Math and Science Popular With Students Until They Realize They're Hard

First time accepted submitter HonorPoncaCityDotCom writes "Khadeeja Safdar reports in the WSJ that researchers who surveyed 655 incoming college students found that while math and science majors drew the most interest initially, not many students finished with degrees in those subjects. Students who dropped out didn't do so because they discovered an unexpected amount of the work and because they were dissatisfied with their grades. "Students knew science was hard to begin with, but for a lot of them it turned out to be much worse than what they expected," says Todd R. Stinebrickner, one of the paper's authors. "What they didn't expect is that even if they work hard, they still won't do well." The authors add that the substantial overoptimism about completing a degree in science can be attributed largely to students beginning school with misperceptions about their ability to perform well academically in science. ""If more science graduates are desired, the findings suggest the importance of policies at younger ages that lead students to enter college better prepared (PDF) to study science.""

Comments

like anything else..

[houbou]

hard is merely the fact that often, the theories and equations taught are quite abstract. It is very important to have a solid grasp of concepts, but in the end, the material could be improved with visual and/or tangible results which have some values and/or association to the abstract concepts.

Re:like anything else..

[Rockoon]

Whats needed is good educators, like Richard Feynman was. What passes for "good educator" these days is pathetic.

Re:like anything else..

[icebike]

Given the current way that most schools and universities operate, the hard work servers merely as a filter, to get rid of those they find unsuitable.

There is probably less interest in teaching anything of real value than there is in finding a way to dump a large percentage of the masses that they don't think will make it anyway. All pretense of making sure students learn and understand disappears somewhere in the middle of high school.

From then on out, schools and colleges act as society's steering committee.

Not saying this is wrong, there may be no point in suggesting anything beyond technical school for the motor-head or anything besides finishing school for the air head.

Still you have to wonder how many quality brains are missed by a school structure more interested in sorting than in educating.

Re:like anything else..

[ackthpt]

hard is merely the fact that often, the theories and equations taught are quite abstract. It is very important to have a solid grasp of concepts, but in the end, the material could be improved with visual and/or tangible results which have some values and/or association to the abstract concepts.

I've had dozens of college profs and the ones which stood out were the ones who were good listeners as well and perceptive of what students struggle over. Generally I found when I thought a course was 'hard' I knew 80% or more of the material or concepts, but I was struggling over one or two things which blocked conceptual understanding of things further on.

Subbing, as a TA once in a programming class I was perplexed how people couldn't wrap their heads around the idea of a Variable (think of it as a name on a bucket, into which I add or remove apples, yet they were still stumped).

Things do tend to be more 'hard' when the student spends more time listening to their nay-saying peers than their instructors. When you actually believe Math, Chemistry or Physics is 'hard' your belief is your own largest obstacle to learning.

Re:like anything else..

[ackthpt]

Whats needed is good educators, like Richard Feynman was. What passes for "good educator" these days is pathetic.

We could certainly do with a lot less people going around saying Math is hard. That's defeatist thinking. Math is easy!

Re:like anything else..

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Math is hard because it's like running long distances. Few people actually like running, or any kind of exercise. Many people do it for utilitarian reasons while hating it. Some people like it inherently, though. I had a gym teacher once who was addicted to running to the point that it was bad for his health.

Re:like anything else..

[fredprado]

Math is the most difficult subject known by humankind. Basic math is very easy, college math is reasonably easy, engineering school math is quite hard, mathematics graduation math is considerably harder, and math research is ridiculously hard.

Re:like anything else..

[expatriot]

Feynman was fantastic at inspiring people and giving them an intuition for physics with simple drawings.

Do you think he understood partial differential equations, functions in a complex space, matrix math, group theory? Sure he did. If he wrote some of that on a blackboard in a 60 minute talk, would the audience struggle to keep up?

I am still not sure I understand using 4x4 matrices to do transforms in three space. I can write the code though (slowly).

My wife (English and Drama) said the biggest party people were the liberal arts students because they did not need as much time to study. And when they were studying they mostly were reading.

A good educator can make learning calculus better than a poor one, but there it is still hard (well for me anyway).

Re:like anything else..

[ShanghaiBill]

In high school, your grades are primarily a reflection of how hard you work.

In college, your grades are primarily a reflection on how smart you are.

Re:like anything else..

[tylikcat]

I think there is something of a grades / work problem for many students. And I suspect that if bright students were more accustomed to classes where they could work fairly hard and not make As, undergraduate science classes would be less of a shock. A lot of the kids I see* turning away aren't doing badly - they're just used to doing so much better with so much less effort. Which is more or less what they've been trained to expect, after all.

And people commonly attribute far more to talent than to hard work. So many kids look at the first physics exam where they've gotten a 67 (which is the lowest grade they've ever gotten in their lives, even if it was the third highest grade in the class) and become convinced that they're just not good at this stuff. I mean, their friends who are psych majors are pulling 4.0, and there they are with a 3.2 even though they spend an order of magnitude more time on their homework. Meanwhile, their parents are asking why their grades have fallen so much since highschool. (Okay, while all these are examples from people I know, they're not all the same person.)

* I teach biology and neuroscience.

Re:like anything else..

[ebno-10db]

Math is the most difficult subject known by humankind.

Care to offer some evidence for that assertion?

Re:like anything else..

[PRMan]

On the flip side, I had professors who would teach material so badly that the class average was 28% or 35%. Even the best student in the class that already had the book memorized since infancy got a 75% because the test was worded so badly he couldn't understand the question. But hey, rather than actually teach anything, just use a curve and its all fixed.

Re:like anything else..

[PRMan]

Not true. I have a very high IQ and got some Ds and Fs in college. The best students routinely fall in the 120 to 130 IQ range. Smart enough to get the concepts but not smart enough to be outraged at the futility and waste of time and money that college is.

Re: like anything else..

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a most wonderful proof of that assertion, but sadly the limited character set of the slashdot text editor will not allow me to present it!

Re:like anything else..

[Beardo the Bearded]

In college, your grades are primarily a reflection on how smart you are.

Not even close. Your college grades are determined by:
1. Understanding the material.
2. Part marks.
3. Knowing the professors.
4. Planning.
5. Reading old exams.

I still remember in one signals class, the guy next to me asked how I did for one of the homework questions, and I told him I didn't do it because it looked awful. He told me it took him several hours to solve.

"[First name], it's worth 1/2 of 1%."

"... you son of a bitch."

But hey, what do I know, I've just got an engineering degree on my wall here next to my PE certificate.

Re:like anything else..

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey! Lets all jump on to the hate teacher's circlejerk! Remember, grip the one on the right!

Have you talked to any educators lately? No, you haven't obviously. Teachers today only teach what's mandated now.
Because that's what the law requires, and that's all they have money for. We've let a bunch of legislators dictate that test scores are king and everything else is a waste of money.

What's fucked up is. Us. You. Our culture is anti-education and anti-intellectual. We're inflicting grave injustice on our children and setting up a future of failure.

It's only going to solved with hard work, sacrifice, and a lot of money.

We're fucking doomed.

Re:like anything else..

[Rockoon]

Do you think he understood partial differential equations, functions in a complex space, matrix math, group theory? Sure he did. If he wrote some of that on a blackboard in a 60 minute talk, would the audience struggle to keep up?

No, they wouldn't have struggled to keep up. The genius of Feynman was that he used things like blackboards productively.

If you think that writing equations on blackboards is equal to education, then you've already gotten screwed over by a disastrous education system that only did that for you.

Re:like anything else..

[Rockoon]

That's true, we need more educators like, oh... say.... one of the top 5 physicists of the last century.

While Feynman may have been one of the top 5 physicists of the last century, the other 4 weret/arent good educators. You arent actually making a point here.

Re:like anything else..

[Beardo the Bearded]

One of the mandatory math classes at my alma mater had (still has?) a 70% failure rate. I got a D the first time I took it, which put me in the elite top 1/3 of math there. My (now ex) wife didn't see it that way, it was more of a "YOU SHOULD GET As ALL THE TIME!!" Seriously, of the four co-op students I was on term with, I was the only one that passed that class.

There was an expression going around when I was in school: "shoot for the stars and you might get the moon." I added "aim for the moon and try to clear the ditch."

I just didn't care about my grades. Since graduation, nobody's cared about them either. If I wasn't at the bottom of my class, graduating GPS wise, I was in the bottom 10% for sure. Of course, I had more time for hobbies and family.

Re:like anything else..

[yurtinus]

I'm sure we've all had a class like that. In all cases I know of, it was a new professor who really was still learning how to teach. One or even two professors like that is not going to ruin your education unless you let them. At my school, there were two professors like that which I can think of, and by the time I graduated their class averages had gotten up to the normal range and they were generally well regarded.

Re:like anything else..

[khallow]

Well, there aren't many fields with well-defined problems that have solutions which can't be found without many human generations of effort. And many math problems are known to be intractable. For example, the Halting problem.

I mention that example because there is probably a Turing machine with input that can be fully described in modest time by a human, but which can't be determined to halt even using the entire resources of the known universe converted optimally into a computer and run for the rest of eternity.

Re:like anything else..

[slew]

Whats needed is good educators, like Richard Feynman was. What passes for "good educator" these days is pathetic.

I'm not so sure Richard Feynman would agree that he was a "good educator", although he was a great scientist. By many accounts, he mainly enjoyed teaching as an exercise to keep his own mind fresh and as an excuse to re-explore things that he knew very well and hopefully stumble upon a new way of looking at things. On his famous lecture series, he himself stated "I don’t think I did very well by the students" and by some accounts was generally depressed by average scores on the tests the year that he was teaching that class in introductory physics from which the lectures were recorded.

It's not to say that really smart folks can't benefit from learning what he could teach, but that even he would probably recognize that if the students aren't learning, you need to have some different approaches to teaching to truly be a good educator.

FWIW, Having sat through a couple of his lectures (right before he passed away), I can say you come out feeling that you know exactly what he's talking about until you actually put pen to paper and realize, he just made it seem so simple, not that you learned what you needed to learn (I apparently was NOT one of those gifted enough to get it on the first pass). Certainly it takes a great talent to make something so complicated seem so intuitive, but at the same time, that doesn't necessarily make a good education plan.

Re:like anything else..

[benf_2004]

I found the exact opposite to be true. I put forth minimal effort in high school (rarely studied, frequently daydreamed during classes, ignored lots of homework assignments) and graduated with honors. I tried to do the same thing when I started college and I was on academic probation after the first quarter. I learned then that I was actually going to have to put forth a reasonable amount of effort if I wanted to graduate.

Re:like anything else..

[Iniamyen]

Care to offer some evidence for that assertion?

Of course not! He was talking about math, not science!
I guess technically he needs to provide a proof.

Re:like anything else..

[yurtinus]

I'd shift that a bit... In high school, your grades are primarily an indication of how awake you were. In college, they're primarily a reflection of how hard you work (with a bit of brains thrown in for good measure).

As others have mentioned here, though - while you're in school there is an over-emphasis on grades which don't really matter once you're out. We need to do a better job of managing expectations. If a student is used to getting As in high school and gets Bs or Cs in their early math or engineering course, they shouldn't consider that a reason to change majors.

Re:like anything else..

[SlashV]

I am still not sure I understand using 4x4 matrices to do transforms in three space. I can write the code though (slowly).

Because a 3 dimensional object can be translated by a linear operation in 4 dimensional space. Similar to how you are able to move (the projection) of a 2D shape by moving it along an arbitrary third axis pointing out of the shape's plane. This doesn't sound fundamentally very difficult for me. Now group theory on the other hand... I guess it depends on how your brain works. I have a lot less trouble with geometry than with more abstract maths.

Re:like anything else..

[fredprado]

As another poster pointed the vanguard problems in math, which are basically the problems the professional mathematicians pursue, usually require many generations to be solved or even to be proved unsolvable. That is proof enough of the hardships.

At the top science's hardships are mostly linked to the difficulty to test hypotheses. Math's hardships on the other hand are linked to sheer mental effort and at a level of abstraction that most of humankind simply isn't capable of exerting.

Re:like anything else..

[mill3d]

I had a heck of a time with the more abstract math concepts I learned in high school and college until I saw them at work while using Maya ; then it just all made sense.

Using modeling and animation software to illustrate the math concepts might be a good way around the abstraction problem.

Re:like anything else..

[onkelonkel]

In high school a very smart student can get honours marks with minimal effort. In high school an average student can get honours marks by working very hard.

In engineering school a very smart student needs to also work very hard just to get by. If you are diligent about doing all the problem assignments, hand in all the labs, study efficiently (in a small group really worked for me), be very strategic about obtaining all possible marks, you can do reasonably well. In engineering school an average student can't get by on hard work, because the workload is too high, and will likely fail.

Re:like anything else..

[yurtinus]

This is important. STEM is *hard*. Ultimately, GPA doesn't really matter. We sail through high school with a 3.9 (because that history research paper junior year really wasn't worth our time), hit college and suddenly get Bs and Cs. You're in an engineering program now - you're with all the rest of the students who sailed through high school and are now just average. Who cares if your slacker friends in liberal arts have better grades than you now - your 3.1 in computer engineering is going to make you more money then their 4.0 in sociology.

When I was in school, I recall there being a mention to adjust our expectations, but it really was never emphasized like it should be. At some point in those beginning courses, somebody needs to say "you're going to get Bs and Cs in some of these classes. In the long run nobody cares."

Re:like anything else..

[grizdog]

The problem with math, if problem is the right word, is that it changes its character, and the kind of thinking that is required at each level is quite different. It helps to be painstaking, but that is true in many fields. The skills required in arithmetic, algebra, calculus, discrete math, linear algebra, and number theory are all quite different, and students who think they are good at math move to the next level and find something quite foraign and quite unpleasant.

Along with this is the problem of grade inflation in high schools. I spent most of my career as a college math professor, and I ran into students every year who thought they were good at math because they had gotten good grades in it, but when I handed out problem sets the first week which reviewed prerequisite material, they could not do them at all. Math is pretty standardized nationally - f you have completed Intermediate Algebra or Precalculus or Calculus 1, there is a standard collection of problems that the student ought to be able to solve - you can find them in any standard text. And since it was the first week, it wasn't because I was a bad teacher - they had barely been exposed to me. But even though their transcript said they had received an A or B in the course, they couldn't solve the problems at all. So suddenly they get to college and a subject that previously didn't require a lot of work, now requires a great deal of work. It happens all the time

Re:like anything else..

[Kielistic]

I'll present this as evidence: List of unsolved problems in mathematics.

Although I will say that it is not very helpful to call any science harder than another. You will only end up in an endless argument of whether physics is the base of math or math is the base of physics and how everything else is just either math or physics.

Re:like anything else..

[Beardo the Bearded]

You can't spell "assassin" without "ass".

Check up or check out, get that prostate examined before it kills you!

Re:like anything else..

[yurtinus]

By the time you get to the point where you're a math researcher, you've long since figured out that you really enjoy that type of math and those ridiculously hard problems are the ones you most enjoy working on. This is why you want students to find something in the field they enjoy doing. They'll be willing to trudge through the difficult stuff they don't like because once you start specializing, you'll get into the difficult stuff you love.

Re:like anything else..

[Kielistic]

It kind of exemplifies the point that good educators are very rare. You have to have vast knowledge of the topic and you must also have a vast knowledge of how people think and great intuition about what a specific person is thinking. Things that very rarely happen on their own and nearly never all together.

Re:like anything else..

[ebno-10db]

Well, there aren't many fields with well-defined problems that have solutions which can't be found without many human generations of effort.

Does the fact that the problems are well defined mean that the subject is easier or harder?

Re:like anything else..

[ebno-10db]

I guess technically he needs to provide a proof.

Starting with what set of axioms :)

Re:like anything else..

[Deadstick]

You -- you mean -- Teen Talk Barbie was wrong?

Re:like anything else..

[ebno-10db]

That is proof enough of the hardships.

I never said math was easy, but you asserted that "math is the most difficult subject known by humankind".

Ok, I'm busting chops, and that was likely hyperbole. But this is Slashdot!

Re:like anything else..

[Iniamyen]

Starting with what set of axioms :)

1. Math is a subject known by humankind.
2. Some subjects are more difficult than others.
3. ???

Good luck!

Re:like anything else..

[Austerity Empowers]

Or because running long distances requires a constant amount of effort. You can't show up to a marathon 13 miles in, think it's over in less than 4, and expect to win anything or even get a sense of accomplishment.

Math and science build, it starts very early, and it keeps building up. By high school most people are already severely disadvantaged. By college, the game is over but for the most dedicated. I will give these people a little credit, I think they truly want in and see the value, but get lost in college material and pacing, and don't even understand how they went wrong, They end up with retarded cop-outs like "i'm dumb at math" or "science makes no sense", which sometimes become self-fulfilling prophecies. They have to be approached like a physical fitness program: you start out easy or you will hurt yourself, and you work up to the serious stuff. There's no cramming for it, you can't jump in and be awesome, it takes a long time.

Most of the other subjects covered in that article can be easily picked up to "beyond the average bear" levels by just reading some books for a few weeks. It's not a surprise then if you're looking for a piece of paper in 4 years and you do not already have some skill in STEM, you go for something easier.

Re:like anything else..

[HornWumpus]

One of my best friends from HS came close to melting down when he got his first B. To his credit it was sophomore year in EE.

I didn't have that problem. Still got my EE/CompE double major.

Re:like anything else..

[Austerity Empowers]

Math is the most difficult subject known by humankind.

Care to offer some evidence for that assertion?

It is a definition. Any problem at all can be put into mathematical form.

Thus it encompases every problem large and small, and must therefore be the most difficult subject known by humankind.

Re:like anything else..

[fredprado]

But that is not a hyperbole. It is just a very reasonable inference. No other subject has anywhere near the same logical difficulties and abstraction requirements than modern math. Most Sciences use the math tools discovered decades ago, Engineering uses mostly math tools discovered centuries ago.

Re:like anything else..

[fredprado]

Oh, my friend, I see you didn't go very far in your math studies. Even already solved problems can be ridiculously hard to understand. Try to even read Andrew Wiles proof of the Fermat Last Theorem, for example. Good luck!

Re:like anything else..

[fredprado]

3) every problem in any other subject can be ultimately converted to a math problem...

Re:like anything else..

[UnknownSoldier]

> I am still not sure I understand using 4x4 matrices to do transforms in three space. I can write the code though (slowly).

That's just proof that you had a bad/crappy teacher. :-( Here is one explanation:

In 3D computer graphics we use a 4x4 matrix to conveniently and compactly represent _two_ things:
  a) orientation, and
  b) location (or position) within a single variable.

M = [ R 0 ]
    [ T 1 ]

Where:
    R = 3x3 orientation matrix, and
    T = 3-dimensional position vector.

To understand how this comes about let us start with something a little more basic: 2D Affine Transformations. Namely: Rotations, Translations, Scaling.

Given a point P = we can write it in matrix form as either [ x y ], or
[ x ]
[ y ]

How would we write the equation for a point that is rotated around the origin (or z-axis.)? We will eventually want to write a matrix equation where the matrix represents a change in orientation. That is by definition:

  x = R * cos(A), and
  y = R * sin(A)
x' = R * cos(A+B), and
y' = R * cos(A+B)

Where:
  R = radius of the angle,
  A = initial angle,
  B = the relative change in the angle,
  A+B = the absolute final angle

We don't always know R, so let us rewriting these in terms without R:
x' = R * cos(A+B)
  = R * {cos(A)*cos(B) - sin(A)*sin(B)}
  = {R*cos(A)} * cos(B) - {R*sin(A)} * sin(B)
  = x * cos(B) - y * sin(B)

Similarly we do the same for y.

Now, we would also like to write the equation for the Translation of a 2D point:
  x' = x + dx
  y' = y + dy

Likewise Scaling is pretty straightforward:
  x' = x * sx
  y' = y * sy

These 3 different operations require 3 different functions and order of operations! This sucks. It sure would be nice if we could unify these operations into one equation! We actually have two choices for how we could write/calculate this:

a) Pre-multiply the column vector (ignore the '.' it is whitespace due to /. being lame.)

[ x' ] = [ m p ] * [ x ]
[ y' ] . [ n q ] * [ y ]

b) Post-multiply the row vector

[ x' y' ] = [ x y ] * [ m p ]
                      [ n q ]

At the end of the day it doesn't matter which convention you pick just as long as you are consistent.

Since /. is lame and doesn't like an _informative_ MATH post I'm breaking it into two parts...

Re:like anything else..

[ebno-10db]

See, math isn't so hard. You just have to know how to choose the right axioms.

Re:like anything else..

[ebno-10db]

Those are examples, not a proof :)
Maybe math really is the hardest subject.

Re:like anything else..

[ebno-10db]

Engineers want to be physicists.
Physicists want to be mathematicians.
Mathematicians want to be God.
God is an engineer.

Re:like anything else..

[Pseudonym Authority]

But look at how many people he failed! That proves that whoever managed to get high enough to fuck up the ridiculously huge curve is the best of the best of the best of the best.

Re:like anything else..

[UnknownSoldier]

> I am still not sure I understand using 4x4 matrices to do transforms in three space. I can write the code though (slowly).

Part 2 since /. ecode formatting is still so gey I am including a bunch of whitespace filler text '.' to align things up in columns.

