as a series of numerals.  Some think of them as sets, groups of dots.  I had a professor who imagined sounds.  Each digit had a unique sound, they made words and melodies in his mind.  He could multiply 5 digit numbers in his head without making any mistakes.  He babbled nonsense while he did it, but it made sense to him, he was saying the sounds the numbers made.  I see numbers in color, two is leaf green, six is orange, and so forth.  This hasn't made me better at math as far as I can tell, but it does help me remember telephone numbers.

I wonder if people who are really good at math use more parts of their brains than the rest of us.  Maybe they use not just the part that does abstract reasoning but also the part that processes visual info or sound or something else?  What can teachers do to help gifted kids reach their full potential?