Reverend Funk
Comfy Penetration
Theres a lot of pointless shit you learn in school but its never pointless for everyone and you can't know its not useful for yourself until you learn it.
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LAT: The politics of math: Is algebra necessary to obtain a college degree?
- Thread starter Tripon
- Start date
The actual mechanics of solving the problem in the OP isn't necessarily as important as discerning from the problem itself the logical process you need to arrive at the solution. Doing something as simple as "Let me divide this expression into 4 separate expressions and factor them individually before evaluating the division and then cancelling like terms" can be entirely lost on someone who hasn't developed those kind of logical thinking skills. For that alone I can't jive with the idea that learning algebra is "useless", even if you never encounter real-world problems that can be cleanly mapped to algebraic expressions.
Also I factored that problem entirely in my head, get on muh level nerdz.
Also I factored that problem entirely in my head, get on muh level nerdz.
And yet I can't remember basic physics formulas without using Google as a crutch 
Chances are it's not the professor's fault. They are genera;ly under pretty strickt timetables to get through all the material. If anything it's a problem with the wider society's approch to understanding the place of a university education pushing problems like this.
Or they don't have the time to do it in class. It's amazing to me how many students complain, but then never talk to their professors or go to office hours before, and not after, a test.
Maybe. But that's a bigger logistical problem. Not to mention the solution, teaching proof based math, would simply garner far more groans.
Also Math is not a science. You don't run math experiments.
I also had a friend in fiance who took a course to further her career and complained that her exam will be hand written with no computer which meant she has to do the math herself. Usually at work there is already a macros package installed and she just press a button and she know what the results means and that's all she cares about. According to her knowing how it was calculated is irrelevant to her job. Her analogy is a driver doesn't need to know how to build a car.
Eventhough she got a job in finance, her college study was totally unrelated, so she really had no idea how to calculate it by hand. Usually for her assignment, she just uses her excel macros to get the answers.
Allonym
There should be more tampons in gaming
I get that but since it's a duplicate term do we just drop it?
None of those things are as basic a skill as high school level algebra, and only the last of them is actually a tool.
Yeah, that's another level to this that we can probably roll under getting a general undergraduate education.
In my experience, math is simply an artificial brick wall that so many people run into on their way to a college degree. I simply cannot agree with the notion that everyone needs to achieve some sort of basic competence in algebra as a prerequisite to any sort of degree thats unrelated to math.
Courses in personal finance or basic computational thinking would be better for a lot of people.
Courses in personal finance or basic computational thinking would be better for a lot of people.
Dongs Macabre
aka Daedalos42
Well, it's still useful for a driver to know how a car works. Building a car would be more like deriving the formulas.
The point of the degree is not only your major, but also the general undergraduate education.
Again people, we are talking about a math skill that large numbers of 12 and 13 year olds learn.
My main point was that the issue lies in how math is taught and all you've done is just give me reasons why this is the case instead of refute anything I've said.
Alright. It seemed to me you were blaming your professors which I'm included to believe generally don't deserve 99% of the flak they get from students as a general rule.
I'd agree the way we teach math is problematic so I wasn't trying to refute that. That doesn't mean I think we should be graduating students that don't know basic algebra.
I vehemently oppose the notion that math is "rarely used". People use math all the time, they just may not understand what they're doing at anything more than an intuitive level. And I don't mean just simple addition and subtraction. Even something as basic as scheduling your daily or weekly routine is one giant algebra problem.
Lumination
'enry 'ollins
Everyone trying to name some obscure job that 99% of the population does not hold is giving you the wrong response.
Algebra presents you with some tools in the form of rules. The problem in the OP is designed to see if you can figure out how to apply about 4 rules you've learned out of tens to solve this. Don't focus on the variables and formulas. Those are all a smokescreen. Learning to algebra is like learning to wax on and wax off. The payoff isn't the ability to solve abstract math problems. It's to apply these techniques to real life situations
like karate
What kinds of situations? Have you ever seen someone bashing their heads against a real-life problem despite getting the same bad result every time? This can be anything from someone repeatedly fighting with a computer program to someone simply refusing to change their daily routine that isn't working. Math has taught me to step back, analyze my options, and take a different approach.