Now, expressing the Rotation equation in Matrix form. Remember we ended up with these two equations:
  x' = x * cos(B) - y * sin(B)
  y' = x * sin(B) + y*cos(B)

We can literally "transcode" them from algebraic form into matrix form without too much difficulty. We end up with this:

[ x' ] = [ cos(B) -sin(B) ] * [ x ]
[ y' ] . [ sin(B) .cos(B) ] . [ y ]

And expressing the Scaling in Matrix form:

. [ x' ] = [ sx 0 ] * [ x ]
  [ y' ] . [ 0 sy ] [ y ]

Likewise expressing the Translation in Matrix form:

x' = x + dx
y' = y + dy
x' = (x*m + y*p) + dx*1
y' = (x*n + y*q) + dy*1

The problem is that a 2x2 matrix form won't do! We need to extend the problem from 2D to 3D !

[ x' ] = [ m p dx ] * [ x ]
[ y' ] . [ n q dy ] . [ y ]
[ 0. ] . [ 0 0 1. ] . [ 1 ]

The exact same _principle_ is used for 3D. We extend a 3x3 matrix (orientation) to a 4x4 matrix so that it expresses BOTH a orientation AND translation.

[ x' y' z' w' ] = [ 4x4matrix ] * [ x y z 1 ]

Hope this helped!

Re:like anything else..

[UnknownSoldier]

Typo: y' = R * cos(A+B)
Should be: y' = R * sin(A+B)

Re:like anything else..

[ebno-10db]

But that is not a hyperbole.

Ok. "Very reasonable inference" is just hand waving. You're expressing an opinion, but not providing any evidence, let alone proof for it. "Require many generations to be solved or even to be proved unsolvable" is a type of difficulty, but there is no argument or evidence that it's the greatest possible difficulty. It's just saying "math is tough". I never said otherwise. Moreover there are many scientific problems that take generations to be solved. That situation is not unique to math.

Re:like anything else..

[Anonymous Coward]

Maths is easy. It makes sense. What can be hard is being taught maths by someone who doesn't understand it, as they can't make it make sense. The problems start in High School, where very few maths teachers hold maths degrees. So students get taught by people to whom the subject is hard, so they learn that the subject is hard, instead of that it's easy. As for research being hard, yes, the original thinking in research is hard, but once you've got your result, it's trivial to those that follow you.

Re:like anything else..

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the fact that the problems are well defined mean that the subject is easier or harder?

It means that there exists an answer - it is possible to solve the problem. Ill-defined problems aren't really problems at all, they are more like poetry. They mean whatever you want them to mean. The only way to solve an ill-defined problem is to turn it into a proper problem and then solving that proper problem. Yet there are an infinite number of ways of turning ill-defined problems into real problems. You could say that there is no correct solution to ill-defined problems or you could say that anything is a solution as long as you adopt the right perspective or model.

There is no such thing as an ill-defined problem that is easy or hard to solve - those adjectives do not apply because there is no such thing as solving an ill-defined problem. The challenge is not to solve the problem, the challenge is to figure out what you would like the problem to be in the first place. That by itself can be hard or difficult, but the difficulty is not in solving the problem, just in figuring out what it can be made to mean. Solving the problem is the next step.

If you try to solve an ill-defined problem head-on, then what you'll do is to implicitly instantiate the ill-defined problem into a proper problem. You just won't tell anyone that you are doing it and maybe you won't know it yourself. If another person does the same thing, he'll instantiate a different problem and hence turn up a different solution. At that point the two of you will be arguing forever with no resolution possible, because you aren't talking about the same thing. This useless sort of thing happens all the time, it's probably the main reason for human disagreement. So most of the time, no progress is made towards solving ill-defined problems, because they can't be solved as they are - they have to be transformed first into real problems. Problems that are already real are much easier to solve because at least it is possible to solve them as they are. It may still be hard, but at least it isn't impossible.

Re:like anything else..

[Darinbob]

I tried to learn Klingon, until I learned that it was hard, and I was weak.

Re:like anything else..

[RightwingNutjob]

I'm a bit young to have bragging rights like actually taking Feynman's class, but I did watch some of his taped lectures in college. It was like the cherry on top. I had already taken most of the standard engineering physics and math courses, and that let me follow him without getting lost. But the fact that he had the talent for making things look intuitive without getting bogged down in unnecessary detail is what made me really understand those courses.

It's probably true that a chicken in every pot and a Feynman clone in every classroom is not a sufficient condition for better physics teaching, but a visit to the Feynman clone *after* you've taken your intro classes can only help.

Re:like anything else..

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with math, if problem is the right word, is that it changes its character, and the kind of thinking that is required at each level is quite different. It helps to be painstaking, but that is true in many fields. The skills required in arithmetic, algebra, calculus, discrete math, linear algebra, and number theory are all quite different, and students who think they are good at math move to the next level and find something quite foraign and quite unpleasant.

I spent most of my career as a college math professor...

No, I disagree. It's all vector spaces and topologies, all the way down (apologies to the turtles). If the student moves to a new topic and it seems not to relate to what has gone before then it's really being taught badly. And I say this from the perspective of someone who spent most of his career as a university maths lecturer.

Re:like anything else..

[HornWumpus]

Or else she wouldn't have put a sewage line in a recreation area.

Re:like anything else..

[wierd_w]

I actually found college to be delightfully refreshing.

In highschool, the teacher staff has a kind of "paranoia" about students failing, due to the inseperable link between the school's federal funding, and their performance on standardized test scores.

As a result, highschool teachers institute a LOT of unnecessary bloat in their curriculum. Like those fucking "agenda books". I spent more time putting bullshit in that fucker than I did doing actual school work, so that I could then document doing school work. There was even a percenage of the grade for the year assigned to how well you complied with the paper pushing!

College? Straight up, the instructor really just does not fucking care if you studied or not. He doesn't care how you studied, if you took notes or not, how long you studied, or who you studied with. He doesn't even care how well you do on the test. You already paid to be there, and if you fuck up, it's no skin off his back. I FUCKING LOVED THAT.

I didn't have constant naggng over inane clerical bullshit, didn't have the "no child left behind!" Nanny philosophy to saddle me with other people's problems to try and float their test scores, nada. Just me, the lectures, the textbook, the assignments, and the tests. It was glorious. How well I did was directly tied to how much effort I put into understanding the material, and not on how well I filled out forms documenting the time I spent studying, and other such insanities.

The "I didn't have to even try in highschool!" Line is, in my opinion, EXACTLY the problem. How can you ever HOPE to be successful, if you don't even try? And, for those that DO try, if there is no tangible benefit for the effort? What does that teach them about expending said effort?

You go to school to learn. Education does not make somebody smarter. It gives a person the tools to use to effectively employ the smarts they already have.

My message for educators? (Specifically, highschool educators--)

Stop trying to fix the problem of poor student performance with ever increasing layers of beaurocracy. Are you trying to teach children how to do algebra, or how to fill out attendence forms? Are you concerned with giving a quality educational OPPORTUNITY, or are you concerned about what the feds THINK about your employer?

The very word "achievement" implies that an obstacle has been overcome; that the expenditure of effort has occured, and that through that exercise, something of value has been gained. If you cook the books with beaurocratic bullshit to inflate group test scores, and in so doing, REWARD LAZINESS, your students don't achieve anything, and those that put forth actual effort, do not get rewarded for it.

Rather than roll over, and blithely accept the "on high" orders from people who are clearly ignorant of anything even remotely connected to effective education, (like capitulating to the "no child left behind" bullshit), use your union for something actually fucking constructive for a change, and demand better policies from the feds instead of pay raises.

Covering up the problem by wrapping it up in fluffy feelgood bullshit does NOT help children to succeed. It sets them up to fail. Lying to kids for 12 years, and pushing them through the system instead of making them actually earn their grades, out of some misguided belief that if they do bad, it will break their little hearts instead of wake them the fuck up, is exactly why this happens at the university level. What do you suppose finding out that you lied to them for 12 years does to their self esteem? The competency fairy doesn't come visit them after their senior year you know.

Failure is required, for there to be achievement.

End of story.

Re:like anything else..

[McGruber]

Along with this is the problem of grade inflation in high schools. I spent most of my career as a college math professor, and I ran into students every year who thought they were good at math because they had gotten good grades in it, but when I handed out problem sets the first week which reviewed prerequisite material, they could not do them at all.

Had their been no grade inflation, their high school transcript would have showed Bs and Cs.... would your college have admitted them with those grades?

Re:like anything else..

[ulatekh]

Here's another guy fantastic at explaining science in terms that normal people can understand -- Tim Lee is a comedian who used to be a scientist.

Re:like anything else..

[HairyNevus]

What people inherently like are the endorphins they're getting when "runner's high" get's triggered. Personally, I can recall sometimes where slogging through math and science excited me enough that I may have been producing a similar effect*, but that was only when I got what I was reading. If the teacher lost me/ the subject matter became over my head I was more like the runner's who feel nauseous after a run.

*Purely anecdotal

Re:like anything else..

[Kielistic]

Case in point.

Re:like anything else..

[Capsaicin]

We could certainly do with a lot less people going around saying Math is hard. That's defeatist thinking. Math is easy!

If memory serves me correctly a few years ago slashdot ran a story linking to some research comparing high school maths performance internationally. One of the findings was that in those countries where the students rated maths "easier" or "more enjoyable" the general level of mathematical ability was lower than in those countries where the students rated maths as difficult.

The fact of the matter is that maths is hard. That's only defeatists thinking if you are not up for the challenge.

Re:like anything else..

[ygtai]

When they couldn't understand the idea of variables, it seems to me they didn't have a grasp of basic algebra. They were simply extremely unprepared, as many previous posts suggested.

Re:like anything else..

[khallow]

Why any student would want to understand a math proof paper reading it by himself?

There's a variety of reasons. First, maybe he's the only one wanting to understand that proof or he just wants to figure it out by himself (that can yield considerable insight into a problem).

If you know the math and understand it you still can teach the basic concepts behind that proof

Basic concepts only get you so far. If you want to understand a proof, then you need to learn both what the proof does and the hidden maths and insights that led to the proof. A proof often gives little clue into how the proof was devised.

Re:like anything else..

[sconeu]

That just means he/she/it is a *CIVIL* Engineer.

Re:like anything else..

[Rakarra]

Whats needed is good educators, like Richard Feynman was. What passes for "good educator" these days is pathetic.

I'd like to add Carl Sagan to the list of great educators in science. Someone who could not only impart knowledge, but help you feel the same passion for learning.
Episode 1 of Contact, where he talks about the loss of the Great Library of Alexandria, is a nice example.

This is part 1 of his thoughts on the library, but passion I speak of was in part 2 .... which EMI has been pretty good about blocking from Youtube. It's available from Netflix Streaming.

Re:like anything else..

[Ultracrepidarian]

I took High School Algebra from an octegenerian none of us took very seriously. It seemed rather easy. In college we covered the same material, and it seemed the professor managed to make it look very difficult. Some are gifted teachers, others are not.

Re:like anything else..

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends. I know people who will probably find reading classics harder than doing calculus.

And if I may make an offtopic remark about the liberal arts -- while it may be traditionally a major chosen by the people who are unable/unwilling to study, the number of people in the real world who are actually qualified to claim they are well versed in the liberal arts are far and few between.

Re:like anything else..

[sydneyfong]

I'm pretty sure we can trivially find a proof that most forms of mathematics is NP-Hard. (No kidding -- determining whether there are mathematical proofs of length N is NP-Complete)

Are there subjects that are harder than exponential? Probably not that many.

Re:like anything else..

[Anonymous Coward]

The beauty of math is that once that that problem is solved, you are able to teach the concepts behing the solution to an average human mind without excesive difficulty.

Exactly..... wrong.
The beauty of math, is that once the problem is solved, you can teach any average idiot how to go through the motions and arrive at the correct the solution without understanding it.

Re:like anything else..

[George_Ou]

Same here. High School AP classes were just too easy compared to what they offer at the junior college. And what they offer at the junior college for the same subject is too easy compared to a major university. It doesn't feel good to get that rude awakening but the people with character admit their shortcomings and then work to overcome them.

The problem in recent decades is that we're too focused on building up the self-esteem of our youngsters. It gives them a false sense of what the real world is like and we're failing to prepare them for the real world. They think everything should be easy and effortless when they should be challenged.

Re:like anything else..

[microbox]

What passes for "good educator" these days is pathetic.

I find that so absurd. As a highly educated person, who has spent inordinate amounts of time sifting through the rather fruitless nature-versus-nurture debate, I can only say that your statement makes sense from an impoverished (social sciences) view of human nature.

Every great teacher knows that their students do well because of their teaching, and their children do well because of their genes. Self-deception is funny like that.

Re:like anything else..

[microbox]

Easier. The hard problems are just addressed terribly by people who don't know that they don't know what they are doing.

Re:like anything else..

[microbox]

That is an interesting conjecture that I agree with; however, it is just an assumption.

Re:like anything else..

[Tyler Durden]

I mention that example because there is probably a Turing machine with input that can be fully described in modest time by a human, but which can't be determined to halt even using the entire resources of the known universe converted optimally into a computer and run for the rest of eternity.

That depends entirely on what algorithm you try to use do determine whether the given TM will halt on the given input. Some algorithms might be able to determine it quickly, some might take a long time before finding the answer, and others won't ever be able to determine whether or not it will halt.

The point is that there is no single algorithm which will be able to determine the correct answer for all possible pairs of TMs and inputs.

Re:like anything else..

[The Cat]

Crayons are very easy. Writing an award winning novel is ridiculously hard.

Get over yourself.

Re:like anything else..

[mark-t]

Math is easy in approximately the same sense that drawing well is easy, or playing a musical instrument is easy. It is a learned skill that can improve with practice... some people appear to take to it more naturally than others, but given the time and willingness to put the necessary effort in, anyone can do them.

Re:like anything else..

[__aaltlg1547]

I think ethics is right up there with it. It is in most other ways the opposite of math.

Re:like anything else..

[__aaltlg1547]

Math uses mostly math tools discovered millenia ago.

Re:like anything else..

[__aaltlg1547]

Also engineering problems. DaVinci was drawing ideas for flying machines in the 15th century, but it took until the 20th to actually make machines that can fly.

Re:like anything else..

[fredprado]

It is based on the fact that all human fields of knowledge use without exception logic as the tool to solve problems and math is the formalization of logic.

Re:like anything else..

[fredprado]

Moreover there are many scientific problems that take generations to be solved.

Sure, but without exception they end reduced to math problems. Math encompasses all fields of knowledge, because math is the formalization of logic itself. Those scientific or engineering problems that took generations to solve, took generation either because the math they needed didn't exist yet, or because testing hypothesis and generating knowledge was a slow or unfeasible process.

They are thus either reduced to math problems that took generations to be solved, or measurement problems that made them impossible to be solved until the right tools existed for the task.

Re:like anything else..

[fredprado]

As about everything else. The difference is that only math uses math that was discovered last week.

Re:like anything else..

[microbox]

It is based on the fact that all human fields of knowledge use without exception logic as the tool to solve problems and math is the formalization of logic.

That is just not true. For a starters, it is a meta-physical question whether the mathematical laws really model anything, and already we are outside of "logic" and into the larger field of esoteric experience. Science itself is an esoteric experience, because you know things through an experience of knowing. Spend some time studying epistemology, and you'll figure out that logic isn't as straight-forward as it seems, and certainly doesn't encompass all fields of human knowledge.

Now I believe that there is a non-self-referential epistemology that grounds the stuff of through in physical laws, but as of today, we've barely come up with an acceptable definition of addiction that isn't self-referential, and have no clue what thoughts really are -- the so called "hard problem".

Re:like anything else..

[TaoPhoenix]

Hmm, go a bit easy on the frustrated comments of people who might be looking at a change of major!

I'm right in line of all this. High School science was different. It's hard to say, but it was "fundamental" enough. If you grow up prowling around the pop-sci section of a bookstore, it's not delusional to think "well gee, maybe I'll study science". So I made it through Freshman year in college still kinda enthused.

Then over summer break I got hold of discard-copies of old versions of the textbooks and collapsed. The combination of Calculus and Organic Chem (and then beyond!) sunk me. Plus I suk at anything spatial involving curves. But the un-sung third point is that I didn't want to spend nine months in a lab recording tedious results and then produce one crispy little paper, and then do it all over again.

So I went back as a business major. I'm clever, but most of y'all here are brighter than this ol' humanities bird. But also it felt "Closer to the ground". Pay a bill in AP. Close a Monthly period. Post Stuff to a contract. "Stuff" gets "done" and it sticks.

Re:like anything else..

[PCM2]

If a student is used to getting As in high school and gets Bs or Cs in their early math or engineering course, they shouldn't consider that a reason to change majors.

There's one problem with that, which I faced. I was getting the B or C in classes like college chemistry and organic chemistry. I told the instructors I was thinking of dropping the class and trying again later, but they told me that A.) my grade was typical, and that it meant I was actually doing decently well in the class; and B.) if I do drop the class, I shouldn't bother trying to take it again, because based on their experience I would end up with the same grade. It was impossible for students to absorb all the material taught, they told me, and if I got a C this time, the next time I took the class I would just forget the other half of the material and get a C again.

This not only seemed to me to be a totally ridiculous way to teach a class -- you actually admit that students can't learn what you're teaching?? -- but this was also a junior college, where anyone who wanted to get a four-year degree would need to transfer to a four-year university. The department prided itself on teaching classes that "prepared you for Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, or any university in the country." The catch, however, was that they handed out grades that made it impossible for their students to transfer to any of those schools. They'd pat you on the back for passing their class, then reward you with the kiss of death that basically ended your education ambitions right there.

Re: like anything else..

[krups gusto]

Sure. But it might also help if students went to school to learn. I suspect most go to get a degree first.

Re:like anything else..

[TFAFalcon]

It probably would have. Since there would be no grade inflation many(most) applicants would probably have Bs and Cs. So those grades would be completely acceptable for a college.

Re:like anything else..

[Meeni]

No. This is the thinking that made the level of high schoolers so bad in the first place that they can't follow when things get serious. This is maybe appropriate for elementary school and as a blend in middle school. But you have to face the reality of science, sooner than later. The longer you stay at "fun" science, and don't dive in the real thing, the worst the monster slap in the face gets when you -have to- use complex abstractions to do anything.

Re:like anything else..

[Meeni]

I oppose the following counter example:

Nuclear fusion is easy (in theory). The math formula, if not trivial, is certainly not -that- hard.

Finding the appropriate apparatus that can achieve sustained nuclear fusion is hard. Harder than the mathematical depiction of the process. Sure, we know, thanks to maths and formulas -what- needs to be done (and what it will look like when it has happened, even). Finding -how- to do it is much harder. We'll have the solution to this practical problem in 30 years (since nuclear fusion is always in 30 years from know, for any date since After-Unix).

Re:like anything else..

[jandersen]

I have thought a lot about this subject over the years, and I think it goes a bit deeper than that, although I agree with what you say - that it is to some extent a question of learning how to pace your effort and keeping it up.

I think a large part of it is simply that the ones that study science at university are very intelligent - so intelligent that they have breezed through school and high-school without having to make an effort. I mean, I turned up to my high-school exams without ever having opened the books or handed in my home work - and I passed with good enough grades to get into university, where I failed everything for the first three years. It would have helped me immensely, if there had been a lot more focus on making me work steadily in school, but as it was, I simply didn't understand the necessity of it.

The other thing is that because there are so many startling and impressive results in science, that is what teaching often seems to be about before university; but at university you are meant to learn about the methods, and the results really ought to be secondary to this. In my opinion this is not pointed out strongly enough in most university education, which means that a lot of students end up with an education that they don't quite know how to use - they can apply the main theorems and results, but they can't go on and produce new theoretical work. I think this is the real, fundamental problem in modern science education.

Re:like anything else..

[arth1]

We could certainly do with a lot less people going around saying Math is hard. That's defeatist thinking. Math is easy!

I think we need more good history teachers too. I mean, look at all the replies you got, and how none of them appeared to recognize your reference.
For those not in the know: Feynman caught a lot of flak for saying that math is easy. He qualified it by noting that it's easy compared to life. That's hard. And I agree.

But I think a sizable portion of our population cannot grok mathematics or hard sciences- they don't seem to be wired to do so. To me, that's strange. But some cannot twist their head into understanding that the order of factors are irrelevant, that you don't have to rotate a map, what an imaginary number is, or that time is not a global phenomenon. I think we just have to accept that many people won't be able to understand certain things that's intuitive to others, even if they can be taught well enough to pass tests.

Re:like anything else..

[wahgnube]

Amen.

The moment I truly understood this, I started working seriously on an applied math and mechanics education resource that tries to use interesting applications to motivate abstract theory.

If anyone is interested in helping out, I'd be delighted to hear from you.

Re:like anything else..

[sg_oneill]

Whats amazing is some of those problems seem so simple even a child would be convinced they could prove it.

And centuries later grey haired men with decades of post-doctoral experience are still banging their heads on the wall trying to concoct that proof.

I mean it wasn't that long ago ('70s or '80s) that we finally proved the 4 color theorum, something children had been proclaiming "easy" .... until they tried it, for centuries.

Re:like anything else..

[Maxo-Texas]

Your girlfriend asks you, do these pants make me look fat?

There are two attractive people, one with red hair and one with blond hair. Which is more attractive?

What is love?

If a man born blind, and able to distinguish by touch between a cube and a globe, were made to see, could he now tell by sight which was the cube and which the globe, before he touched them?

Are mathematical objects are real or merely formal constructions?

Do deities exist?

Re:like anything else..

[chrismcb]

Things do tend to be more 'hard' when the student spends more time listening to their nay-saying peers than their instructors. When you actually believe Math, Chemistry or Physics is 'hard' your belief is your own largest obstacle to learning.

This is probably why it is difficult to teach students these things. Because for many people in the industry, what they are studying comes easy for them. So they think it is easy for everyone else. When those other people say the subject matter is difficult, the experts say "silly kids, think of it as easy and it will be." Unfortunately it isn't that simple. Math IS difficult.
For example I know a lot of skateboarders. And many of these people think skateboarding is easy, and they can't understand why more people don't do it. They can't comprehend the fact that some people can't even STAND on a stationary skateboard, let along make it move. Some people can barely understand that concept that 2 + 2 = 4, and yet you tell them "well if you think it is hard, it will be hard." When it actuality it IS hard.

Re:like anything else..

[Maxo-Texas]

Oh ... and

If a man guards a book year after year, which is more important? The man or the book?

And a horse has no udders, and a cow canâ(TM)t whinny. And up is down, and sideways is straight ahead.

Re:like anything else..

[SerpentMage]

While I would like to agree with you my practical experience has shown otherwise. BTW I am an ME, wife is EE, and 60% of my family is in technical field.

1) Teachers are too often humanities teachers. This means the route of memorization is used, instead of the logic approach.

2) Math and Science are way too abstract. They are taught without any relation to reality. As one of the other commentators posted, "you see something come in, then go out and it makes sense in business school." Where is that in the math's and sciences? Take for example the Pythagorean Theorem. It was use in the past to build straight buildings. Maybe that is how it should be taught now! Games should be created with Math.

3) In the end either you have it or you don't. Sure you can tune and try to make it work, but that is like asking me to become a musician or a singer. Or worse my wife! My wife loves to sing, and when we were first dating we drove from University to her house during the night. I decided to take a nap in the car while my then girlfriend now wife decided to sing. I woke up right away and thought, "did we run something over!" Since then my wife has never sung in front of me. But damm, she can out do me in math.

Re:like anything else..

[tyrione]

Now show a 6 Degree of Freedom, 4 bar linkage in Kinematics.

Re:like anything else..

[Anonymous Coward]

> In engineering school an average student can't get by on hard work, because the workload is too high, and will likely fail.

As an average student (Neverthless I mostly was top of my engeneering studies), I will just say : NEVER, JUST NEVER listen to people saying you haven"t the abilities to become good. 99% of the success in life is hardwork. Having aptitude is mostly useless.

After high-school I was discouraged by some professors to continue at higher level. Aftermath, I reached a level that most of them never dreamed (I did dream of it and I did it).

Re:like anything else..

[sFurbo]

Ah, so THAT is what is meant by finding proofs being NP-Hard. Thanks :-)

However, I don't think that that necessarily makes math itself hard. Consider the travelling salesman problem in fully connected graphs. Determining whether a path smaller than N exists is NP-complete, but determining whether ANY path exists is trivial (it does, as the graph is fully connected). In math, we are rarely concerned with determining whether a short proof exists (though it is nice if it does), but whether any proof exists, so we could have a situation where determining whether a proof exists is much easier than determining whether a proof with particular properties exist. Or am I missing something?

Re:like anything else..

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Well, there aren't many fields with well-defined problems that have solutions which can't be found without many human generations of effort. And many math problems are known to be intractable.

You could apply the same thing to, say, biology: "find out how exactly life developed on Earth, in all levels of detail". It will either be horribly laborious or demonstrated to be intractable, due to loss of information. And yet, this is exactly the kind of questions that people ask scientists.

Re:like anything else..

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Yet to me is seems that this doesn't show that math is hard; it merely shows that in math, it's easy to come up with hard problems.

Re:like anything else..

[brillow]

People always says Feynman was a great educator, but what's the evidence for this? People liked hearing him talk, but how do we know he's a good educator? What metrics are available?

Re:like anything else..

[grizdog]

The place I worked was a State school with modest admissions standards. Moreover, if grades generally had been lower, we probably would have lowered the standards, which were mostly enrollment driven, so yes, they probably still would have been admitted. But the students would not have erroneously believed they were good at math and didn't have to work particularly hard at it, which I think would have been a win.

Re:like anything else..

[Ash Vince]

On the flip side, I had professors who would teach material so badly that the class average was 28% or 35%.

That is not always the teachers fault.

When I went to Uni to study Physics one of our Maths modules had a similar average. The lecturer we has not great, but the real problem is that all the fundamental principles of higher maths had been disappearing from the A-Level (the level before university) Maths syllabus in the years before that.

When I was studying for my A-Levels I had to struggle through things like complex integration and differentiation, finding the roots of quadratic equations and tons more stuff I saw no relevance to. This has now all been removed from the A-Level syllabus to try and encourage more students to take Maths at A-Level and to improve the pass rate. It was actually removed the year I finished so by the time I came to Uni after a gap year I was in a uni class with people who had no experience of this stuff but were still trying to do a Physics degree. Maybe this is only happening here in the UK where I live but I reckon it is similar in the US too.

Then there is the other problem, students always bitch about the teachers and blame them when things go wrong. It has been going on for decades, especially at degree level as before then you are very much being spoon fed the stuff you need to learn but they need to start weaning you off this so you start doing more of the the learning you need to do in a self directed manner. That means that your lecturers have to be there for you to ask questions of occasionally, but for the most part you have to get used to teaching yourself anything you need to pass your course. Some students really struggle with this transition, especially if the lack a real passion for what they chose to study.

This is not to say that bad lecturers do not exist, like anything there will be teachers and lecturers who are good at it and some that suck. It is just worth remembering that however crap the teacher is it is still down to the student to drive their own learning by the time they get to university. What really differentiates between good and bad lecturers is the ability to foster a passion for learning a subject in their students.

Re:like anything else..

[readin]

hard is merely the fact that often, the theories and equations taught are quite abstract. It is very important to have a solid grasp of concepts, but in the end, the material could be improved with visual and/or tangible results which have some values and/or association to the abstract concepts.

I found advanced physics hard. How does one make the twin paradox tangible? I think in some cases the material is hard because it isn't tangible or visible. That Slower Speed of Light project Slashdot reported on is a good start, but in my case (going to college years and years ago) the technology simple wasn't available for such a simulation.

Re:like anything else..

[Ash Vince]

I still remember in one signals class, the guy next to me asked how I did for one of the homework questions, and I told him I didn't do it because it looked awful. He told me it took him several hours to solve.

"[First name], it's worth 1/2 of 1%."

"... you son of a bitch."

But hey, what do I know, I've just got an engineering degree on my wall here next to my PE certificate.

Of course you are right, that is how you pass exams. I was actually quite good at by the end as I would make several passes through the paper going for the stuff I found harder and harder on each pass. The first pass would really just be a skim read and quick answer of the stuff I found easy, the last pass would probably be just going for one question that bugged the hell out of me.

I also never made any secret of this as my answer books generally had all the questions in the order I answered them (eg, 5,2,1,8,etc) so it kept the lecturers on their toes. This was perfectly allowed so why bother trying to leave space to answer questions you are skipping on that pass when you don't need to, however easy it would be.

The thing is though techniques like this are always a bit of a cop out. Persisting with something you find incredibly hard to the bitter end gives a real sense of satisfaction when you get it right, even if it is only worth half a percent. This is what university should be about: Satisfaction and learning for learning's sake.

Re:like anything else..

[readin]

I think a large part of it is simply that the ones that study science at university are very intelligent - so intelligent that they have breezed through school and high-school without having to make an effort. I mean, I turned up to my high-school exams without ever having opened the books or handed in my home work - and I passed with good enough grades to get into university, where I failed everything for the first three years. It would have helped me immensely, if there had been a lot more focus on making me work steadily in school, but as it was, I simply didn't understand the necessity of it.

I had similar issues. I never learned to take notes (never needed them). I never learned how to go talk to the teacher. I never bothered to memorized math formulas, laws and such because I could re-derive them during the test if I needed them (but I didn't have time for that when I needed all these formulas for advanced physics, or worse, I had forgotten they even existed).

I can't claim to have been treated unfairly, since I had been told that being lazy was bad and since I was the one being lazy. But I often wonder how my life would be different and likely better if grade school had been more challenging, if grades were open announced like sports results to bring out my competitive side, and if there had been tangible penalties for getting a B instead of an A on report, test, and especially homework.

Re:like anything else..

[SuricouRaven]

Same story here. Seems it is quite common. Breezed through secondary school and A-levels without a single minute of revision and came out with good grades - then had a breakdown in university, at my first experience of intellectual failure.

Re:like anything else..

[luis_a_espinal]

Whats needed is good educators, like Richard Feynman was. What passes for "good educator" these days is pathetic.

We could certainly do with a lot less people going around saying Math is hard. That's defeatist thinking. Math is easy!

"Math is easy". That's one hell of a subjective statement. Some math is easy. Other math can be extremely hard regardless of how you much you like it. As a broad subject, it is mired with difficulties. Those difficulties become greater when you add professors who made it hard on purpose, who favor being "tough" over being "effective", and who come to class already with a mind set in giving A to only 10% of the class, B to 30% of the class and C's, D's and F's to the rest, REGARDLESS OF HOW WELL PEOPLE COULD BE CAPABLE OF DOING AT THE HANDS OF ANOTHER, MUCH BETTER PROFESSOR.

Re:like anything else..

[hibiki_r]

Ah, you didn't know? It was all an experiment. You were teaching Functional Programming savants, so of course they couldn't understand how a variable works!

Re:like anything else..

[Marxist Hacker 42]

This. Having said this, however, my software engineering program had a 75% drop out rate- within the first three terms. This was back when they were telling EVERYBODY that programming was the career of the future (they lied) and that it was easy. C and Advanced C at OIT were *all* visual/tangible results within two weeks- short two week programming projects that introduced basic concepts such as looping and data structures.

There was a backup degree called "Management in Information Systems", we had a saying by the time I graduated "God Bless those little MIS students, they interview for the same jobs we do and make us look good".

Re:like anything else..

[Marxist Hacker 42]

I resemble this remark. Same here. Made it through high school with a GPA of 3.5 without much effort. Barely succeeded at college with a GPA of 2.6 because of it.

I kept thinking "There must be some way to use computer memory instead of human memory for this stuff". Today, I think I'd be recording lectures on my smart phone and listening to them at night when I'm asleep on loop.

Re:like anything else..

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Starting with what set of axioms :)

1. Math is a subject known by humankind.
2. Some subjects are more difficult than others.
3. ???

Good luck!

I think the major problem with your suggestion is that "Profit!" is not a proposition and therefore can't be an axiom.

Re:like anything else..

[cryptizard]

Math is the easiest subject there is. We created math because we couldn't deal with all the complicated edge cases of reality. Instead we imagine a perfect world in our heads where we know all the axioms and rules and are free to play around without all the mucky details of the real world.

Re:like anything else..

[serviscope_minor]

Math is easy!

If you find maths easy, then you're doing it wrong.

The only way it's easy is if you're just doing the same thing over and over, or moving at a very slow pace. If you actually do some maths, you will very soon find problems you cannot solve. Maths eventually defeats everyone who attempts it, with no exceptions.

Re:like anything else..

[serviscope_minor]

Smart enough to get the concepts but not smart enough to be outraged at the futility and waste of time and money that college is.

Ah, so you were too smart to do well in college. Nice to know.

Re:like anything else..

[jellomizer]

What really needs is to fix the Competitive grading structure of schools.
You need a 3.0 or better to get into grad schools, the person with the Highest GPA get all the extra honors that looks good when looking for a job.

I went to a University that had a rather diverse set of majors, Almost all of the Valedictorians were Art Majors... Why because they didn't need to take too many of the tough courses that would kill a GPA. It is nearly unheard of an Engineering Major to be in the High 3 GPA. Because the classes were that much harder.

And with Math, Science and Engineering (Especially with Undergrad studies) your answers are either right or they are wrong, sure you may get partial credit for showing your thought process and get a few points off for missing a step, but still grading is very mechanical. The Arts and Humanities there is a lot of touchy feely stuff towards grading, and it is easier for students to fudge the system. Know what the professor likes and cater to it, even if you disagree with them. When I took history my professor was big in Womens History, so when I wrote my paper on early computers I made sure it had a good womans history slant to it, and I got a really good grade on it. Because I focused more on Ada Lovelace and less on Charles Babbage. You can't cater your answer for the Math professor as much to his taste. There is the correct answer or not. So if you are going to that discipline don't expect a stellar GPA especially if you are actually going to be learning stuff in college.

Re:like anything else..

[Rotag_FU]

In my case I had a number of teachers who weren't new, but were horrible teachers at the same time (although likely excellent researchers hence the reason they were still on staff).

In at least one case (differential equations), the prof's english was so poor that he was unable to comprehensibly express the simplest of concepts. It got so bad that I realized that I was learning nothing in the class and was entirely self learning using the text book. This wasn't so bad since I was still learning the concepts and understanding them, but I was upset that I was effectively paying this professor through my tuition for nothing more than the ability to give me tests and grade them since he was not conveying the core concepts. I eventually only would go to the classes where the homework was assigned and the quizzes/tests were given since everything else was a real waste of time. I did get an A and left the course with an understanding of the material, but again this was entirely through my own efforts and there was no real teaching by the professor.

Re:like anything else..

[fredrated]

As a mathematician I would disagree: human interactions are harder.

Re:like anything else..

[Ambassador Kosh]

You might want to be careful about some of those assumptions.

I know exactly what a graph is, how to create them etc but I find reading them to be extremely hard. I don't think visually at all, I don't dream in pictures etc. For whatever reason when I look at graphs I find it takes a lot of time to read them, the information just does not make a lot of sense to me. However, if I get a table of numbers I have no issues with that at all.

Not everyone thinks and see the world the same way and some things that seem obvious and simple to you can be very difficult for someone else just because of how their brain works. I do have advantages though also. Many problems that other students find difficult because they can't figure out how to visualize them I find trivially easy because I never visualized them in the first place so I find that for many of the harder problems I can solve them far faster than other students but I get slowed down when I have to deal with graphs.

Re:like anything else..

[khallow]

That depends entirely on what algorithm you try to use do determine whether the given TM will halt on the given input.

Ok, any algorithm where you don't already know the answer in advance.

Re:like anything else..

[khallow]

You could apply the same thing to, say, biology: "find out how exactly life developed on Earth, in all levels of detail".

Well, how "exact" is "exact"? It's ill-defined. You can't exactly do anything with respect to physical measurement nor do we try. We can approximate and that's something that can't be done with these hard math problems. There's no way to approximate whether a program ends or not.

Re:like anything else..

[zildgulf]

That reminds me of Differential Equations. I could always calculate the answer of any problem but I never had any understanding of how mathematicians even derive that solution from the beginning. I assume it is the same with all mathematics.

Re:like anything else..

[khallow]

Yet to me is seems that this doesn't show that math is hard; it merely shows that in math, it's easy to come up with hard problems.

If math was easy those problems would not exist.

Re: like anything else..

[test:)tezzz]

Agreed

Re:like anything else..

[Anon-Admin]

They are taught without any relation to reality.

Ill agree with that, my daughters science teachers (HS) went one of two ways. It was ether cool experiments with no research or it was the teacher doing the experiment and then having the students do the math.

I started teaching her after school. We would do the cool experiment then formulate questions from it. Why did it do that? what did it change to? etc. Then research and math to answer the questions. It was a blase.

A great example is as simple as baking soda and vinegar. Mix them to a neutral PH, heat and boil off the excess water (1/2), set in the fridge tell cool, then reach in and touch the liquid with a pin. From that we had over a month of learning, Starting with why it bubbled, why the PH was changing, what are the chemical formulas for both, what was the reaction doing, why did it solidify when touched, etc, etc, etc. Math and science can be hard, the trick is to let the kids explore and learn. Let them see how and why it matters and teach them analytical thought.

Re:like anything else..

[zildgulf]

Does it really matter that STEM education may be a scam? Does it matter than vendor specific certifications are a type of scam? Is the entire job market for STEM educated people a scam?

The common thread is that these are not things you can do something about. Why are you worrying about how the world is not conforming to your vision of the universe and simply accept what you cannot change externally. Be the change you want to see happen because that is all you can control. For the rest I suggest gaming these corrupt systems to the limit without losing your integrity. Get the STEM degree so you can get to your goal. Get the vendor specific certifications to get yourself trusted and hired. The job market is very unfair so I have no qualms getting worthless pieces of paper if it will gain trust from prospective employers that you know what you are doing, even when you doubt yourself. If in getting these worthless pieces of paper I seek out to learn all I can and accidentally stumble on some awesome technique or, better yet, something earth shattering, the journey will be well worth it. It is in the journey through the labors and pressures of education and work that we can discover our strength and potential if we want to do so.

Re:like anything else..

[UnknownSoldier]

> a) Writing a matrix as a composition of sub-matrices is not familiar to people who don't grok matrix math. They need to think about it and can't follow the rest.

At this stage they don't need to understand all the technical details only the concept: namely we representing both a orientation and position within a 4x4 matrix. As we drill down into the details we will put together all the constituent parts.

> The decomposition was also wrong.
No it isn't. If are you going to make claims then you need to provide evidence of the correct answer so it can be determined what _precisely_ is "wrong."

> b) The explanation of the rotation matrix uses trigonometric identities that are not familiar to most people. Much easier to explain it with triangles.

i) ALL matrix students should _already_ have a basic background in trigonometry. If they don't then it is worth going over the basics until they understand them.
ii) It is much easier to see the equations when there is a diagram.

> c) Magic parameter. Where did the one and the zeros come from?

i) That is intentional to provoke the students into thinking: "Where the hell did those come from? And why do we need them?"
ii) IF you read the 2nd part that is explained.

Re:like anything else..

[sandytaru]

The problem with that is when you give the students free reign to play with the modeling software during labs, they end up creating nifty vases using integrals instead of actually doing the math. *cough* (Didn't help that my math TA was blind as a bat and had to CTRL + my screen 200% to read anything I wrote.)

I agree, the illustrations of the concepts are important, but it needs to be incorporated into the structure of the class to work.

Re:like anything else..

[khallow]

The beauty of math, is that once the problem is solved, you can teach any average idiot how to go through the motions and arrive at the correct the solution without understanding it.

Ugh, I have to disagree. I'd call that utility not beauty. For me, the beauty of mathematics is that you can contemplate just about anything and come up with relevant and nontrivial mathematical puzzles, problems, or features.

Re:like anything else..

[khallow]

Not always, but that is a very common and prevalent problem. Math techniques and proofs often don't yield insight into how or why they were developed. For example, when I do analysis proofs, it's common for me to calculate what tolerances will lead to the desired result and then strip those calculations away for the final proof.

"Why did he pick this delta or set that coefficient to that value?" Because I figured out what would work well enough and got rid of the scaffolding. Here, you see the finished result, not what went into finding the finished result.

Good math books discuss the scaffolding in detail not just the proofs or techniques.

Re:like anything else..

[stdarg]

1) Teachers are too often humanities teachers. This means the route of memorization is used, instead of the logic approach.

Memory is a key component of intelligence. If anything I think there isn't enough emphasis on memorization anymore. People think "who cares, I can look it up..." well that's not true... you have to remember what's available to look up for solving the problem at hand. Many people can't even do that. Probably because their "memory muscles" are weak due to lack of practice.

When my nephew was growing up, he decided that memorizing multiplication tables was stupid because he could just calculate the product in his head whenever he needed to. In theory that's right. In reality, he was soooooo sloooooow at doing simple math that he couldn't keep up, he became very bad at math, and through today he absolutely hates it. Even when it was obvious what was going on, and I implored him to just memorize some stuff so he would be faster, he refused to "waste his time" memorizing. And he didn't do enough math (what people today call "unnecessary busy work that distracts from creativity" or something) to memorize it on accident. It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

I think memorization promotes an intuitive understanding of the subject.

2) Math and Science are way too abstract. They are taught without any relation to reality.

This is very true, especially for basic subjects. I think part of the problem is that the applications for basic subjects are really boring and have been generally superseded in the real world by more advanced math and/or computers. I mean seriously, I can't believe how much time was wasted in... hmm I forget what grade... when we spent weeks and weeks studying geometry with compasses and rulers! I mean yeah, you can draw stuff, that's technically an application of geometry, but holy crap it was boring, and I never did it right because the stupid point on the compass would create a large hole while I was rotating it, and.. well whatever. The proofs are "character building" perhaps but they are soooo dry and uninteresting compared to, say, combinatorics, and much harder than say, basic Boolean logic proofs.

In high school calculus though the applications came fast and furious and were awesome. As soon as we learned derivatives we were studying the relationships of acceleration, velocity, and position, as well as maximization/minimization problems.

I think calculus should be taught much earlier than it is, certainly before geometry.

Take for example the Pythagorean Theorem. It was use in the past to build straight buildings. Maybe that is how it should be taught now!

I took a class in college about the history of mathematics and it had all kinds of stuff like that. I think it would be incredibly valuable to teach kids math along with the historical reasoning for and application of the math.

3) In the end either you have it or you don't.

I have mixed feelings about this. It's hard to decide when to give up on a kid. But you're definitely right. Some kids should not learn more than the most basic math, like how to make change for $10, because it's just a waste of time and money and accomplishes nothing but make the kid feel dumb. Maybe that bar is still too high for some kids.

I think tracking programs (low, average, high) are the way to go, but there should also be some small programs for the very low and very high.

Re:like anything else..

[kaatochacha]

math was easy for me in school when I could ask the teacher/instructor "but why does it work this way?", and got an answer.
The moment I arrived at the teachers saying "just follow the instructions and it will return the correct answer", it got hard.
Knowing why it worked was/is important to my comprehension.

Re:like anything else..

[kaatochacha]

Wow! I thought I was the only idiot around who that happened to! Pre college: Simple. College: Wha?

Re:like anything else..

[Moral Judgement]

I have to agree with this, the whole point of maths is to make a problem from something that can't be solved into something that can. I mean computers can do math, and they're fucking dumb.

Re: like anything else..

[janerules]

Not only! What about support? Higher education seemed to mean less hours with someone who can explain what I was doing wrong!!

Re:like anything else..

[frank_adrian314159]

I woke up right away and thought, "did we run something over!" Since then my wife has never sung in front of me.

You're lucky you didn't say that out loud - the something run over would have been you!

Re:like anything else..

[yurtinus]

Well, I can't say I agree with your professors view that you wouldn't do better next time around. However, they do have a good point about the material. Particularly in the initial courses like chemistry or physics - there is a very broad baseline of material to cover, students may not pick it all up or may not find all of it interesting. I'm not surprised to see most students get Bs or Cs in those courses, then move up to As in the specialty courses that really interest them.

As to the issues transferring from your community college to a university... well you've got me there. I transferred from community college to university with a few Bs, but I wasn't looking to get into one of those big name schools.

Re:like anything else..

[yurtinus]

That sucks... I suppose universities need a good mix of researchers and teachers. I definitely noticed professors of mine trending one way or the other, but none were so far off the deep end to make the classes miserable. Y'know, my favorite professor had a thick accent. Always said "wariables." He knew it, worked around it, and even joked about it. Unfortunately, he went to another school because he wanted to just teach but my university was pressuring him for research.

So, I suppose you're right!

Re:like anything else..

[Your.Master]

I don't think I've ever seen somebody argue that physics is the base of math. I mean, I might have seen people propose measuring Pi physically but in the abstract, doesn't *everybody* agree that math is a tool used by physics?

Physics might *motivate* the development of math, but that's not the same thing.

Re:like anything else..

[expatriot]

I said I can do the math, what I was not sure of was whether I understand what was behind it all.

The debate here does not change that, and you have not even touched on the argument between vector and quaternions yet and whether gimbal lock is a difficult or trivial problem.

For examples of this debate see http://www.gamedev.net/topic/25314-why-diana-grubers-wrong-about-quats/ and http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/math-and-physics/do-we-really-need-quaternions-r1199

Hint the real problem here is not working out a simplified 2D version with sin and cos and symbols, the real problem is coding this to handle how to display moving 3D objects (defined by arrays of floats) as seen by a virtual moving camera.

Saying the "same principle is used for 3D" is hand waving in the context of the subject of "is math hard"

Re:like anything else..

[scott_obryan]

No. Math is hard because it's like running long distances. Few people actually like running, or any kind of exercise. Many people do it for utilitarian reasons while hating it. Some people like it inherently, though. I had a gym teacher once who was addicted to running to the point that it was bad for his health.

I do math so I don't have to run.. Just sayin..

Re:like anything else..

[cellocgw]

Your girlfriend asks you, do these pants make me look fat?

There are two attractive people, one with red hair and one with blond hair. Which is more attractive?

What is love?

If a man born blind, and able to distinguish by touch between a cube and a globe, were made to see, could he now tell by sight which was the cube and which the globe, before he touched them?

Are mathematical objects are real or merely formal constructions?

Do deities exist?

OK, it's Friday so I'll bite.
1) No, she doesn't (ask me)
2) The female one (to me, at least)
3) Love is an emotion (stolen from Colussus)
4) This is already been documented by Oliver Sacks and others; the answer typically is "no."
5) Are you kidding? Show me a "two", and I mean the number, not the numeral. Duh.
6) By definition, no: "deity" means "supernatural being," and everything which exists is part of nature. Nyahhh nyaaaahhhh!

Re: like anything else..

[Mabhatter]

The fact that the "entry level" classes are taught basically to the kids that "already know it" is one main problem. The class's are taught specifically to the clique of "smart kids" with the intention that those who "don't get it" go away.

That was the biggest difference between Community college and university... Because community college tracers are there to TEACH where Uni professors are just winnowing the chaff from a big room that might be interesting assistants.

Re:like anything else..

[lsatenstein]

hard is merely the fact that often, the theories and equations taught are quite abstract. It is very important to have a solid grasp of concepts, but in the end, the material could be improved with visual and/or tangible results which have some values and/or association to the abstract concepts.

===
I would like to append to your comments with personal experience. I was just a regular kid doing math in highschool. I was a failure with social subjects such as psychology or second language, because my mind's orientation was geared to rules and that rules should not have exceptions. I had some mentors at that time that asked me if my homemade stereo amp power supply was adequate. (I had to learn to calculate the capacity, and to learn the size in microfarads of filter capacitors and the like). Later, I learned (self-taught) solid state design. I was motivated. I worked after school as a technician in a lab, and did first year university at night. The engineers at work encouraged me to complete university and continue in the day program. They encouraged me to take maths as they saw it as one of my dominant interests.

I graduated with pure and applied mathematics. Following my graduation, I worked in large systems doing capacity planning, forecasting, system modelling etc. I was also lucky because our high school curriculum in mathematics was not superficial, but well enough to provide the building foundation for later university work.
That is me. My observation of me and my peers at that time was that we were poor in psychology or economics or creative writing, but we were strong in the sciences. Was mathematics/physics the last resort for us or is it a natural inclination to excel where we had our strengths.

Today, I still work in design, but I have added fluency in French and Spanish to my skill-set. I was not able to handle a second language when I was in university or high-school. Maths and science people have different brains. We are all budding Einsteins

Re:like anything else..

[raque]

So in the end the first problem with poor college science and math performance is poor elementary school education. I worked and worked through Calc 1 and 2 in college, enjoyed it, and got Cs. My professors were wonderful. I was working on a problem with her during office hours and she stopped, looked me in the eyes and said "What's 12 x 9?". I was flummoxed. She said that if I didn't know that the way I breathed it was going to be hard going. It's 108 (how many of you knew that before you read the answer?).

The second problem is that doing anything well at a high level is hard. That's the difference between one of us noodling away on a guitar and Eric Clapton. One of the issues in any discussion of education is the assumption that with the proper education we can turn out Feynmans and Claptons as needed. No, you can't. A poor education and stymie a genius, but it can't create one.

The third problem is motivation. It has to be the most fun you can have standing up. As a previous poster pointed out - do you really want to collect data for six days a week for 9 months and produce one little paper for your effort? If you learn to sing really well like Robin Thicke you can make a music video with Emily Ratajkowski strutting around naked in front of you. Edward O. Wilson watched bugs. He loves watching bugs.

  BTW as an example of the second problem - if you watch the blurred lines videos, the censored and the uncensored you'll note that Thicke, Pharrell and T.I. make it look easy and natural twice - differently. Then they did it again on The Voice TV show. That's really hard to do. No one seems to thing that all all I have to to do is pass some classes and I can do that.

Re:like anything else..

[Zephyn]

Mathematicians want to be God.

Why would mathematicians want to be Imaginary?

To make reality more complex.

Re:like anything else..

[PurplePhase]

I hate that. And it started in high school! Except for Calculus: good book + good teacher + dedicated student = edification!

Re:like anything else..

[tylikcat]

I don't think the value of a degree is necessarily in that you can make money with it,* but I rather like the rigor of some of the science courses. That is to say when it's rigor, rather than cruelty. (Well, and I've helped teach a class that was just chaotic - I enjoyed it a great deal, but I felt bad for what a wild ride. It's one thing if the subject matter is unpredictable - it's another if you never get your homework back, and the math that is required for the work is more than what is a prerequisite for the course. I handled the programming portions, and those were rather steadier.)

* Much of my undergrad work was in Chinese Language and Literature - no grade inflation or easy As there, let me assure you. But there is a reason I spent the next several years as a software engineer.

Re:like anything else..

[PurplePhase]

I remember the whole class getting stumped on how to use variables - in Algebra in 6th grade. It took a lot for us to finally wrap our heads around it. Unfortunately I'm not sure how it finally happened - Eureka moment or not.

Re:like anything else..

[tylikcat]

I can only agree. That and the whole weed-out method generally. (And I teach a lot of pre-meds, who can at times be frustrating enough to make a weed out class seem appealing. Except that what I find frustrating is pursuing grades instead of knowledge, and I don't think weed out classes remedy that.)

Re:like anything else..

[tylikcat]

It's more complicated than that, and some of it comes back to funding.

Large format classes - y'know, the big lecture classes, are relatively inexpensive for the university, but it's really hard to do them well and a lot of how to do this best is still under active research. (And when we know how, it's can be pretty difficult to implement, especially if you're, say, junior faculty and already overwhelmed. And teaching isn't what will get you tenure. I am not saying I agree with a lot of the institutional structures that make this so) If you have a fairly well defined amount of material that you want covered*, you can adjust how you're going to grade different amounts of succeeding to learn that, but to some extent, people are learning the material, or they aren't, and often if you don't learn the lower level material you're pretty much screwed for the upper.

You have a lot more flexibility with small format classes... but they're expensive. And if you have a lot of students in your department (say, you're a biology department flooded by premeds) you might still not have the money to bring in enough faculty to get the class sizes down.

* This is often an open question. I mean, yes, for many math based subjects, there is often a lot of concepts builts on prior concepts. But for something like physiology... you can teach a very memorization heavy physiology, of you can teach a very critical thinking heavy physiology, where you might cover less material overall, but you have a far better understanding of that material, and how to go about understanding further material.

Re:like anything else..

[yurtinus]

I don't disagree with you. There is tremendous value in the broad education you receive during a degree program, and - as you say - in the challenge. However, the greatly improved earnings potential is a significant factor for most people who go to college. "Better life" means a lot of things - more knowledge and more money both contribute.

Re:like anything else..

[fredprado]

Logic does encompass all fields on human knowledge, and that includes Epistemology. Epistemology uses logic and logic alone to analyze knowledge. Without logic there is no Philosophy at all, and despite your unwillingness to accept it, mostly because you probably have no clue about Math or Logic, Math is by definition the formalization of Logic. Your ignorance is shameful, my friend, and your willingness to keep exposing it as a virtue is even more.

Re:like anything else..

[Maxo-Texas]

No no.. i want to see these set up in math statements as the parent poster said.

For example, you could show that love is a set of hormonal and biological systems which could be modeled with mathematics. It's actually the only one which can be resolved as the parent poster suggested.

The man born blind and question about math objects real or constructions are both classic unsolved philosophical problems. If you've solved them, prepare for fame.

As far as 6 goes. First -- can you set that up as a math problem.
Second -- given that we still don't know more than we know (and it seems the more we know, the more we become aware we don't know), it's certainly possible that a deity exists. For example, a being of higher than 4 dimensions would effectively be a deity since it would be outside of time and space and able to see all of time and all of space simultaneously. And, from our frame of reference, that would be "supernatural".

For example, it could reach straight inside your body without breaking the surface. It could tell you what you would do before you did it. (See flatland- A Romance of Many Dimensions)

Re:like anything else..

[microbox]

Your ignorance is shameful, my friend, and your willingness to keep exposing it as a virtue is even more.

Projection isn't logical. If you knew what it was, then you'd know something illogical.

Re:like anything else..

[fredprado]

Illogical projection is a theoretic concept that more likely than not produces undesirable results and is not used as a tool in any field of knowledge. It is basically what students do when they fail at exams.

Re:like anything else..

[Whorhay]

To me that is all the same. If a variable is only ever a single fixed value then it is not actually a variable, it's just a value that you haven't determined yet. There are plenty of places in math I would guess where variables act just like they do in programming. For instance you could say in math that "A = B * B" The value of A can be any positive number and B can be any number at all, if you pick a number for one you can then determine what the other will be in that case.

The easiest way I can think of to demonstrate the concept of a variable to any idiot would be to ask them how fast they were moving while traveling to the class. Or how much do you weigh and how old are you?

Re:like anything else..

[tylikcat]

And I do highly agree with you. Money may not buy happiness - but it can buy a lot more room for happiness. And so many undergrads choose their degrees for really stupid reasons because they just don't have a clue. (I think a lot of people would do well to spend a few years working before going to the university.)

Also: "you're going to get Bs and Cs in some of these classes. In the long run nobody cares." is just generally a good life lesson. One of the problems of being bright is that you don't learn how to apply yourself and make something work even if it's not coming easily to you. I'm not saying that the end result of this is being lazy - it's that you end up not having faith in your own ability to just kep going and get through on sweat, blood and tears. (Also, it's easy to come through it lacking a sense of proportion. It took me a long time to learn not to halfway kill myself on a project when I was in software. I mean, I did good work, but it was pretty stupid and unsustainable in the long run.)

Re:like anything else..

[cellocgw]

No idea which parent you were referring to, but clearly you're humor-impaired today.

Further, you appear to have failed reading comprehension, because I stated quite clearly that there are recorded cases of people blind from birth who were given sight (functional internal lens replacement or something similar). We know from their own testimony that they could not identify some objects they saw until they touched them.

I've read Flatland and some semisequels. You miss the point: if there are more spatial dimensions in nature, then that's still nature. There's a big difference between "effectively a deity," which could describe Jerry Garcia, and actually BEING a deity.

Re:like anything else..

[wierd_w]

Wrong on nearly all counts.

1) social darwinism is full of shit, but that doesn't mean that failure to reward excellence has no penalty. Like all things in philosophy, it isn't a boolean property. Treating it like one results in the current educational clusterfuck. Not everyone can be Dr Feinman. Sabotaging the people that could be by removing any sense of accomplishment through dilution actively discourages them from reaching their potentials. Instead, it is OK to be less than Dr. Feinman. You don't *have* to be the absolute best, just do the best you yourself are capable of. The problem here, is that uniformity is being demanded from an intrinsically heterogenous substance. It can't be done; instead, you have people redefining the terms, until all subjects appear homogenous. It's a lie. A lie that gets exposed the moment those kids enter the real world. It is a lie that does them a terrible disservice.

2) white, non-hispanic

3) does have alcohol intolerance.

4) industrial draftsman and CNC programmer.

5) you incorrectly assert that I am against social wellfare for people that simply can't provide for themselves. We might disagree where that line gets drawn, but we do not disagree that social welfare is vital to a large and cosmopolitan society that values public health and safety. By definition, such financial assistance to such persons is a negative income tax.

The issue I have, is that a home-built coherent laser light source and a potato battery at the school science fair get the same "A". They aren't even in the same league. There must be a penalty for failing to try, if you want people to actually succeed. Potato battery kid probably did the best they could, but it isn't the very best there is. They should get a high B, at best. Lying to them, and leading them to think that they can compete with laser boy in the cuthroat world of academia is flat out irresponsible. If potato boy wants to compete with laser boy, it gives him something to strive to accomplish. But, to prove the accomplishment, the grading cannot be rigged in his favor. If he succeeds in competing with laser boy by buildng a homebrew farnsworth fuser next year? He just won the prize, and his pride is well earned.

Academia doesn't care about things like people's feelings. It cares only about objective quality of the work done. Making kids think mediocre work is excellent work, by hiding the line and shifting the curve, only leads them up to a cliff, and pushes them over the side. Science is heartless, and cruel. It doesn't care how hard you worked. Either your theory is useful, or it isn't. Either you make papers worth publishing, or you wash up as a scientist.

Reality is not fair. That is the objective truth. Trying to cast it as anything otherwise is magical thinking.

Re:like anything else..

[Austerity Empowers]

I agree, but I think if you're been doing science and math for those 13 years prior to the university, you already understand this to a certain degree. Also I was in engineering, and my math prof's were either engineers or applied mathematicians, there were very few pure theorists as may be more common in a liberal arts university.

Re:like anything else..

[Ambassador Kosh]

Yeah that is pretty bad. I wonder how someone got that far in life and had never encountered a graph before. Unless you are blind I wonder how you even get out of grade school without using graphs at least sometimes.

Re:like anything else..

[St.Creed]

I can't claim to have been treated unfairly, since I had been told that being lazy was bad and since I was the one being lazy. But I often wonder how my life would be different and likely better if grade school had been more challenging, if grades were open announced like sports results to bring out my competitive side, and if there had been tangible penalties for getting a B instead of an A on report, test, and especially homework.

Telling kids that being lazy is bad, but not giving them the tools to actually help them do something useful, is tantamount to child abuse, in my book.

I do agree that your story is pretty common. I went to high school without ever doing much. And sunk in university the first two years. Then it clicked and eventually I graduated but it was close - and under the new rules I'd never have been allowed to graduate. For a couple of my friends it was about the same.

So when my kid told me he finished his schoolwork halfway during the week, we talked to the teacher. He gets extra work now (Dalton education is very easy in that respect since everything is based on stuff the kids plan and do themselves). On saturday he gets Chinese lessons - it's a topic he finds difficult and he really has to study on it, which helps a lot with teaching him how to approach difficult but boring material.

What also helps is the fact that all the kids know roughly how they stand on grades in relation to eachother. It's an honor to get the extra calculus material and most of the kids are proud to get good grades. Yes, it's hard on the few that can't make good grades. But you can drag down everyone to their level, or push them to do better if they were lazy, or find a more suitable level for them if they can't.

His mother is used to the Chinese school system btw, she thinks we're a bunch of pussies - in Chinese classes only the top 3 kids count for anything, the rest better shape up. And while I don't think that's a good idea, it certainly works better than the reverse where the kids that are hailed as heroes are the ones who do the worst on intellectual stuff.

Re:like anything else..

[St.Creed]

Oooh, that reminds me: I couldn't figure this one out (yes, really) so perhaps you'd like to try it.

What is the chance you pick the right answer to this question the first time when picking at random?
A: 25%
B: 50%
C: 60%
D: 25%

I'd love to see a good answer to this one.

Re:like anything else..

[St.Creed]

The answers:

1. No, you're just fat and they can't make you any fatter.
2. The red haired one.
3. A chemical imbalance in your hormones.
4. Yes (and that one's easy to determine yourself, by the way, by experimenting)
5. Sentence does not parse.
6. Yes(1), as shown by this message.

(1) Definitions used in this answer: Deity: a human of average proportion with nickname "St.Creed" on slashdot. Exist: give evidence of changing their environment in any way.

Re:like anything else..

[gcatullus]

What credit should be given to these kids who drop the major? They only wanted to be in science because they think there is money in it. Or they watched too much CSI.

Re:like anything else..

[fredprado]

There is a whole wing of most universities dedicated to fields of knowledge which have nothing to do with logic.

The problem here is that you have absolutely no clue about what is logic, my friend. All the wings of universities you think that have nothing with logic are actually basing all their theories and knowledge in logic. including epistemology. Have you ever cared to wonder why the names of all those nice subjects end with "-logy"? Should be a good hint even for you...

Re:like anything else..

[HornWumpus]

Be fair, civils were the first Engineers. Glorified ditch diggers etc.

Re:like anything else..

[mattack2]

We could certainly do with a lot less people going around saying Math is hard.

We could certainly do with a lot fewer people saying it too.

Re:like anything else..

[ChrisMaple]

There is nothing civil about the concept of god.

Re:like anything else..

[Reziac]

Not entirely. Frex, I do very well learning math as abstract concepts. But when it's taught via "reality" (story problems and the like) it makes no sense to me. I need the abstract first, then I can grok the realworld application. I can't do it the other way around. I'm sure I'm not alone.

Re:like anything else..

[fractoid]

No. Math is hard because it's like running long distances.

Math isn't just like running long distances, no. Some of it (like algebra) is just learning rules for manipulating symbols, and I guess that bit is sort of like running. It's all more or less the same difficulty.

And then you get into things like calculus where there are irreducible, abstract new concepts to manage. Suddenly you're not running, you're rock climbing.

And then you get to the maths that's actually hard. Really hard. Understanding this stuff is like being able to fly. And if you weren't born with the natural ability, you will never ever understand it.

Re:like anything else..

[undeadbill]

Spot on. The one time I did well in math in school was because I had a good teacher who could understand my questions and answer them. I know that sounds a bit odd, but the reality is that most math teachers barely understand how to explain what they are trying to teach. There is a huge difference between showing someone how to complete a rote task, versus using a rote task to impart the reasons why the task is important. Most math teachers fall into the former category. That isn't to say that I gave up, but I wasn't going to take more classes in a subject that the teachers themselves had a hard time explaining and didn't know the history thereof.

Well, most other teachers fall into the former category as well, but the difference is that subjects like history and $native_literature are explained using the language most people started with, and any subject specific jargon usually has easily understood linguistic references. Looking up reference material in those subjects involves using the same paradigm.

Math is pretty much its own language, but the jargon used to describe it is specific to the understanding of someone who is already an expert in the field. Even though it is its own language with its own rules, none of these are taught as such- instead, much time is given to rote methods which have already been abandoned in other fields because they are proven to be poor conveyors of knowledge. Moreover the math sub-disciplines are taught in a way so that there is almost no relevance between them: no historical referential progress is given, no reasoning is provided as to *why* they exist, and so the subject becomes very tiresome to anyone needing to apply relevance in order to maintain interest- which would apply to the vast majority of people out there.

This would also be why I own more math books than any other subject- I've found I can learn a lot more through self-instruction and self-discovery than I can from trying to suffer through classroom lectures.

Re:like anything else..

[Eli Gottlieb]

It's really much simpler than that. Any translation in N dimensions can be viewed as rotation around the appropriately-oriented axis of an N+1'st dimension.

Re: like anything else..

[HornWumpus]

Is'nt they're a websight _for_ grammer and punctuation pendants somewhere on net? Reddit might be good choice. They all act like douches their.

Re:like anything else..

[redlemming]

And many math problems are known to be intractable. For example, the Halting problem.

The halting problem is not intractable: all programs will halt. Entropy ensures this. In a modern semiconductor-based computer system, any program will eventually halt due to mechanisms such as hot electron injection, traps, room temperature diffusion, and so forth, that destroy the semiconductor structure which creates the logic gates the program depends upon.

While other types of computer systems are possible, there is no reason at this time to suppose they will not have their own entropy-related mechanisms.

It is only possible to have a program whose halting status is uncertain if you first postulate a mathematical fantasy world in which that program will run without real-world considerations such as entropy. In short, the "intractable" status of this "problem" results from the manner in which the problem is set up.

This, of course, is the big difference between mathematics and engineering. Mathematicians love to complain that engineering is all about approximations, while engineers recognize that this is necessary if one is not living and working in a fantasy world.

Re:like anything else..

[nobodie]

My sister's partner is a high school geometry teacher, union member and tenured. She is also an extremely competent, caring and skilled teacher. She has had fantastic success with students going on to STEM degrees and higher, and with success in the real world. They loved her as a teacher so much that some come back to thank her many years later.

So, my friend, before you use your broad and unknowing brush to paint all the same color, you should think about how the real world works: there are good people and bad people. Those are the only reliable divisions, the rest are "-ism" based and bound to show you as a fool.

Re:like anything else..

[nobodie]

yeah, but back in 1971,2,3 when I was in high school I took organic chem and the teacher said, "oh, you haven't studied calculus yet? I show you what you need." Then when I did calculus the next year it was a little easier. But, I had the chance to study that stuff, in high school. Why? BECAUSE IT WAS IN THE CURRICULUM! How did I get organic chem in high school, because the chem teacher offered to teach it to the two students who wanted it and the school had the money to allow that to happen.

It doesn't happen today because our fucktard electorate believes that our public schools are bad because Ronald Raygun told them they were, and then George HW repeated it, and so did his idiot children. Our schools are degrading because you want them to be shitty, you tell your representatives that they should take money away from those horrible union and tenure supporting hotbeds of radical democracy: the public schools. You voted to de-fund the schools, or weren't you listening to the "pro-education" BS of the "No child left behind" and the "Charter School" movement and all the rest of that idiocy.

You got just what you wanted, and just what you paid for.

Re:like anything else..

[Hognoxious]

Math is easy!

It's easy compared to quantum mechanics.

It's also hard compared to quantum mechanics. At the same time.

Re:like anything else..

[UnknownSoldier]

> and you have not even touched on the argument between vector and quaternions yet and whether gimbal lock is a difficult or trivial problem.

I intentional did not discuss Quaternions nor Euler angles. Discussing singularities would be a natural progression for the discussion and one I hope that the student would next purse.
i.e.
        "Is matrix form the only way we can represent an orientation?"

IMO bringing them up at this stage would just be too confusing as people are still coming to terms with the bigger picture and the implementation details. Once they get a handle on that they we can introduce special edge cases and how we can "solve" them.

I'm quite well aware of Diana Gruber from the old rec.games.programmer days and the (almost endless) arguments whether "quats" were equivalent to half-angle-axis representation (they are.) For the more advanced student a good paper is written by the modern "father" of quaternions:

* "Quaternions" by Ken Shoemake
http://courses.cms.caltech.edu/cs171/quatut.pdf

> Saying the "same principle is used for 3D" is hand waving in the context of the subject of "is math hard"

Somewhat. I agree higher dimensions quickly becomes verbose and cumbersome, However that is a perceptual belief. Whether you are doing an inner product (dot) or exterior product (wedge) in 2, 3, 4, ... 7, 11, etc. dimensions is (largely) irrelevant if one understands the basics. IMHO it is more important for the "stigma" of 3D+ math to be removed so people will feel more comfortable working in higher dimensions. i.e. Use their confidence from 2D to slowly understand 3D and then grok 4D. The higher dimensions of 5+ are "not intuitive" so anything we can do to help them avoid the false stigma "math is hard" is a good thing. (Aside: one can visualize a 3x3 matrix or quat if one learns a different way of thinking, or in this case, "seeing".)

Re:like anything else..

[Hognoxious]

Assuming equal numbers of applicants, yes. But as I understand it that's not the case. I'm not going to say that's what caused grade inflation, but I suspect it's not a coincidence.

Re:like anything else..

[plover]

Why not frighten the potential engineers? A well-timed scare like that might have saved you 9 months.

Re:like anything else..

[obscuro]

Math can be very hard. What is often lost is that math MAKES THINGS EASY.

Post college earnings

[0100010001010011]

A lot of it has to do with "Engineers make good money" or "My dad's an engineer, I'm smarter than him". I remember seeing it all the time back in college.

Then they realise it's hard and transfer to a different major.

Re:Post college earnings

[modmans2ndcoming]

We laughed when they announced the Liberal Arts graduates.

Re:Post college earnings

[Seumas]

Yeah, part of me suspects it's just an issue of "well, we need to stop babying them through gradeschool and highschool so it isn't such a harsh shock when they get to college and find how ill prepared the system has made them"... the other part of me says "good, this weeks out the lazy twats who just jump into a career, because they read that it is one of the top five careers in high demand in some shitty magazine rather than actually being passionate in the field".

Re:Post college earnings

[Seumas]

That likely isn't owed to your (partial) liberal arts degree. Possibly sheer luck. Probably you fell into something that was really your passion and that you were obsessed with and you found a way to succeed in the field.

Re:Post college earnings

[Anonymous Coward]

I think a major misconception a lot of people have is that there is a strictly ordered field of easy-->difficult subjects. I'm really cut out for engineering, but I don't think I would be able to go through (say) law school without shooting myself. By the same token, I've met some lawyers that are pretty science-illiterate, I couldn't see them going through a STEM program.

I think my point is that a lot of people think science and engineering are cool, but then they realize they don't actually like the leg-work that you have to do to make the result. That doesn't mean they're stupid, it just means they have a different niche.

derpert

[Anonymous Coward]

Solution: make the classes easier!

You're welcome,

My alma mater

[Valdrax]

My alma mater used to have saying that summed this up quite nicely for the freshman physics weed-out classes:

"E-mag, Re-mag, Three-mag, Management."

Re:My alma mater

[Seumas]

I believe it has to do with electromagnetics and its ability to suss out the wheat from the chaff at alarming rates. You fail EM three times and then you're ready to change to a business major.

At least, this is the only context I've ever heard it in, so I'm kind of just guessing.

Re:My alma mater

[dlakelan]

I think it's E-Mag = "Electricity and Magnetism", Re-Mag = "take E-Mag again", Three-mag = "take it a third time", Management = give up and take business courses.

Re:My alma mater

[Nemyst]

At my uni, the three major thinners were, in order of appearance, classical mechanics, electromagnetics and relativity. If you managed to go through all three, you only had to suffer through EM 2 and 3 was optional (if very very recommended). It doesn't help that for some bizarre reason EM professors seemed to like having a different definition of what an exam is: instead of being a test to review your knowledge and see if you understood what was shown in class, it was used as a way of introducing brand new concepts and seeing if you could use your existing knowledge to grasp the new ones. All in a 2 to 3 hours test which usually was worth half your grade.

Let's just say it caused a lot of people to fail.

Re:My alma mater

[mjvvjm]

I see someone managed to get out of GT.
...No one ever graduates, you just "get out".

Major wise, there is also the progression of
(ME/EE/ChemE/CSE/CE) (real enginering) -> IE (imaginary engineering) -> Management

Re:My alma mater

[Seumas]

Ugh. I've absolutely had teachers who tested on yet-to-be presented material. I was fortunate enough to have been pretty familiar with the subjects of my own accord, but that wasn't the case for the majority of students in the class. The stress level across the room spiked for those two days. :D

Re:My alma mater

[Seumas]

And that is why, to this day, Shaggy 2 Dope still doesn't understand how magnets work. :)

You can't "prepare" to have a high IQ

[KrazyDave]

All of these garbage political/social projects to supposedly increase American kids' achievement in science are just that: feel good garbage. Lowering standards only goes so far until real work and real achievement are required.

Re:You can't "prepare" to have a high IQ

[DerekLyons]

All of these garbage political/social projects to supposedly increase American kids' achievement in science are just that: feel good garbage. Lowering standards only goes so far until real work and real achievement are required.

Yep. I've said it before and I'll say it again - infotainment and edutainment and meaningless feel good "science" projects are doing a vast disservice to a whole generation of students. They don't actually learn anything and they don't learn how to learn. When the history of current education is written a century hence, STEM will be seen as a total failure.

Re:You can't "prepare" to have a high IQ

[Kielistic]

Not necessarily true. You will still have top students and you will still have bottom students. You will get the same type of students at the top now that you did before. The type of people that aren't affected by your "feel good science projects". People like you (or I), I assume. Some people take a much greater enjoyment out of it, and/or, just find it easier than others. Even if most of the people that are interested in it now aren't capable of becoming experts in it for one reason or another they still gain valuable knowledge and at the very least respect for the science. And I will definitely count that as a plus.

Re:You can't "prepare" to have a high IQ

[Culture20]

But you can prepare people with high IQ to fail in college by letting them coast through high school. I left physics because of the math (then ultimately settled on CS, which was worse math-wise).

Re:You can't "prepare" to have a high IQ

[DerekLyons]

Not necessarily true. You will still have top students and you will still have bottom students. You will get the same type of students at the top now that you did before.

It's not the type of student that's under discussion - it's the type and content of their education, which is something different entirely.
 

The type of people that aren't affected by your "feel good science projects".

An assumption based on a) bias about 'rop students', and b) the assumption that all top students are the same, and c) all top students are budding scientists.
 

Even if most of the people that are interested in it now aren't capable of becoming experts in it for one reason or another they still gain valuable knowledge and at the very least respect for the science.

Um, no. The curriculum is content lite, because it's not aimed at education. It's Mythbusters, which gives people the misapprehension they know about science and leads to no respect as it's demonstrated not as a process to respect but as something 'fun'.

Seriously, you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.

Re:You can't "prepare" to have a high IQ

[Kielistic]

Seriously, you have absolutely no clue what you're talking about.

Calm down there pal- you might want to get those knee-jerks under control. If, as you say, we have an entire generation ruined that cannot do science we must have not a single person graduating in these fields right? We clearly do not see that though. Lots of people graduate in the sciences. Lots of very intelligent and capable people graduate in the sciences.

"Our youth are stupid and will be the downfall of civilization" has been repeated ad nauseum through-out human history by people that don't really know what they're talking about (It is highly probable you fall into this group). A university student getting in over their head, thinking it's too hard, etc etc and dropping out is not a new occurrence implying that apocalypse. There is nothing wrong with thinking science is 'fun' or enjoyable. A casual interest in something is not a bad thing. A 19/20 year old finding out something isn't as simple as first assumed is not the end of the world.

Again I repeat: we still have people graduating in these fields. So people aren't getting dumber.

Additionally: we have a larger group of people with a casual interest and/or a first hand understanding of complexities and how difficult STEM can be. Or are you of the opinion if someone can't cut it or finds out they don't enjoy it in STEM they should have just been an ignorant hillbilly their whole life instead?

This just in: Science is Hard

[Yergle143]

The Onion has reported on this ground breaking finding exhaustively.

Re:This just in: Science is Hard

[istartedi]

Yes, but is it NP hard? If so, then maybe we can just give up on it.

The price of mediocrity

[kheldan]

From TFA:

"If more science graduates are desired, the findings suggest the importance of policies at younger ages that lead students to enter college better prepared (PDF) to study science."

In other words, this is the price everyone is now paying for public schools sucking so much ass: A generation full of kids who will end up working at McDonalds or something equally meaningless, because they weren't given a decent foundation in grade school and high school.

Re:The price of mediocrity

[HornWumpus]

Not so much. It's just the usual complaints that future PHBs can't be made into engineers no matter how young you start.

America's top 25% of kids ranks with any nations. We fall flat (on average) because of how badly we do with the mouth breathers. Frankly they don't matter, an educated

Re:The price of mediocrity

[Nemyst]

Obviously, when students aren't allowed to fail, they never really learn. The good ones will go through, but the ones that would've greatly benefited from taking more time to understand something will end up lagging behind and getting dragged on by the system. Instead of trying to be gentle to them, all it does is catapult them to university, where all of a sudden we don't give a shit whether your feelings are hurt and you need to pass the courses to move on.

The step is very steep and many just give up.

Re:The price of mediocrity

[khallow]

America's top 25% of kids ranks with any nations.

But which 25% of that other country do they rank with?

When I was teaching and grading low level college level math a few years ago, I ran across many students who were near the top of their class, but very weak at math. I think US college students have gotten weaker over the past few decades and not just in math. Further my suspicion was supported by observations from long term faculty who had been teaching such classes since the 70s.

Now there could be all sorts of biases which could explain that, but it is a well known problem that students are coming into college with great looking grades, but also with rather misguided expectations, weak study skills, and poor preparation. I think that's contributing to some of the very nasty problems brewing at the college level - such as high levels of student loan debt and a student unprepared for a lot of what the modern world can throw at them.

Re:The price of mediocrity

[Darinbob]

There was a huge push in the US to promote science and math education during the cold war. There was fear that we could fall behind and end up having to speak Russian or growing a second head due to radiation. Enough of a fear that the funding materialized; this wasn't some namby pamby social experiment with kids, this was red blooded War!

So when I was in high school this was also around the time that many high school chemistry stockrooms were discovered to contain explosive substances from that time which had gotten extremely old and thus dangerously unstable, and this was making the news in several places.

Re:The price of mediocrity

[HornWumpus]

Hint: The best 25% of college students aren't taking 'low level college math'. They are calculus ready or took AP calc in HS.

Granting many kids gamed the HS system and got 4.0s by selecting only the easiest classes. I don't know what metric to use, but HS GPA is broken beyond fixing.

Re:The price of mediocrity

[asmkm22]

More or less, yeah. It's pretty easy to get a 3.8+ in high school. It basically requires attendance and effort, but not actual intelligence. Most of my teachers were throwing out extra credit like it was candy, so even if you didn't score perfectly on tests and homework, you could make up the difference.

So yeah, I imagine there's a lot of kids going to college with an inaccurate perception of their own personal abilities. Also probably explains why so many kids end up getting Psych degrees, which are easy to get, yet "sound smart." Of course it's usually later that the realize they need med school to make those degree's worth more than padding for some retail HR job...

Well, when you have poor teaching

[stox]

Arithmetic is hard. A good teacher is worth their weight in gold. I consider myself extremely fortunate that I had a few in my career. Sadly, I don't know how we can change the system to get many more. If I could, Nobel Prize baby!

Re:Well, when you have poor teaching

[PRMan]

Easy. Teaching salaries for Math and Science need to double. If that happened (and I could make my same salary teaching high school or college level programming), I would switch in a second.

Re:Well, when you have poor teaching

[PRMan]

I taught programming as an adjunct professor while my wife was finishing up college (worked there in the IT dept too) and I LOVED teaching. But it was BY FAR the most work for the least pay of any job I have ever had including minimum wage. ALL of my students ended up in IT careers, despite the school not having that as a focus. The least was a high school math teacher that became the math department head in her second year as a 23-year-old because she was the only one who knew how to use the computers.

And I had a kid who had never touched a computer before but he got an A in my class and ended up in an IT career.

Other than the pay, it was so rewarding...

Re:Well, when you have poor teaching

[lgw]

Salaries reflect supply and demand. Raise standards, and salaries will follow. Prop up salaries above market rate and unexpected consequences will follow.

Re:Well, when you have poor teaching

[JeanCroix]

It's not just the teaching salaries. Why wouldn't a student drop the difficult major for one which requires less thought and promises more earning potential? If we need more STEM, there has to be both push (better teaching) AND better pull (better earning potential after graduation). Otherwise, we'll continue to be glutted with finance, legal, and marketing types...

Re:Well, when you have poor teaching

[lgw]

Yup, you're being underpaid for semiskilled labor. So why are you still there? Is it the only job in town for that kind of work? If there are 6 who can do the work, and only a need for 1 in the city, well, yeah, it will pay crap. But if that's not true, you might find a non-asshole to hire you.

All jobs pay the least they possibly can, it's your duty to seek the highest pay you possibly can. Or change profession - that's how supply and demand sets a price for labor, after all, by workers flowing to the job that pays the best of all the jobs they are able and willing to do.

Re:Well, when you have poor teaching

[kaatochacha]

Wouldn't you then end up with a bunch of greedy idiots who hop on the teaching bandwagon just for the easy money?
Raising pay rates doesn't always raise quality.

Re:Really? derp derp

[Anonymous Coward]

"If more science graduates are desired, the findings suggest the importance of policies at younger ages that lead students to enter college better prepared."

Conclusion: We should improve education.

Whee! And they spent how long and how much money coming to this conclusion?

This is a completely ignorant comment.

There has always been a question of where money and resources should be dedicated if we want to increase the number of STEM college graduates. To many people, it would seem obvious that if we want more college graduates in subjects, we should just support those subjects more at the college level. After all, these students get good grades in high school, but they struggle when they take that college physics class.

Although this might seem obvious, this study indicates that it is probably completely wrong. Increasing funding at the college level is unlikely to have much of an impact - the money would be better spent by improving teaching at lower levels. The high grades in high school just indicate that standards have gone to crap, not that students are prepared.

Now, this does match up with what pretty much any college (natural) science educator would tell you. Everybody with any experience in science education at the university level can tell you that students come in WOEFULLY unprepared for college level (natural) science. The students simply aren't good enough, and instead of lowering standards excessively, many of the sciences simply force prospective majors to work much, much harder than other majors.

But, it is always important to have studies backing up anecdotal evidence before you start spending millions to billions of dollars.

Grades

[sandwall]

How about teaching children grades don't matter as much as they are meant to believe. Science undergrad with sub-par (2.7) GPA, still made it into graduate school and currently make six figures (with my degree's). Clearly remember, straight A students crying over B's and other straight A students switching to easier majors to maintain unrealistic GPAs. No one gives a shit about your 4.0 five years after the fact. Actually, no one gives a shit now. Too many believe they're learning the material in the book, they're actually learning *how to learn*

Re:Grades

[Seumas]

I have a ninth grade education (well, an eighth grade I suppose, really) and have had a six figure salary most of my adult life. I would assert that GPAs don't matter a hell of a lot in a practical sense. I would also assert that a degree doesn't matter a hell of a lot, either. It certainly doesn't hurt (on paper, to unlock doors, if nothing else). The most important thing is the passion and ambition. If you don't have that, the degree and the grades are fucking meaningless. If you *do* have that, you *can* overcome the lack of those things in most situations (obviously, you're not going to become a lawyer or medical doctor without institutional academia).

I can not imagine wasting all the time, money, and energy of a full education for something you weren't truly passionate about. Baffling.

Re:Grades

[Beardo the Bearded]

I was a C student. Given the number of raises I've had in the last 9 years, I'm going to suggest I'm a pretty decent engineer. There were a couple of times when I was explaining what some semiconductors were doing and how the electrons travelled through the system and I just got shocked faces.

"Wait, you actually know what's going on?"

Everyone thought I was a slacker that should have flunked out. I just never cared about grades.

Re:Grades

[PRMan]

Exactly. Do something you are passionate about. That's the key to success and--especially--happiness.

Re:Grades

[phantomfive]

No one gives a shit about your 4.0 five years after the fact. Actually, no one gives a shit now.

You're right, unless you apply for a job at a university associated research lab. Then they care a lot.

Re:Grades

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Nothing wrong with a high GPA (4.0 undergrad, 3.9 PhD), as long as you don't play games to get it. I loaded up on classes, took the hardest profs, learned a ton, and established a solid foundation for future learning.

Everyone Wins

[SuperCharlie]

Its the last 20 years of coddling and telling kids thay can do anything, handing out prizes to everyone, and boring the crap out of anyone with an extra IQ point above average that makes the mentality that well, of course you can dear, all you have to do is work hard and you can do anything.

Then you get a classroom full of people who expect a prize every time they do anything.

/ old grump rant..

Re:Everyone Wins

[Anonymous Coward]

Bravo! Too many little sweetums who could do no wrong in their public schools, sass their teachers but still get passing grades without working for them... see the kids that tried to work harder and get ahead ridiculed or forced to stop and 'help the other kinds who are just not progressing quite as well'; then they enter the real world. And its hard!!! Waaa!

Re:Everyone Wins

[Winter Lightning]

Damnation - I just blew my mod points before this story came-up. SuperCharlie has hit the nail on the head.

This has come about because politicians - mostly soft classics/humanities* types with no significant experience of the world outside politics that pays the bills - wanted to make voters think that the junior and high school systems in places like the US and UK were still working after all their meddling. Add some incompetent box-ticking bureaucrats and educators who are content to game the system, and you have the mess that we're in. The best and brightest still make their own way, but many kids arrive in STEM courses at university/college and can't cope with the kind of learning environment that depends on curiosity and initiative in addition to hard work. Some seem to think that regurgitation and rhetoric will win celebrity status - but STEM subjects generally aren't like that.

*These subjects are great in themselves, but we have too many politicians from this kind of background who largely use their subjects as a way of peddling lies.

Re:Everyone Wins

[ortholattice]

The grading level runs: Excellent, Great, Good, Satisfactory, Needs Work

Well, "Needs Work" is an improvement over "Emerging", which was the lowest category when my kid was in school several years ago.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Why does the WSJ hate American students?

[ebno-10db]

Why does the WSJ hate American students? Technically I shouldn't jump to that conclusion, since it is phrased conditionally. FTA:

“If more science graduates are desired, the findings suggest the importance of policies at younger ages that lead students to enter college better prepared to study science,” the researchers write in the paper.

Why would we want more STEM graduates? There is no objective evidence that there is a shortage of them, and quite a few indications that, at least in some fields, we have a surplus. Moreover US policy is, and for many years has been, to import STEM students or graduates rather than get Americans interested in these fields. We know this policy is essential because Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and other very wealthy STEM dropouts tell us it is.

Re:Why does the WSJ hate American students?

[PRMan]

I can assure you that no company can hire enough programmers. They just aren't there.

Re:Why does the WSJ hate American students?

[ebno-10db]

I can assure you that no company can hire enough programmers.

Your assurance is not sufficient. If there was that much of a demand, there would be almost no unemployment and salaries would be climbing.

Re:Why does the WSJ hate American students?

[phantomfive]

I have no idea what your post has to do with hating American students, and after reading the article, I have no idea why you think it has anything to do with hating American students.

Re:Why does the WSJ hate American students?

[LordLucless]

He's saying that trying to push more kids through a STEM course isn't doing them any favours, due to the job market (and, presumably, no native interest in the subject). The "hate" is a sort of ironic overstatement.

Re:Why does the WSJ hate American students?

[ebno-10db]

Unemployment amongst programmers who can actually program useful stuff is basically zero.

And you know this how? Lemme guess, you know some programmers who can actually program (according to your judgement of course) and right now they're working. QED.

programmer salaries have been going up rapidly

Cite statistics. Anecdotes need not apply (especially from Bay Area recruiters).

Re:Why does the WSJ hate American students?

[ebno-10db]

I was just going to say that. The 2% unemployment is because people take a week off between jobs. It's entirely nonexistent.

The unemployment numbers don't count the legions of people that have left over the years because they couldn't find work. Get a job as a burger flipper to try and make ends meet and poof, you're no longer an unemployed programmer. Do that for a year or two until the next upturn in the programming racket and you'll never get another job in programming. Low unemployment - it's magic!

Let me guess - none of them were any good at what they did (all the ones I know personally are the rare exceptions). Or they were over 30. The really smart ones though moved to another field before they were outsourced.

Re:Why does the WSJ hate American students?

[ebno-10db]

Start with the BLS.

Programming jobs are expected to increase at the same rate as jobs on the whole: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/computer-programmers.htm#tab-6

EE jobs at only about half the average rate: http://www.bls.gov/ooh/architecture-and-engineering/electrical-and-electronics-engineers.htm#tab-6

Do those sound like fast growing fields to you? That's why there is no shortage.

Re:Why does the WSJ hate American students?

[zildgulf]

I can assure you that no company can hire enough programmers for under $25/hr. The massive importation of science, technology, engineering, and mathematical (STEM) professionals from other countries as cheaper temporary immigrants has distorted the job market against American STEM professionals causing fewer students to go into the STEM field in the past two decades. The STEM job market is eventually self-correcting so the slow correction is what is driving the lack of cheap STEM professionals in America. The increased importation of more STEM professionals will further drive away students from STEM studies.

Re:Why does the WSJ hate American students?

[stymy]

That only holds in closed systems. If a company can't find good programmers (or workers of any kind), now they can just open up a new facility in Canada, Mexico, India, Ukraine or whatever. Hence, there might be demand but no fall in unemployment or rise in wages.

Immune to Criticism

[mothlos]

Of course it couldn't possibly be that classrooms are frequently designed for the efficiency of the institution over the educational needs of students. Lecture-based education, unaccommodating clasroom policies, instruction and assistance provided by persons with almost no professional education training, uninformative grading systems, a culture of shape-up or ship-out, none of these could possibly be changed without compromising the integrity of the program. The industrial organization of education can efficiently educate students well only by reducing the diversity of student learning requirements and that is most easily accomplished by rejecting input units which fail to meet specification. Don't you dare criticize this structure as to do so would only be dumbing things down and that is unacceptable.

Math and Science are taught wrong!

[m00sh]

The main problem is that large parts of science and math are skills. But, they are taught as other subjects with a lecture and homework. You wouldn't learn swimming by listening to someone talk about it for an hour or learn to play the guitar by looking at someone playing it for an hour.

Seriously, there is even a saying among people that the best way to learn something is to teach it. Sitting in class and listening to lectures is the wrong way to learn something.

Re:Math and Science are taught wrong!

[Georules]

While I agree, getting students engaged enough to attempt to teach something is terribly hard. There is not a winning model for back and forth teaching/learning that works beyond just a few students in the room. Lecture/homework is the lazy solution for mass instruction.

Re:Math and Science are taught wrong!

[cryptizard]

I am teaching a graduate course for the first time this summer and I can say that is absolutely true for me. I "knew" the material before, but I realized that until I had to get in front of student and actually teach it, I hadn't completely absorbed and understood it on an intuitive level. Their assignment for the final project is to pick an advanced topic and give a lecture on it to the rest of the class. I didn't bother with quizzes or midterms, I figure if you can get in front of other students and explain a new concept to them, then you have learned exactly what I wanted to teach.

Re:Math and Science are taught wrong!

[sandytaru]

The issue is that for a very bright kid, they CAN get away with just "learning from the lecture" for most early math. I didn't have to start really thinking about math outside of the classroom until I hit geometry, and then I didn't have to really start doing homework until trig and calculus.

Re:Math and Science are taught wrong!

[Tablizer]

they are taught as other subjects with a lecture and homework. You wouldn't learn swimming by listening to someone talk about it for an hour

Time for hands-on quantum experiments with real cats! (or volunteer students)

Re:Fails to control for college

[HornWumpus]

The whole point of education is teaching you to learn. By college you are _supposed_ to no longer need to be spoon fed.

It's Impossible until it becomes Trivial...

[Gavin Scott]

In almost any skill that has to be learned, there's often a fairly rapid and abrupt transition from "I can't do that" to "I CAN do that and since I now know how to it's actually easy".

I think a lot of people get discouraged when they're unable to get through that transition on their own the first time they try it, and "I can't do that right" can be appear to be an impossible mountain to climb, even if you're not far from the top.

I think we need to be challenging kids from an early age to learn things that are "hard" so that they become intimately familiar with this progression from impossible to trivial. Too often I see kids these days try something that looks interesting to them a couple times and then decide "nah, that's too hard" and quit.

It's not specifically teaching perseverance, but more about learning to recognize that progress is almost never linear toward a goal and many times you won't recognize you've reached your goal until you're actually there.

Additionally, we ought to be able to get better at helping people fight through these places they get stuck, rather than just leaving them with a failing grade in a math class and a feeling that that they're not up to the task. Early recognition of students who are having difficulty and focused tutoring and other help getting through the hard parts to the point that they achieve their needed breakthrough.

I don't think any undergraduate subject should be so inherently difficult that anyone who can get into the university in the first place shouldn't be able to do well in it.

G.

Re:It's Impossible until it becomes Trivial...

[ebno-10db]

Damn, a comment on Slashdot that makes sense and isn't about tooting your own horn. Are you in the wrong place?

I agree. My experience in tutoring people in math is that mathophobes are thrown by the fact that they don't understand something the first time they see it. That's different from say, a history class. That's not knocking history, which also a very important subject (and a personal favorite), but it does mean that learning math is different. I always tell people that of course you don't understand it - you haven't learned it yet!

Re:It's Impossible until it becomes Trivial...

[argStyopa]

Well there's two problems.

1) EVERYONE thinks they need to go to University. It doesn't matter if you barely struggled your way through high school - mom and dad (and you, likely) expect that you *will* get a college degree.

2) The only way for kids to learn that they CAN persevere is to have challenges when younger. Invariably, some will fail. Today's "everyone wins" culture is obvious to most youngsters by the cynical age of 10: if I "try my hardest" I will be granted opportunities as if I succeeded, whether I did or not.

Re:It's Impossible until it becomes Trivial...

[jrumney]

In almost any skill that has to be learned, there's often a fairly rapid and abrupt transition from "I can't do that" to "I CAN do that and since I now know how to it's actually easy".

The only times in Maths I remember feeling "I can't do that" at school, were when I first encountered division in 3rd grade, and integration in my final year. Integration I slowly got the hang of during my first year of University, but by that time my professors were demanding proofs of laws of physics based on partial differential and improper integral equations with complex algebra in the mix, moving at a pace where I could never really get the hang of it. By the end of my Bachelors degree I was burnt out and could not understand why anyone would stay to do a Masters or Doctorate. In science, there was a time our physics teacher came in at the start of the lesson and announced he had something important to do elsewhere, so to read the textbook section on relativity (which we had had no prior exposure to) and write an essay about it in our own words. To me, with the limited knowledge I had at the time, it sounded like science fiction, so I wrote as much in my essay. It was the only time I got a D in physics. Students who were used to regurgitating what they were told without understanding or questioning it fared a lot better.

Re:It's Impossible until it becomes Trivial...

[HornWumpus]

I don't think referencing schools of education is doing your argument any good. They are a joke. Lowest student SATs, highest GPAs.

By the time you are in college you are supposed to not need spoon feeding. Another way most high schools fail their students.

Re:It's Impossible until it becomes Trivial...

[Ambassador Kosh]

At least with my engineers classes there are a lot of things I can do now but many of them I doubt I would ever say they are easy. Many of the more complex reactor type designs or kinetic simulations are just plain hard even though I can do them. We had some problems in kinetics where we needed to model blood clotting and the effect of various factors. It was about 35 or so ODEs and 75 or so other support equations. I solved it in MATLAB and most others used other similar type programs. However none of them made the problem easy, they just made it solvable.

Many of the things I have learned for balancing various heat reactions with fluids and reaction kinetics are not easy either. I know exactly how to solve them though, I can do them correctly pretty much every time but, they are still hard to solve and can take quite a lot of time.

There are many things I once thought were hard that are not trivially easy but at some point you get to hard things that just stay hard. These things are considered hard even by experts with 20+ years of experience and there is no real getting around it.

Next semester I will have a very interesting class on nanotechnology. It is likely to be EXTREMELY hard. No amount of time is likely to make that class easy either but I do love challenging things like that. Strangely enough though I tend not to like challenging video games very much. After working extremely hard to solve many of these problems when I get done I want to just relax.

Re:It's Impossible until it becomes Trivial...

[drinkypoo]

It would be nice to have an alternate system for teaching certain things to students who aren't getting it right the normal way around. I have to understand things to retain them, I've never proven anything in math (never got that far) and I just don't remember what to do when because there's never been a why. And without math, what good are you to science? Not totally useless, but of more value as a test subject than on the other side of the table.

Effort vs. Reward

[Nethemas the Great]

Here's a really crazy thought. A thought based on something that really pissed me off all through my schooling. At the end of the day, kids (which may or may not themselves be stupid) that took stupid, easy courses would earn better grades than those that busted their butt taking challenging courses. An "A" grade in physical education, or introductory algebra should most certainly NOT mean the same thing as an "A" in biology, or Calculus. It's unfair, and discouraging to those students that are truly accomplishing something. Why try so hard when you're surrounded by dumba**es taking slacker classes and pulling off better grades than you.

Re:Effort vs. Reward

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, people care about grades, not learning the amazing wonders of mathematics and science? No wonder they suck at those classes. When I took calculus (second year of high-school) I did no homework aced the class. Its not about putting in the work, or about the other students, its about learning the right things. Calculus changed my whole world view. I think about everything in terms of differential functions now. How could I fail to learn something so astounding!

If your math and science is about the classes, its gonna suck. If you are learning math and science, and you happen to be in a class that helps you along, things will go much better. The same applied to my linguistics and physiology courses, as well as most of my computer science and engineering classes. They helped me learn what I wanted to learn, and thats why I went to class.

If you are discouraged because slackers are getting good grades in easy classes, thats your problem. Grades don't freaking matter, nor do classes. If someone wants to use school as a social device, and you object because you want to use it as a ranking system to show your superiority, fuck you: thats just a different social device. Complain about not being able to learn what you want to learn, or STFU.

Re:Effort vs. Reward

[ukemike]

Here's a really crazy thought. A thought based on something that really pissed me off all through my schooling. At the end of the day, kids (which may or may not themselves be stupid) that took stupid, easy courses would earn better grades than those that busted their butt taking challenging courses. An "A" grade in physical education, or introductory algebra should most certainly NOT mean the same thing as an "A" in biology, or Calculus. It's unfair, and discouraging to those students that are truly accomplishing something. Why try so hard when you're surrounded by dumba**es taking slacker classes and pulling off better grades than you.

Grades hardly matter at all after you graduate unless you got really terrible grades. When I am hiring I don't care about grades, I care if you have a BS. I really don't care which BS it is. A BA is much less impressive, closer to an AA degree. So once you've been in the real world for a little while the grades won't count for anything. What will matter is how well you learned the material, and more importantly how well you learned to learn. So don't feel jealous of those kids getting A's in their easy classes, they'll be flipping burgers if they are lucky.

You need to teach incredible persistence

[DeathGrippe]

""If more science graduates are desired, the findings suggest the importance of policies at younger ages that lead students to enter college better prepared (PDF) to study science.""

Secondary and college students are subjected to only the most minimal of discouragement compared with what they will experience in the real world of academic and industrial science. Research progress is based on multiple failures, punctuated by brief, intense flashes of insight. There is a lot of chance involved, because there is a great deal of educated guesswork leading to theories and experiments.

High school, and college barely begin to prepare you for grad school and life in the real world.

Very important distinction needs to be made...

[Pollux]

...Between what the research proves and the conclusions drawn from the research. I missed it the first time in the summary, and think this deserves highlighting:

The research concludes: "While math and science majors drew the most interest initially, not many students finished with degrees in those subjects...The students switched out [of math and science majors] because they were dissatisfied with their grades."

The author concludes from the research: "“If more science graduates are desired, the findings suggest the importance of policies at younger ages that lead students to enter college better prepared to study science."

That's quite the spin. If I could be so bold as to suggest a different conclusion...

Kids these days don't understand the meaning of the word fortitude.

Re:Very important distinction needs to be made...

[Dracul]

The problem is the culture that means that everyone has to succeed and anything less than an 'A' is a failure of the school teacher not someone's little darling being a lazy shit who can't apply themselves because their entire life is based on getting anything they want rather than having to work for it. By the time these kids get to college/university many of them have no idea how to bang their head hard against a problem, fail, learn from that and do it again until they succeed. The idea that you might have to struggle for weeks or months with very little success or fake self-esteem boosts is completely alien to them. I suspect half the reason sections of first world societies have so much issue with immigrants is that many immigrants know how to work hard - its embarrassing for many in so called 'first world' countries to be reminded of what personal discipline and commitment look like...

Re:Very important distinction needs to be made...

[Alsee]

That's quite the spin. If I could be so bold as to suggest a different conclusion...
Kids these days don't understand the meaning of the word fortitude.

So..... you're saying that Science and English are both hard?

p.s.
fortitude

-

Re:Very important distinction needs to be made...

[LordLucless]

The author concludes from the research: "“If more science graduates are desired, the findings suggest the importance of policies at younger ages that lead students to enter college better prepared to study science."

That's quite the spin. If I could be so bold as to suggest a different conclusion...

Kids these days don't understand the meaning of the word fortitude.

Actually, I don't see a great difference between the author's conclusion and yours - he just phrased his more diplomatically. It's quite possible that the development of intellectual fortitude is one of the things that needs to be encouraged to better prepare students to study science.

Re:Very important distinction needs to be made...

[Ambassador Kosh]

In my material and energy balances class at least 1/3 of the people gave up and switched degrees because they found the material too hard. The professor had a LOT of additional help available and she worked very hard to try and get everyone to pass but many of those students that failed and quit would skip class, not do the homework and then complain that the tests were so hard.

It is true that engineering classes are very hard and do require a lot of time but many of the problems are from the students not the material. You can't spend every weekend partying and slacking off and expect to do well in the courses.

Re:I've said this a million times

[Sigma 7]

Math and Science are NOT hard. What they are is fucking tedious.

Only if you have an algorithm to the solution (as is the case with arithmetic, algebra, calculus, etc.). If you have to construct a solution yourself without relying on prior information, then math and science become hard.

Gotta love those scientists

[holophrastic]

So, these scientists did studies on science and found one simple thing: "math is hard". Congrats.

And the "solution" is to train six year olds harder. Again, well done.

Perhaps, just maybe, there might be a better solution.

Re:So why did they drop out?

[Molochi]

It's a bungled quote. RTFA.

How does this differ from the past?

[ebno-10db]

How does this differ from the past? The article doesn't address that at all. In the past, did a smaller percentage of STEM students dropout or switch to non-STEM majors? In the past were STEM graduates a larger or a smaller percentage of college graduates, and were they a larger or smaller percentage of people of a given age? Is there any objective evidence that there is a shortage of STEM graduates?

Without that information, this article is the usual "OMG, crisis! American education sucks!" hysteria that we've been hearing for decades. Not that that jibes with American prowess in science and technology, but lets not worry about a little things like that. A variant of this garbage is that everyone should study STEM (ignoring demand). Look, the USSR launched a satellite before us! We're gonna loose the Cold War! That was the "crisis" in 1957, and the nonsense hasn't abated since.

Don't ignore the study itself

[yurtinus]

Make sure you include the requisite grain of salt. The blog is based on a study from over a decade ago - performed at a liberal arts college. Quickly perusing the school's website, I do not see a strong emphasis on STEM programs (I don't even see a B.S. offered, even the CS degree is a B.A.).

Not that I entirely disagree with the premise, but I think a study at a school with a broader academic base would provide more worthwhile results.

Paradigm shift required!

[agapeton]

I was a Math major back in the day (though I regret not doing Physics or EE instead). The biggest things that I wish I were told were these: 1) You don't STUDY math and physics. You PRACTICE math and physics. 2) Don't worry about not knowing something. The next chapter is nothing if not examples of this chapter (this is especially true for Physics; this is also a better way of saying-- this chapter is a prerequisite for the next). Sadly, weekly tests DESTROY the ability for people to learn correctly in this model. 3) Your math teacher isn't rain man, s/he just did the work ahead of time. Most of the time you don't hope for an insight, but just recall a similar problem. Thus, again, you PRACTICE math... get the ninja skills going. 4) Reach the pareto point (80/20) as fast as possible, then hammer on that last bit as hard as you can. The next 5% is what's separating you from your peers. Of course, another 5% you are in the masters program. The next 5%, doctoral. The last 3% is post doc. The last 2% will be for a future generations.

Re:I've said this a million times

[occasional_dabbler]

Troll

Science shows

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how many people watch science shows like Through the Wormhole, NOVA Science NOW et al. (which I regularly watch myself) and don't realize how much of the intricate background math is deliberately not shown/discussed to make the subject matter more engaging to the average viewer.

Re:Really? derp derp

[ebno-10db]

There has always been a question of where money and resources should be dedicated if we the number of STEM college graduates.

There's no point in even asking that question until it's been decided whether "we" want to increase the number of STEM graduates, and if so, why "we" want to. If that question was analyzed a tenth as scientifically as the question of where to allocate resources if "we" want to increase the number of STEM graduates, it would be a miracle. The assumption that "we" should want to is endlessly asserted and little questioned. Whose agenda does that promote?

Re:dumb

[PRMan]

Having talked to East Asian co-workers, we came to the conclusion that while rote memorization was by far in favor of the Asians, solving unseen problems went to the Americans. They were constantly astounded at how easily we could solve problems that we had never heard of before and credited the American education system. So, I would say not dumb, just a different focus.

Why would I care about doing the lightning-speed mental arithmetic? I have a calculator for that.

Correction

[Azure Flash]

Math and Science Popular Until Students Realize They Are Taught In The Most Boring And Ass-Backwards Way Possible

Re:dumb

[ebno-10db]

in japan, kids are taught to be able to do mental arithmetic at lightning speed. tests involve flashing up 6-digit sums for 1/3 of a second every couple of seconds

Let's teach our students to do something more difficult and more useful, like balance a ball on the end of their nose while clapping their flippers (err, hands). The ability to do some mental arithmetic is very useful, but the usefulness of doing 6 digit sums in your head was obviated by technologies like the abacus or pencil and paper. Go with the ball on your nose.

Real-world examples, shaky foundations

[Cyrano de Maniac]

While my intuition tells me that high school grads are, on the whole, not as well prepared as they should be, there is certainly some improvement that could be done at the college level.

One problem I faced on the path to my EE degree was that in mathematics classes and some engineering classes (particularly electromagnetic fields, communication systems theory, and stochastic signal analysis -- which of course are some of the most math/calculus heavy of the EE curriculum), was that I lacked an intellectual model of what the mathematics was accomplishing. While concepts like derivatives and integrals made a degree of sense because they could be related to velocity, acceleration, position, area, and volume, when I got to the point I was dealing with eigen-this and eigen-that and hermetian-something-or-others I had lost any real-world connection, and my understanding suffered as a result.

The most frustrating and poignant instance of this was the first day of my linear algebra class, which I was taking only as a pre-req for CS class on GUIs, which only needed it to the extent that rotation, translation, and scaling using matrices was involved, and I already knew that much. Anyway, the mathematics professor walks in and announces "I do not care, even one little bit, what this material is used for in the real world. I am here to instruct you in mathematics alone." I looked around the room. In a class of about 25, I believe there were 20 science/engineering students, 4 math students, and one photography major (she was one of those brilliant types who took upper level classes in sciences, math, philosophy, or anything else just for fun). I was somewhat incredulous at the professor's utter disregard for his students' background, abilities, and interests. And just as I expected the course was utterly miserable and tedious, and then there were the bad days.

I contrast that with the math classes I took for Calculus II-IV, and Numerical Systems Analysis. The professors (thank heavens I avoided graduate students) who taught those classes were totally on top of the situation, and made it very clear what we were trying to accomplish with real world examples, or at least didn't veer too incredibly far from intuitive models. I think it helped that in Calc II-IV I had the same professor all through, and he was teaching a pilot course that integrated calculators into the material, so there was a lot of approachable material throughout. This was a stark contrast from the previously mentioned Linear Algebra as well as the Differential Equations I courses.

To this day I hate Linear Algebra and Differential Equations, and I'm 100% convinced it's due to the terrible instructors I dealt with. Which is a shame, because I loved mathematics in high school, and would go beyond my coursework to explore what I could on my own without much additional help from my (incredible) high school teacher, and I had a blast doing it. If I hadn't developed a strong interest in aeronautics and computers I most likely would have pursued a math degree.

The biggest problem I faced throughout my mathematics education, as well as many engineering classes, is that as the course would progress it was building taller and taller upon a shaky foundation. While my arithmetic was bedrock, my algebra was concrete, and my trigonometry was 2x4 construction, the rest was a lot less solid. Calculus felt a lot like building with Tinker-toys, and by the time I got to anything past that it was toothpicks stuck together with Sticky-Tack. As more and more material was piled on top, a lot of it kept slipping off because the stuff underneath it was crumbling. I would have benefited greatly from either better construction (i.e. better instruction), or a lot more hands-on experience with those shaky bits such that they were strongly reinforced.

Re:Real-world examples, shaky foundations

[sconeu]

Your experience mirrors mine. Although the professor didn't explictly state that up front, during a lecture on N-dimensional Jacobians (or something like that), someone asked, "Does this have any use in the Real World(tm)?" The professor scratched his beard for a moment, and then said, "I don't think zo".

At that point, I started questioning my choice of a math major.

Re:Real-world examples, shaky foundations

[Ambassador Kosh]

I ran into that in some of my math classes also. I one of my classes I heard a student behind me whisper to another student that if they had only one hour left to live they would choose to spend it in that professors class. He would make that last hour seem like an eternity and when death finally came they would be ready for it.

He spent the ENTIRE class period with his back to the class writing on a chalkboard. He had his notes written ahead of time and pretty much just copied them onto the board. Asking questions was pretty much futile. This was an applied math class and the only students in the class were various kinds of engineers. The class was almost completely abstract.

I have liked most of my engineering classes a lot because they tend to be extremely concrete. Most classes end up just being working through one example after another to understand how and why things work and how to approach a problem. I much prefer that to the lecturing formats that most other classes take. It is assumed you have done the readings before class and class is for truly learning how to understand this stuff.

Re:Real-world examples, shaky foundations

[A_Non_Moose]

Amen.

When I started my degree for the second time, I had about 15 years in IT/Support/SysAdmin roles (or all 3 at once).

I had done quite well in CS and math/Calc classes, but had to start from ground zero (Algebra 1 on up) to get into calc,
because while I had the ability, I lacked the skills/exp.

EE was my goal, after being an AT in the Navy...but calc was a brutal first go, but I *GOT IT* the second time around to the
point I could do volumes of irregular shapes and implicit differentiation so well it was ... (GASP) ... FUN (and annoying to those
I studied with, even though Newton's Law of Cooling gave me fits). And, I was in the top 5 students in my Discrete Logic
class (and dating the girl who was likely #1 in the class).

Second time around was a different story in both Calc I and DL, and I had the same teacher my 2ND time in DL I got to
hear the same concern: "Your excellent knowledge and ability in this subject is not reflected in your grade."

I became CS after EE wasn't going to happen, and second time around went for CS, but got a BA because I could not make
it through Calc III because the math was easy, but Sequences and Series beat me down so badly I just could not take any
more abuse. First was a horrible teacher (use the term very loosely) second was great, but there was some lynch-pin missing
to keep everything from flying apart.

I eventually talked to the Dept Head and explained and he said "CS uses calc and discrete as weed-out courses."
I replied something to the effect of "I see that, and I agree...however you are weeding out people who know what the hell
they are doing."

It is amusing now, but I was explaining the calc I and II concepts to other students, but getting a "C" in both and failing calc III
despite strong math skills and obvious poor decision skills with Seq's and Ser's and getting no help.

I seriously think that if "professors who teach" were subject to a GPA that could cause them fiscal (or even physical) harm
from students, the shitty ones would be weeded out in rapid order.

In my opinion; CS degrees need calc *only* for mathematical discipline, and Discrete should be taught by other CS people.
(Note: when I went through my degree the second time, this was not the case. I had a Theoretical Mathematician teaching
Discrete. It did not go well, surprisingly)

Re:Real-world examples, shaky foundations

[gatzke]

Diff EQ and Linear Algebra were also very shaky for me, they did not make sense until later in grad school when I finally found more relevant physical examples. Now I review them in engineering courses when I teach and I make a point to pull out various applications more explicitly.

I wish math profs would do a better job on this topic. At GT I had a great prof that taught calculus for engineers. He got it. Some math profs don't. They won't let engineering profs teach basic math from accreditation standpoint AFAIK, even though it is like requiring a novelist teach basic grammar.

Re:Real-world examples, shaky foundations

[Beetle B.]

While you have a point, I'll make a counterpoint:

First, a lot of mathematics majors get a poor mathematics education when teachers teach to the demographics in these classes (which is mostly non-math majors). As a result, a number of mathematics professors have gotten irritated and they'll insist that their courses exist to serve the mathematics students, no matter how few, and if the engineers want something more applied and tied to reality, then the engineering department needs to step up and offer a course rather than leach off the math department at the expense of their students. Of course, department politics and funding come into play which is why they end up having to teach non-math majors.

You may be collateral damage in their battle, but as someone who's been on both the EE and the math side, I think they have a very valid point: Catering to outsiders is hurting their own math program (which ultimately affects the rankings of the math department, although most usually are not driven by that).

Second, if you plan to go to grad school, for many disciplines in EE and CS, you'll likely need all the theoretical stuff that linear algebra professor was trying to teach, and many grad schools will expect you to know it. In my experience, those who know that material coming in will ususally excel. Many EE/CS departments will try to teach the same material as part of some other course that may need it, but the students often don't learn it as well as if they had taken it from a proper math course.

And that's the other battle: Undergrad vs Grad school. In EE/CS, most undergrads do not plan on going to grad school, but the grad school folks are understandably upset that incoming students are ill prepared (which affects their rankings, and more importantly, the university's research). This being academia, the grad school advocates have more say then you'd perhaps like.

Path of least resistance...

[nbritton]

It's not so much that it's hard, but that it takes longer to complete a science degree. Figuratively speaking, 1 credit hour in libral arts is like 0.1 hours in STEM courses. I think a lot of people come to realize that a degree is just a key for opening doors, and opt for the easiest degree that will accomplish their goals.

I totally understand in a way...

[jo7hs2]

I started in college as a comp sci major. I already knew how to program in BASIC, C, and C++ with reasonable proficiency and was excited about the major. However, I had a string of lousy math teachers until high school and struggled with algebra. Oddly, I was always fine with trigonometry and statistics, and I never had issues with the logic part of programming (I'm an attorney now). I was drastically unprepared for college mathematics. Because comp sci majors weren't even allowed to take major-required coursework until they had various math prerequisites, I started behind. After I nearly failed a mid-term in math class I barely understood with a TA I literally could not comprehend, I dropped the class and the major. I retreated to my safe zone in history and eventually ended up in law school.

While I'm not disappointed with the way things worked out, since my hands give me trouble just with the typing I do for my job now, I do wonder how different my life could have been if one of my math teachers caught on that I was struggling before my senior year of high school. I finally had a good teacher that last year, and she pulled my aside after class and turned a D to an A, but it was too late by then. I just lacked the skills.

From my perspective, the biggest issue in math education, and really education in general, is grading with no follow up. If a student isn't getting it, failing them doesn't make them get it, and passing them with pity is even worse. This flaw in a lot of education was really hammered home to me in law school when a professor got frustrated her ENTIRE class failed an exam. If the whole class fails, it isn't the students...

Ironically, I always had amazing science teachers. They were always engaged and excited. I usually got good grades. But, one science teacher was the only teacher I ever had who picked up on the fact that I was being teased and then tried to do something about it. And, my aunt is a science teacher, so I may be biased.

My rambling point...they need to be catching the kids who are struggling in second to fifth grade. My math issues started with multiplication in elementary school. I was behind, and no one ever caught it because in our school system you could basically still pass if you didn't understand, provided you just got enough questions right and showed effort...and passing was all that mattered.

Re:I totally understand in a way...

[Darinbob]

College is often a massive culture shock to many students. The level of effort you need to do even is more than most people ever do in high school, even at mediocre colleges. Someone who is a top student at high school will have these same problems adjusting, especially ones who are smart and manage to get top marks without working at it. Especially true if you're not in one of the few high schools in rich districts that give or require honors classes. But even then, I've seen honors students who will test out of the first semester of college because they already know it, and then end up overwhelmed in the follow-on class.

Re:I totally understand in a way...

[bussdriver]

I tested out of Calc in highschool. I took it in college anyhow. It was a huge shock (mostly because it was 7am) because the AP targeted high school class was a total joke that lacked any understanding and skipped everything not on the AP exam.

Re:I totally understand in a way...

[jo7hs2]

Oh, absolutely. Other than math classes, I was a "without effort" A or B student. And aside from math, that remained true in college, actually. By the time I hit law school and I actually had to study to get a decent grade, I realized the fact that I had been able to get by just in what I absorbed in class without study was not beneficial.

Re:I totally understand in a way...

[jo7hs2]

I had to take a "developmental" class to catch up before I could start regular classes. It was a good idea, poorly executed. It was a purely computer-based class (we had to show up to the computer lab, however) and you could take the segments over and over without learning anything, because eventually you'd find the correct answer and move on. It was a waste of time for everyone in the class. Ironically, when I dropped out of computer science I still needed one math class for my History major. I took a basic college algebra class with a great professor over the summer. I learned more about algebra in that six week class than I had since algebra was first introduced to me in middle school. That should have been the development class.

Failure is not an option

[tomhath]

Schools these days don't allow the top students to be challenged by treating them like they're special. The good students are mixed in with the others who are just putting in their time; robbing both good students and good teachers of the opportunity to prepare for college classes.

Pre-Science (Not To Be Confused With Prescience)

[Baby Duck]

This is a great money making opportunity for a savvy university. Offer a 2-year Pre-Science curriculum to prepare them for the following 4-year Bachelor of Science. Wouldn't be much different than Pre-Nursing, Pre-Med, Pre-Law, etc. If you happened to come from an awesome school system, then you will have no problem testing out of Pre-Science and go directly to your standard 4-year program.

Re:Fails to control for college

[maxwell demon]

Well, if education is about teaching you to learn, how come that children learn easily and happily before coming into school, but on average their ability (and willingness) to learn is reduced during their school career? Something seems to go horribly wrong.

Math is hard only when the teacher is bad

[Anonymous Coward]

Math is hard only when the teacher is bad. Known now and since the Greeks. Even the most difficult math can be understood to some good degree by almost any average inteligent person if explained adequately. Even Quantum Mechanics. That is not the problem.

One problem theaching science is that while math is the language of science, in many places, physics, thermodynamics, elasticity or other science courses are teached more like math courses with science applications than focusing to teach the actual science concepts and solving actual problems.

Entangling the studends in an algebra, calculus or differential equations mess make lots of people lose the perspective and the simplicity of most science concepts. Sure they need to know all these math things, but more important is to understand the science concepts and know how to solve these science problems with modern tools which mostly take away the prone-to-error math tedious and leaves all the science concepts intact.

Then if you want to be sure they still know how to solve evil multivariate differential equations or simplify page full algebraic expressions and such, do a math exam but don't make things that are easy hard with no benefit... at all.

Re:Math is hard only when the teacher is bad

[thoth]

Math is hard only when the teacher is bad.

And if you're reasonably good a math, you can probably find a better paying job doing something other than teach.
Especially at the elementary school level, where kids can easily get turned off math. Who winds up teaching 3rd graders math? People who, generally speaking, aren't going into that field because they love math and want to teach it to elementary school kids.

Re:Math is hard only when the teacher is bad

[ChrisMaple]

Being able to follow through a math problem that someone else is showing the solution of is very much less difficult than being able to solve symbolically (for instance) a complicated system of differential equations. Much of math is very difficult, and I say this with a bachelor's in math from MIT.

Math & Science isn't hard, other subjects are

[Anonymous Coward]

As a retired chemistry professor I find that undergraduates are incredibly unprepared for college level science courses both in math and basic science. I have many example stories that I could recite. Here's one: handing back the 1st exam in General Chemistry, one student came in late after the graded exams were returned and picked up his at the end of class. His score was 16 out of 100 and asked what kind of grade that would be. I told him it was an F and he needed some help if he wanted to pass the course. He told me that he got A's in all his science and math in HS and expected the same in college. I never saw the student again. Another: the average grades for all chem courses at our school was something like 2.4 out of 4. The average grade in the communication department was 3.95. Hmmm.... It's clear some departments have absolutely no standards or their courses are so easy the subject matter is obvious and requires no work. Another: one of my colleagues went to a 5th grade parent-teacher conference and asked the teacher when fractions would be studied. The teacher said that they were no longer taught because no one ever used them any more. I think of that response every time I use a ruler or tape measure with English units, divided in 16ths of an inch. If this is an example of how elementary teachers think, no wonder why students aren't prepared for college, much less a technical vocational school. And: how about a HS algebra teacher who told me that freshman algebra was taught at the 5th grade math level. Enough said.

competing with asia

[r0xtarninja]

I ducked out of a STEM degree myself exactly because it was too much work and because science classes turned out to be a huge drag on my grades. However, this wasn't because the content itself was "hard," it was because at the university level all the math and science classes I took were graded competitively on a curve, and this system gave a tremendous advantage to all the students from Korea and China who were brought up spending every waking hour in study.

Ultimately, I changed to a liberal arts degree. This wasn't the only reason I switched away from STEM, but it certainly made my decision easier.

Re:competing with asia

[Ash Vince]

I ducked out of a STEM degree myself exactly because it was too much work and because science classes turned out to be a huge drag on my grades. However, this wasn't because the content itself was "hard," it was because at the university level all the math and science classes I took were graded competitively on a curve, and this system gave a tremendous advantage to all the students from Korea and China who were brought up spending every waking hour in study.

Ultimately, I changed to a liberal arts degree. This wasn't the only reason I switched away from STEM, but it certainly made my decision easier.

So you gave up because you couldn't be bothered to work as hard as people from China and Korea living in the US? If that is true that is pretty pathetic on your part and may explain much of why the US needs so many H-1B visas.

There are other possible reasons though why chinese and korean students do better at Maths. I remember reading this a few years ago in Outliers by Malcom Gladwell: http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/outliers_excerpt3.html

Its a good book and I would recommend reading it if you can be bothered.

Kinda like what I experienced...

[Arkh89]

Coming from a different system, I appreciate the fact of not having the choice in the class "I took" AT ALL. I had to learn the same thing as all my other classmates (3 sections of 45 persons each). I think that it helped me because I couldn't feel alone in the storm that way...

Also it was intensive work at this time (12hrs of Maths class/week, about 20Hrs of work by my-self, 1Hr oral examination with one professor per week, 4Hr closed-book-no-calculators-you-have-only-your-brain-and-your-hands exam every two weeks). Then add almost the same in Physics and a little bit of Philosophy, English and Espagnol, and voila!

Re:Kinda like what I experienced...

[Arkh89]

You're totally right on this... seven years completely wasted as I don't even recall how to write the language name properly... (but, to my discharge, it does sound the same)...

Re:Passion

[Ghubi]

If that's the key to success why am I still broke? I've been playing video games all day for years!

Re:Fails to control for college

[lgw]

I can learn without being spoon fed for free. Heck, that's what I've mostly done. When tuition passes $10k, class sizes should be very small and professors very attentive, or what are you paying for?

I didn't think science and math were hard

[NotSoHeavyD3]

Now French, there was a course that was basically impossible.(Especially French 4 in college with those made up tenses.)

Great until you find out how hard it is

[PopeRatzo]

Funny, marriage is like that, too.

Obligatory XKCD

[rwa2]

http://xkcd.com/435/

Up through Engineering math isn't that bad, as long as you don't fall behind the rest of the class.

Good math classes are self-paced (more so than most other subjects, since there are so many dependencies), so everyone can rise to their level of ability.

Re:Really? derp derp

[ebno-10db]

The question of what "we" want is not a scientific question.

Strictly speaking you're right, but what I was referring to is whether there is objective evidence that we have a "shortage" of STEM graduates. Normally it's just assumed, or the evidence is the assertions of some very wealthy STEM dropouts with a vested interest. That's not a good enough starting point for a debate.

Now, you could make an economical argument about whether or not increasing the number of STEM graduates is useful to our economy. But I don't think that anybody trusts economical models at that level.

Forget the fancy models. Start with basic question of whether there is a "shortage" in the sense of rising prices. There isn't.

But I think that most people would find it believable that training people to address challenging problems quantitatively (which is really what all the STEM fields have in common) is going to be a good thing, and certainly isn't going to hurt.

Believable isn't the same thing as true, and "isn't going to hurt" is not a good enough argument for possibly spending a lot of money, and almost certainly expending a lot of effort. It wouldn't hurt if everybody learned the Klingon language either, but that's not much of an argument for encouraging it.

Re:Fails to control for college

[HornWumpus]

Of course you have to teach them stuff in order to teach them how to learn.

I bet you don't know how to learn. Most people don't. Hence the need for schools.

At some point you leave school. At that point you ether know how to learn things independently or you will never learn anything significant again.

Re:Fails to control for college

[HornWumpus]

Kids brains absorb information better then adults. But kids are incapable of learning things that aren't fun. Early childhood education is about socializing the little monsters, keeping basic education fun and presenting them with new fun things to play with.

Identifying part of the problem....

[Alsee]

If I may borrow a quote from Representative Paul Broun on the House committee for Science Space and Technology, this so-called study is obviously just another Lie Straight From The Pit Of Hell. As he says, the Bible is "the manufacturer's handbook". Obviously science would be a lot easier if students spent a lot more time in Bible class and spent a lot less time in science class.

-

Re:Identifying part of the problem....

[sandytaru]

I hope he runs for Senate and fails miserably. I'm tired of being in his district.

Effort is its own Reward

[slew]

Rather than be pissed-off, you should see school for what it really is, not a competition between students, but an opportunity to get educated.

If you look back at it, it's rather bizzare to think of education as a contest. So if you happened to be so smart that you didn't have to study and you still got better grades than everyone else, would that matter a bit to your preparation for a future college course (or life). Or in contrast, finding the best opportunities to put in your best effort regardless of the competition, you will perhaps learn better your own strengths and weaknesses as preparation for the future.

Life is really what you make of it. It generally is not what everyone else is doing (or as some might suggest, a race to die with the most ribbons and toys, or that success requires others to fail). The truth is that eventually, nobody really truly cares what you did or even what you are doing, so who are you trying to impress? The answer is generally yourself, so you might as well try as hard as will make you happy or you will live to regret it (a fact that many looking back who do not try as hard as they could will often attest to).

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Fails to control for college

[cheekyjohnson]

Hence the need for schools.

And a lot of good they're doing (unless you consider rote memorization educations to be a good thing)! Well, they're not completely useless, but they just don't seem very effective at what it is you're talking about.

At that point you ether know how to learn things independently

It would be rather sad if people didn't. At any rate, you don't need a school to teach you how to learn.

Students getting Hard?

[wisnoskij]

"Math[s] and Science Popular With Students Until THEY Realize THEY're Hard"

So students like Maths and Science until they get horny?
I would agree with this.

Re:Students getting Hard?

[VortexCortex]

I came.

Re:Students getting Hard?

[TeknoHog]

I saw.

Re:dumb

[White Flame]

I wouldn't necessarily credit the American education system, but American culture (which in turn does effect educational style). We're in theory the pioneers, the free people forging our own destinies from the unknown, etc. We are supposed to be new-problem solvers by cultural definition.

Duh.

[HockeyPuck]

Let's see... watching a rocket take off or seeing a Ferrari and thinking "I want to build one when I grow up!" is very different than acquiring the skills and aptitude to actually work on a team to build one.

 

Re:Math & Science isn't hard, other subjects a

[HornWumpus]

I didn't know you were on /. dad.

Seriously, you sound just like him. Do you brag about how many 'idiot, good memorizer, non-doctors' you are responsible for? (pre-meds NEED an A in general chem)

Focus On Self Esteem Leads to Selling French Fries

[theshowmecanuck]

What's needed are less helicopter parents and less public and high school teachers who are more concerned with not hurting students self esteem, than about about teaching core fundamentals and ensuring that kids are graded so that they can know when that isn't happening. Then students will be better prepared for college. Yes good teachers are essential. But on the whole, the current batch seem to be less than stellar. Or on the other hand, teachers can continue to focus on students' self esteem so they feel better at work selling french fries.

Re:Really? derp derp

[Zmobie]

The question of what "we" want is not a scientific question.

Strictly speaking you're right, but what I was referring to is whether there is objective evidence that we have a "shortage" of STEM graduates. Normally it's just assumed, or the evidence is the assertions of some very wealthy STEM dropouts with a vested interest. That's not a good enough starting point for a debate.

Now, you could make an economical argument about whether or not increasing the number of STEM graduates is useful to our economy. But I don't think that anybody trusts economical models at that level.

Forget the fancy models. Start with basic question of whether there is a "shortage" in the sense of rising prices. There isn't.

But I think that most people would find it believable that training people to address challenging problems quantitatively (which is really what all the STEM fields have in common) is going to be a good thing, and certainly isn't going to hurt.

Believable isn't the same thing as true, and "isn't going to hurt" is not a good enough argument for possibly spending a lot of money, and almost certainly expending a lot of effort. It wouldn't hurt if everybody learned the Klingon language either, but that's not much of an argument for encouraging it.

No, I would say there is plenty of evidence to suggest a shortage of STEM graduates. Looking at things from the stated economic perspective, there is a massive demand for engineers in a variety of fields that is simply not being met. That, by definition, is a shortage. In this instance, I don't think I even need to start linking the proof because EVERYONE, especially on slashdot should be aware of this, and it is also not limited to the United States, it is worldwide. You are kind of looking at things from the 'it isn't broke, don't need to fix it' perspective, but you can't do that when you are trying to grow the economy.

Yes, I agree with many people there is no end all be all correct answer to where we should spend money/effort/virgin blood/(insert economic stimulus aid here), but there definitely is a quantatitive statistical base for putting that money into stimulation for math and science education.

Jumping into the middle

[Livius]

Part of it is that science, at a post-secondary level, is not taught from the beginning, but something like sociology or accounting is.

You're expected to have had an intuitive understanding of some of it for your whole life, and to have taken it formally in high school. Therefore the material in, say, second year, actually is far more advanced than the second year level of some other disciplines. Something like economics starts with unlearning the pop culture understanding of the subject (which is usually ideology and not economics in any kind of scientific sense).

Re:Jumping into the middle

[bussdriver]

Seems to me the economists that get into pop culture largely are cheerleaders for ideology... You mean to say that there are economists who actually practice honest economics? Wonder why they aren't allowed on TV? (sarcasm)

Not necessarily harder than anything else!

[Tony Isaac]

I majored in computer science and minored in math. I loved both subjects. They were--and are--easy to me, and fun!

But I stink at art. I can't draw or paint or sculpt or play an instrument well, even after 10 years of trying. ART IS HARD...for me!

It's not so much that science and math are "hard," it's more that people are wired certain ways, and if you try to go outside what you are good at, it's going to be hard!

Math and science are currently popular because they lead to well-compensated professions, so lots of people try to major in math and science, who have no aptitude for either. So it seems hard to lots of people!

Missing Tag: DUH

[Khyber]

Assuming were talking about America here, this is a no-brainer conclusion any GED-holding fool can come to.

America loves to hate education.

A Favourite Story of Chad Mulligan’s

[handy_vandal]

I'm reminded of this bit from John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar:

“This very distinguished philosophy professor came out on the platform in front of this gang of students and took a bit of chalk and scrawled up a proposition in symbolic logic on the board. He turned to the audience and said, ‘Well now, ladies and gentlemen, I think you’ll agree that that’s obvious?’ “Then he looked at it a bit more and started to scratch his head and after a while he said, ‘Excuse me!’ And he disappeared. “About half an hour later he came back beaming all over his face and said triumphantly, ‘Yes, I was right — it is obvious!’”

Feynman on sticking it out

[memetech]

Feynman had a wonderful statement in his precursor lectures that I found inspiring. I don't have it on hand but I think it should be taught to all incoming university students. So here it is paraphrased:

Most of you here went through school being the top one or two in your class. But even after that, Caltech must limit how many students get in. So those of you that are here now are the best of the best. Yet in this group, at least half of you are below average.

So there is good news and bad news. The bad news is that for the next four years you are going to have this feeling that you're not the best, and that's not something you're used to, and you have to learn to deal with that.

The good news, is that four years from now you'll be thrown back out into the real word, and lo' you will find yourselves number 1 again, and all will be right with the world, and in addition you'll always feel that your Caltech education has stood you in good stead.

Upshot: it's worth the struggle. Stick it out.

Also, from the books Feynman was disappointed in the quality of the solutions to the physics exercises that his lecture series students could perform (understatement). So let's not just assume he was the world's greatest educator :)

Re:Pre-Science (Not To Be Confused With Prescience

[habig]

While this would result in graduates who really knew their stuff, I'm afraid the pressure is in the opposite direction. Administrators lean on faculty to increase the institution's "4-year graduation rate". Because legislators lean on them, because the public leans on the legislators. John Q. Public wants what he's paying for, a four year degree in four years, dammit! (despite the fact that an Engineering curriculum really is five years worth of stuff: it used to be here, and still is in much of the world). Given the current huge tuition rates, certainly that's understandable though: if penny wise and pound foolish.

Some people can learn what they need in less time than others. Some subjects are harder than others. But, everyone and every subject unfortunately has to be mashed into the same timeframe.

Of course, why it's ok for the "professional" careers (as if Engineer or Scientist isn't) you mention to require more schooling is a baffling exception. Good for those fields: they get the time to teach stuff thoroughly!

Re: Real-world examples = stealth aircraft

[Cyrano de Maniac]

I learned more about how fields and waves really worked from building antennas from the ARRL handbook, and rewinding bicycle generators than I did from those two courses.

Same here, effectively. However it was some IEEE journal, I believe, that finally helped me make sense of what antennas are really doing and the principles behind designing them to radiate effectively. I saved that journal, though it's stuffed away in a box somewhere, because I thought it is exactly the sort of thing which should be in an ARRL publication somewhere.

Just today, some 15 years after I finished my masters in EE, a coworker filled me in on the basics of how vacuum tubes work. It was almost intuitive once he described their structure, and suddenly the terms "collector" and "emitter" as applied to transistors make much more sense and are much easier to remember. Now granted, there's a widespread demand for engineers who are familiar with designing vacuum tube circuits these days so I can understand why the technology isn't taught, but I think a basic understanding of how they work would go a long way toward helping students understand the operation of transistors.

500 students

[fsterman]

My pre-calculus course at a major research university had nearly 500 students. Lab/section consisted of an underpaid graduate student with poor English. I'm all for the US attracting top minds from other countries and we should fund it, but not with undergraduate tuition. That class brought in over a $1 million for that department. At 500-$1,000/credit, you can afford private one-on-one tutoring sessions at $40-$50 every day for the entire quarter. The only difference is that "student aid" (aka taxes in the form of debt) won't pay for a tutoring! On top of that, the professor also told us to expect devoting 50-100% more time than the normal credit/hour ratio.

I dropped the class and took it (in two quarters instead of one) at the local community college, where I had a class of 25. If you were lucky enough to be an honors student in HS (yes, lucky enough to have a normal childhood and good teachers) and you get on the honors track in college, you will be rewarded with small class sizes, a smaller selection of higher quality professors, scholarships, and projects instead of rote memorization.

So yes, if you give us poor grades on top of a shitload of homework and a terrible education we will be very unhappy.

Re:Really? derp derp

[ebno-10db]

there is a massive demand for engineers in a variety of fields that is simply not being met. That, by definition, is a shortage

The prices aren't going up, which is the objective sign of a shortage. Anybody can say they have a "massive demand", but if it's not backed by money, it's nonsense.

In this instance, I don't think I even need to start linking the proof because EVERYONE, especially on slashdot should be aware of this

The "everybody just knows it" argument. Sorry, but that's pure hand waving. Please cite some evidence.

Ironically you're say there is a shortage of STEM, where the first rule is to make measurements and use objective data, yet you resort to "everybody knows" to argue that there's a shortage!

you can't do that when you are trying to grow the economy

I'll believe that the supposed shortage of STEM people is hindering the economy when supply exceeds demand. That in turn would be indicated by a long term trend of increasing prices. It ain't there. Money talks, and it ain't saying a word.

there definitely is a quantatitive statistical base for putting that money into stimulation for math and science education

Is there? Then please cite it.

Re:Pre-Science (Not To Be Confused With Prescience

[ygtai]

Sounds not a good idea in practice. After those pre-nursing, pre-med, pre-law, you get into med school, law school, and earn a professional doctorate. Following the pre-science track, you then get a bachelor of science that gets paid 1/3 of those professional doctorate...

Re:Math & Science isn't hard, other subjects a

[ygtai]

Pre-meds NEED an A in general chemistry for a reason. They will be responsible for lives of human beings. I wouldn't want someone who got 16/100 in general chemistry to be my doctor...

My God, Someone Agrees!

[b4upoo]

I have ranted endlessly, like a rabid dog, that we need to raise the bar for every high school student by a huge increment. The days of lite mathematics or dumbed down courses in any subject need to be dealt a death blow. If we want skilled people we must have great expectations and demands upon the youngsters. Any young person allowed to graduate from high school should easily make it at the better colleges.
                            Those children who are not able to have a full academic experience should be sorted out and taught trades after the sixth grade ends.
                              I had a relative, by marriage, who took a high school class in physiology. After a full six weeks he was under the illusion that he was in a psychology class. How can a junior in high school be that far gone?

Effort Shock

[Freebirth Toad]

David Wong called this effort shock. Basically, most (U.S.) kids today vastly underestimate how much effort it takes to accomplish anything worthwhile.

Yep, I can relate

[Barlo_Mung_42]

I worked really hard and still had to retake two math classes to get through my CS degree. I wasn't going to quit over it though and I'm happy I didn't.

We are ALL mathematicians

[MindPrison]

Everyone uses math in one way or another.

What most people consider "hard math", is the math you get in engineering etc. But what most people don't really give a second thought, is that we ALL use some kind of simple AND quite advanced math in real life, everyday situations too.

Some artists use highly advanced math to create the most amazing artwork, without even knowing or suspecting it's math. And we all visualize mathematics differently. Sure, book-math as we know it, is the sure way to explain things mathematically, you know - numbers and formula, but what about the guy that visualize solutions to complex formulas and problems in fields and mountains? That's just ONE example on how some genius uses math, but not as WE know it, still math though!

A world renown cook, that wins prize after prize - has INCREDIBLE skills in math, maybe not on paper, but I'm pretty sure he/she would be an award winning scientist in chemistry, cooking IS chemistry.

We need to look at math the natural way. Everything is math, and math is everything.

Re:We are ALL mathematicians

[brunnegd]

Ha! Watch the typical register operator at a fast food joint if required to make change without looking at the register. Blank looks, call the manager, who isn't any better. Zero math skills.

we need more apprenticeship / trades schools and

[Joe_Dragon]

we need more apprenticeship / trades schools and less college.

We are sending to many people to college and some of them are not college material and they should be in an apprenticeship or an trades school.

http://www.theledger.com/article/20130329/EDIT02/130329193

gamification

[senapathy]

When there is a need / curiosity, there won't be problem in learning. But for kids, gamification is good approach to teach the maths. For kids, it should be more meaningful while teaching the abstract concepts like numbers and operation on them. One way is to convert this abstract concept into a conceivable objects like stones. Instead of using symbols, it would be great if small pebbles are used to do addition / multiplications.

Physicist Here

[drolli]

I studied some time (15y) ago (and stayed in academical research for a while) and i find the findings more than just plausible, even if if affects only a certain fractions of the students.

In principle it is very reasonable to readjust your plans after assessing the difficulty of the path you want to follow. Have seen too many who did not leave but got unhappy, frustrated (even with the degree they wanted), or ending up with a failed life (10y+ trying to get a degree which they did not get in the end). It is very reasonable to stop studying physics if you fail at math.

What is special for science is that there is no way around seeing your limitations. You solve the equation or you dont. Your are able to measure something or you are not. You are able to understand a certain theory or not. Sometimes you may take 1week to understand a few pages of a book, which you should understand faster to finish it in time.

IMHO the problem is not that the subject is difficult (which aplies for many subjects if you do them right), but the problem is that there is no way around the difficulty.

Re:Physicist Here

[drolli]

my experience if the reverse. when work dries up only the people who are interested in science study it.

Did the same ...

[YoungManKlaus]

... not only because it got quite hard unexpectedly, but also because I found that the course was not what I was actually looking for (was a simulation course and I tended more towards the programming side while the course pushed for the hard math side without giving much incentive)

I would assume the same for art majors

[brillow]

The reason kids drop out of art school, or art programs, is not because its "bullshit" as they always say, but because its a lot of work.

Try doing 3 paintings a week as well as drawings, pottery, etc. Oddly enough they work more than science majors. I had a good science education in college but I wasn't writing more than 4 or 5 papers a semester. Art majors are producing 3 or 4 things a week.

Re:I would assume the same for art majors

[EMG at MU]

I think art and science/math are different kinds of "hard". I lived with a guy who basically got a degree in playing the guitar (music performance). He played the guitar more than I studied. But as a amature guitar player and a engineer myself I can tell you that I would rather play scales for 2 hours than do differential equations for 2 hours. There is a difference.

I didn't chose guitar over engineering because he had immense talent in music and I don't, my talent is in engineering.

Chicken Scratches

[cheaphomemadeacid]

So, did math discover computers yet? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mathematical_symbols Maybe we don't need to shorten every variable to 1 character just so you can write it fast by hand anymore? Maybe math can start using, let me think, this new invention called "Words with meaning" instead? Nah of course not then more people would understand it and that would be really bad wouldn't it?

Re:Chicken Scratches

[WillAdams]

Actually, that's how things used to be done --- look at the (laborious) notation which was prevalent before Sir Thomas Harriot (and his printer) developed the equals sign, less than and greater than symbols (the printer actually used side-ways `V's at some points in Artis analyticae praxis http://lccn.loc.gov/2006938536 ), &c.

If you want to see the textual names instead of the symbols, just look at the (La)TeX source instead.

Hard in great part because many professors suck

[luis_a_espinal]

"What they didn't expect is that even if they work hard, they still won't do well."

Purely anecdotal, and I won't mention names other than my own. Many professors are good and go above and beyond what is required of them to get the subject matter through their students' skulls. For example, my Logic for CS professor on his own dime and time chose to meet the entire class for an additional lecture every single Saturday to go over lectures and homeworks and additional exercises. Suffice to say that, collectively our grades and learning skyrocketted. We were fortunately that our CS department didn't care much about grade quotas.

Sadly, not all departments and not all universities are like that. For instance, my Physics II professor was admonished by the Physics department because too many people were getting good greats. IMO, he was the best professor I've ever met, and he made it possible, via his teaching, to get the bulk of the class to have a satisfactory rate of learning. But 3/4 up the semester he was forced to start "curving" and quoting who got A's, who got B's, etc. This was independent of how well he did.

An acquaintance of mine is a full-time Math professor at a local community college who was also teaching part-time at another local 4-year school. It was the same story. Good professor and lots of people getting good grades. Sadly he was constantly harassed about being "tough", that he was "giving away" too many good grades (those grades weren't given away, they were earned. I know the guy, and I know he won't give a grade to someone not deserving it.) Lo and behold he was pretty much forced out of (and made to walk away from) this specific teaching position.

A sad day for the pedagogical sciences and many from-now-on unfortunate students. Being "tough"? Being "tough"? How about being effective for a change. Regardless of the hardness of a topic, if you cannot get the bulk of your students to get good grades, you pretty much suck at teaching. Period.

A lot of students are unfortunately poorly trained in middle and high school to tackle science courses. But that is just a fraction of the problem. There are extremely few topics that are truly that hard. The bulk of freshman, sophomore and even junior science courses are not in that category. A lot of professors simply suck. And I'm not just talking about sucking at teaching, but sucking at being human.

To be deliberately "tough" as opposed to striving in efficiency, that's the hallmark of being an asshole to cover for other, deeper levels of flaws. It is the ultimately form of incompetence IMO.

Re:Math is hard because you can get it wrong.

[EmagGeek]

Don't get too far ahead of yourself. When my kids were in public school, their math tests were graded full credit for the right answer, and partial credit depending on how "close" they got to the actual right answer, or if it was just a dumb mistake that resulted in the wrong answer.

It was entirely possible to get a B in a math class never having arrived at a single correct answer. That's the point where I pulled them out of the public school system. I'm just glad I got them out in time.

Or.

[LoyalOpposition]

The authors add that the substantial overoptimism about completing a degree in science can be attributed largely to students beginning school with misperceptions about their ability to perform well academically in science.

That hasn't been my experience. I have two sons who were taking engineering at the same university where I received my degree, but dropped out last year. I was tutoring them, and my evaluation is that they were learning the material. In fact, they understood some of the material better than I did at the same point in my academic career. My judgement is that the university has changed.

There is no longer a human grading homework. They have reduced costs by having a computer do that work. The problem that causes is that these computers only know one correct answer. The instructor accommodates the computer by having the significant digits be required in every problem. Thus, if the answer is 2.2, then 2.21 is marked wrong. In fact, 2.20 is marked wrong as well. No partial credit is awarded. Now, I could understand if that were being done on a section regarding significant digits, but it's done everywhere. That's absurd. In the real world you have to accept nearest best. Suppose the ideal size for a drain hole is calculated to be 0.160 inches diameter. Well, it turns out that there are no 0.160 drills. You have to accept either a #20 drill or a #19 drill. And even then you must live with the hole + or - 0.003. Or suppose in electrical engineering that you calculate the ideal size of a resistor to be 43.5K ohms. There are no 43.5K ohm resistors. Well, there aren't at any kind of price that I'm willing to pay.

Furthermore, their physics instructor had no text book. That's outrageous. Who teaches physics without a text?

If indeed there was any overoptimism it wasn't because of any misperceptions about their ability to perform well academically in science.

~Loyal

Thinking Skills

[syntaxterror7]

Is this a surprise? America is crap for science core skills like critical thinking. A good part of our population is not even sure that "science is real" and "is just as fallible as any belief".

The problem is societal

[Rambo Tribble]

Analysis and logical thought are more than sidelined by media and society; they're actively discouraged. "News" organizations that push innuendo and fabrications as fact, advertising that teaches flash and dazzle trump substance, constant distraction touted as a desirable lifestyle, all lead to minds challenged by any concrete logic. It takes a village to create a scientist.

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You mean I actually have to do homework?

[sandytaru]

That was what hit me when I took my first AP classes in high school. AP Chemistry, AP Physics, and AP Calculus - for the first time in 12 years of education, I found myself unable to do my homework on the bus before school or during lunch because the concepts were difficult to grasp immediately. I didn't have the necessary study skills for the subjects because I'd never needed them before. My parents were flummoxed too, because I'd coasted along on the straight A gravy train for so long that to suddenly face a D in AP calculus was a big blow to my personal pride and their expectations of me.

I think I would have done better with an accelerated math program that challenged me much earlier and forced me to sit and work through problems for an hour at night, instead of breezing through them in fifteen minutes during homeroom for so long.

Re:You mean I actually have to do homework?

[tylikcat]

This was me, except I didn't go to highschool (or I did, but only for a year, and only after getting in a fight with the administration of my program my first year at the university).

It wasn't even a problem with concepts, it was just that there was too much homework* and I had no clue whatesoever how to deal with it. (And a lot of it was kind of stupid, so I was pretty cranky. I don't mind working hard if something is actually hard, but working hard to prove a point seemed ridiculous.)

* Dude, I was thirteen and suddenly taking a 20 credit load, and I'd never learned study skills.

We Learn At Different Rates

[canadiannomad]

What I feel most commenters are ignoring is the fact that we all learn at different rates and hit different choke points. The math and science programs are particularly prone to this. All it takes is a major enough stumbling block and a student will be thrown off course for an entire year or their entire lives. We need better mechanisms to tailor math and science courses to the individual students. I think this is really the only way to make sure that students achieve the most that they can.

Why study STEM just to train ur H1B replacement?

[walterbyrd]

Smart US students would have to be stupid to plan on a STEM career in today's environment.

If you want student to study STEM, provide stable employment for them.

Even the liberal arts have weeder classes

[sandytaru]

All those mid-uni transfers to English had to suffer through English 3000, which was a 300+ lecture with ten smaller breakout session classes led by TAs. You needed a C or higher in the class to declare your major as English. That was easier said than done, since they wanted an essay a week and the proper levels of kissing up to the TAs. I got into many frustrated arguments with my TA, who was a bigger ass than anyone I'd dealt with in the physics department, and barely scraped through with my C. A good third of the class got a D or F and either had to take it again or find another major.

Re:I've said this a million times

[sandytaru]

We had that class at my uni. It was "Honors (Math X) with Theory." The nickname for it was "math for math masochists." I took a a stab at Honors Calculus I with Theory and got a B. Honors Calculus II with Theory netted me a D, and I gave up.

You're right about the science teachers

[sandytaru]

Looking back, every science teacher I had in both middle school and high school was fantastic. They loved their subject material, they loved teaching. They put together fun and interesting labs (my high school anatomy teacher, Mrs. Pousman, was famous for using different food and candies to illustrate difference cells - