Slashdot Mirror
Algebra As A Gateway Subject
Spock the Baptist writes: "The Washington Post started a two article series Sunday, and Monday August 18 and 19 2002. The articles deal with something that the math, engineering, and physics faculties at colleges, and universities have long known. Algebra is a 'gateway subject' for math, science, and technology, and secondary schools in general are not doing a good job teaching algebra."
Yup, today your kid is doing algebra, tomorrow he's smoking crack. Just say no.
Fun with editing:
... How about teaching kids to ... figure out a 15% or 20% tip.
Hmmm let me count the number of times I've needed algebra.....none.
(Cost of dinner) * 0.1 = x
x + x/2 = tip
That's how my grandmother does tips and she "never uses algebra" either.
As my father lik@(munch munch)...
My goverment has informed me, a patriotic citizen, that I should be especially aware of anything arabic sounding around me. They like to sneak things in to try and destroy our beautiful country, and this could be one of the very plots that brings about 9-11 the sequel!
Why, filling our kids heads with islamic math propaganda is the last thing we need right now. Will it help us build bigger bombs? No, I don't think so. Counting to 10 is enough, and if you forget a few numbers in between, that's alright by me. President Bush himself can't count to 10 without his advisors helping, and I bet none of them know al-jebrah either.
Al jebrah is a tool of the devil! It might help when you're trying to decide how many camels to give away to marry off your daughters, and it might even help to figure out how to build those crazy pointy towered mosque thingies. But as americans, what good does that do us?
Besides, they come right out and say it. It leads to godless science, teaching us that we're the grandchildren of monkeys. Yes, cousin Cletis kinda looks like a chimp, but by god he's a good 85% human. Keep your godless atheist algebraic satanic brainwashings out of my kids skulls!
(stupid lameness filter won't even let you do a *** seperator bar)
Dammit. Spent 20 minutes writing one of my best trolls ever, and I can't bring myself to click 'submit'. It wouldn't be a big deal, but I know people like this... ugh. I'm wimping out.
Maybe i'm goofie, but me thinks more people have troubel with basic english than algabra has done. I'll leeve it up to the reeders to decide about it. How many grammatical erreor can you find in the front page comment was on? I'm not trolling b/c I could give too shits about typos here and their, and lots of grammitical errors, and mispellings in /.'s responses in here, however, if you make the 'front page' you should definetly at least double check your work too make sure everything is good and makes sense and their are no run-on sentences are in your article. Yes, geeks have to know how too write to. Very important.
Ah... Multi-variable equations. Pizza and Jolt. Next we'll be doing econometric modeling of coder utility functions.
Interestingly enough, our word Algebra comes from the book Hisab al-jabr w'al-muqabala written by a Middle-Eastern man named Abu Abd-Allah ibn Musa al'Khwarizmi around 830.
Brian Ellenberger
Oh, and my use of "arse" is just my way of avoiding the apparently-vulgar word "ass"; is it 'just as vulgar' "over there"?
"ass" -> Donkey
"arse" -> The Queen wouldn't use it in public, but that's about the extent of its vulgarity.
What would Lemmy do?