Problems like this are supposed to look daunting ("x AND y? Two fractions? Exponents??"), but math teaches you to approach the problem in a scientific manner, figure out how to break it down into smaller pieces, and see if we can apply our rules to those pieces. Anyone in a management/leadership position can understand the importance of taking a big task, breaking it into smaller pieces in a sensible manner, and delegating those out. This may seem trivial or obvious to you, but that's not the case for everyone.
I don't think you are arguing that fine art and history should be eliminated, but I am inferring that you think they are clearly less valuable than algebra. I strongly disagree. History in particular is so incredibly important because it helps to frame almost every social or economic situation that people and governments face today. By knowing history, we learn why things are the way they are now. Instead of just being angry at the present situation, we can at least know things that could have made it worse or things that can make it better. We learn to identify situations and actions that are likely to turn out poorly. A population that is unaware of history is far more likely to fall victim to governments and politicians that do not have the population's best interests in mind.
It is a shame, at least in AMerica, that the history people are taught is so rose-tinted and myopic that the US population gets almost no value from it.
Ah, ok. No it's just math started to make more sense after I started to ask why and that just made me realize how flawed the system was.
Earthbound64
Banned
It's all fun and games until you're in the next Pompeii.
I don't really agree. We shouldn't be holding people back with some arbitrary standard that is rarely used in real life. Do you need to understand how something works to use it? I get that math is the core "language" of the universe and many things wouldn't be possible without it, but does that mean that every college graduate must be able to pass an intermediate algebra class? Do you know how your computer works at a very core level? Do you need to know that in order to use it? What use does a historian or a writer have for the problem that was given in the OP?
It's ridiculous to me that I can take an English class and use Word to do all of the work, which has spelling and grammar checking. Yet if you take a math class, all of your exams are proctored and in many cases you can't even bring in a calculator.
A college degree is meant to indicate that the individual achieved a sufficient level of proficiency on higher universal knowledge. And, as the foundation of modern maths, algebra is an indispensable pillar for such universal knowledge. What most seem to want here is a technical school.
This quote-by-quote format is getting reeeaaal annoying, so I'm just gonna lump these together.
Now, I am not someone who works in education, so I'm not someone who has to work to figure out the minutiae of what goes where and what belongs in general education versus university majors and etc. All I can say is that having a basic understanding of how violent and unsettling our history has been and how much progress we've made over the past century alone has done a lot to inform my views today, and that it's inevitable that that knowledge (or lack thereof) is going to come up in some way in modern politics.
Especially when it comes to anything to do with socialism or communism.
I just think it's a more important subject to broach than higher level math. Whether or not that's true is obviously going to be highly subjective.
I do not understand what you're trying to argue for here. Are you just being pedantic for kicks? I'm pretty sure we both agree that the general population should at least have some understanding of how modern science works and how we come to the conclusions we do, right?
If I was taught wrong and there are many interpretations of "the scientific method", well great, whatever, does it matter? You know what I was talking about, so I'm not sure why you need to point this out.
Well, yes, obviously the education system hasn't done particularly well in instilling within me an appreciation of what algebra is or what it does, because otherwise I wouldn't be mixing it up with trigonometry or calculus.
More word problems would certainly go a long way to help, sure. As would problems that don't actually require math but require students to go through similar steps to solve them.
I won't argue that it shouldn't be a requirement for graduation, much less college graduation. But the way we're going about all of this seems less than helpful for a lot of people.
Chainsawkitten
Member
If you know BEDMAS, you can get to all the factorization formulas. No need for memorization. I can do factorization and I never bothered to memorize any of those formulas.
I'm a programmer, so I use algebra all the time. There are often blocks I hit because I don't know enough higher math and I have to ask friends for advice.
The OP was about passing algebra classes, not about how everything in the world has some basis in math, whether you know it or not.
As I mentioned above, what use do the majority of the professions have with the problem given in the OP?
I get that it's about problem solving and critical thinking, but there are better ways to teach it than math classes. You can teach and learn reasoning through language, it's not simply a mathematical attribute.
Rich Uncle Skeleton
Member
The "I never use this!" complaints are absurd. Nothing in school other than literacy can claim more universal usefulness than basic math. I think people see how abstract it is and think that makes it irrelevant to their lives, but its abstractness is exactly what makes it so valuable. It's a general skill that can be applied in countless instances.
What use the majority of the professions have for a college degree anyway?
Yes they are.
I like to think of it as Economics as the study of the how wealth is created and distributed in society. Finance, a derivative of economics, deals with what we (individuals, corporations or governments) do with that wealth.
There is a reason why Econ majors are recruited in Finance as well. They're related.
Other than getting into the position in the first place, not much. People always say things like "The point of college is not to be a training facility for jobs". Yet, that is what society has turned it into. My employer has a specific tier where you can't get promoted to jobs above a certain level without a degree, regardless of how qualified you are for the position. I've seen lesser qualified people be promoted due to this. This is a Fortune 500 company. Many companies throw resumes away if they don't list a degree.
Lumination
'enry 'ollins
But by learning it through math, you get the added benefit of actually knowing math.
So, give free pieces of paper to everyone? Edit: Sounds like the problem is with your employer.
Necroscope
Member
I think so many people here came out of the college system failed to understand the point of algebra study as a training of the mind for problem solving and logical deduction are disturbing. No wonder Trump got elected.
smokeandmirrors
Banned
the problem with math today is how it's taught. i didnt truly grasp certain mathematical principles until i took classes on discrete math and things that taught basic probability and counting. that really helped connect a lot of things: algebra, calculus, geometry.
I can do that I think, but it's kind of obnoxious and easy to make a mistake.
I think math/algebra has very real and important uses, but I also think that if people try their hardest and still struggle to the point where it impairs their ability to get a higher education, there should be some kind of alternative. Not all jobs require knowing this kind of knowledge and a higher education is just way too valuable in 2017.
I think math/algebra has very real and important uses, but I also think that if people try their hardest and still struggle to the point where it impairs their ability to get a higher education, there should be some kind of alternative. Not all jobs require knowing this kind of knowledge and a higher education is just way too valuable in 2017.
davepoobond
you can't put a price on sparks
If they spent more time on basic algebra and less on the awful problems like in the OP it would be more useful. I use algebra occasionally just wish it taught us the more practical uses of it rather than the "advanced" parts of it
Not in my line of work.
smokeandmirrors
Banned
you can do both but a lot of the time it ends up being rote memorization and that is not conducive towards learning it at all.
saying here: here's a formula memorize it is so damaging.
I think students, at a young age, understand that for the most part, basic arithmetic is all that is needed in life. I think that's why we (Americans at least) are not that great at higher maths.
Someone mentioned it before but I think teaching about the history of math alongside actually learning it would help students gain a better appreciation for it.
As a youngster learning this stuff I use to think, what's the point? That's why I hated it. In college, I see (I'm still college) that at least in algebra, calculus and even in some linear algebra how important it is in solving economic problems.
Someone mentioned it before but I think teaching about the history of math alongside actually learning it would help students gain a better appreciation for it.
That's another thing. Practical application would help it.
As a youngster learning this stuff I use to think, what's the point? That's why I hated it. In college, I see (I'm still college) that at least in algebra, calculus and even in some linear algebra how important it is in solving economic problems.
Do you use Google Maps every single time you want to go somewhere? Every mental calculation to find a route is essentially related rates.
This is my position on it. People in non-math majors have one math requirement for graduation, while everyone else with majors involving math would get a much harder one.
Considering that a college degree is necessary to secure a job good enough so you're not in crushing poverty, I'm not comfortable dooming people to misery because Academia has a hard on for a certain level of algebra.
The change has to start from those who teach math. Someone earlier in the thread that it's significantly easier to get lost on the steps of understanding a mathematical concept than any other subject. Someone else brought up the fact that instructors rarely, if ever, try to offer practical real world examples in which to ground what they're teaching.
I don't know man, I just randomly guess a route or use Google Maps he first time and just copy that for my subsequent visits. I'm sure I'm notthe only one doing this.
Unless I'm using math subconsciously to guess the fastest route, but I seriously doubt that.
As someone who can solve the problem in the OP, I think lack of basic knowledge of history and politics is far more relevant to how Trump got elected.
The problem in the OP is the basic stuff. It's just a lot of it.
A key part of algebra is being able to compartmentalize the problem and solve each part in simple steps.
The problem itself has no useful purpose. Why would it? x and y are given no meaning nor is the relationship between x and y and whatever the expression is meant to evaluate to. The problem has nothing to do with anything, it's simply a means by which to teach a useful process.
I'm totally down with the idea of using practical examples or real-world situations to add additional context to certain problems and make them more approachable to those who have trouble thinking in abstract terms. That's not an issue. Here's the thing though. No matter how you dress it up or what type of language you use, all logical and reasoning problems eventually break down to mathematical components of some kind, because on the most basic level that's how all formal logic is expressed. Attempts to bury those basic building blocks behind real-world practical problems without considering them just adds layers of obfuscation to the whole process. The idea isn't to teach problem solving only in certain contexts, the idea is to teach problem solving in a way that it can be applied to any context.
No it isn't. If you're doing political science, why would you ever need to break down that equation?
On the other hand, I fully support introducing linear algebra & mathematical proof (set theory, induction, notions of cardinality and infinite sets) at the high-school level. Way more important than being able to figure out how to draw the graph of a random function.
That problem would be considered intermediate algebra, but yes, still high school level.
It's less about doing any given equation, so much as training your mind to think in terms of symbols and patterns as opposed to concrete values and physical entities.
Correct me if I'm wrong here but political science encompasses game theory, doesn't it? And game theory can be heavy on math at higher levels, although I guess that's more calculus.
Though I think of all the US highschool standard curriculum topics, probability and combination is the most generally useful and recieves very little attention relative to other major topics (geo/trig, algebra, calc).
OminoMichelin
Member
You cannot even ENTER any technical university in Italy if you can't do that and more. It's high school math. I fucking suck at it
This isn't really an issue of education, it's a philosophical issue of what constitutes a knowledge of history.
I agree people should learn more history, it'd be pretty odd if I didn't as a historian. But these questions aren't minute details, they get at the very heart of what it is you're trying to do here. Making ambiguously defined history education as some particular key element of an education. Teaching the past is important, hell I'm inclined to say it's incredibly important, but it's not some easy epistemological shortcut to truth. History at a low level is more useful for how it teaches people to think than it is for teaching them specific things to think.
As someone who thinks about this very issue a lot, from a historical perspective no less, I'm going to argue that the issue here is mostly one of philosophy and political-economy than it is of history. Americans have a pretty skewed understanding of socialism because they want to, for various cultural and intellectual reasons, not because of a lack, which certainly exists, of historical knowledge.
It being a more important subject should vary right? Either way, you aren't really clearly setting out what you even mean by this subject. It reads more like you mean people need to learn whatever information about the past that will make them think like you. That isn't a very strong position, and it isn't really how people use the past to think about the present anyway.
I'd argue thinking about social systems, and change over time in a social and political setting is about as basic a skill as 7th grade algebra.
I think science, along with the rest of the arts, has a place in a general liberal arts education. What I'm trying to argue here, besides pointing out something that I think is generally important, is that these ideas about what disciplines like history and science can do based on flawed understandings of them have the potential to make them appear more all encompassing than they are. Ironically I'm normally on the side of history arguing against the primacy of science and math, while here I'm arguing for math against history and science. Each is important in its way.
I mean yes, this is a vitally important point in what science is, and can do. I know what you were talking about, but it's a problematic idea that is relevant to the conversation.
That's great! But then it sounds like you aren't arguing that they get rid of the requirement, but are instead arguing for reform, something I can wholeheartedly get behind.
Okay.
It seems irrelevant to anyone not going towards STEM and trivial for anyone who is going towards STEM. It's also the kind of question where it would be fairly easy to make an error despite being fundamentally simple. If I ever have some mass of terms to simplify in my day job (graphics programmer) I'll just use Wolfram Alpha to save time and ensure accuracy.
Maths in the real world is a lot more about being able to determine what kind of problem you're looking at and what kind of method you need to use to solve it, and very rarely about jumping through a series of prescribed hoops. That maths teaching is almost always completely removed from any kind of real problem surely hurts people's abilities to understand its usefulness.
Maths in the real world is a lot more about being able to determine what kind of problem you're looking at and what kind of method you need to use to solve it, and very rarely about jumping through a series of prescribed hoops. That maths teaching is almost always completely removed from any kind of real problem surely hurts people's abilities to understand its usefulness.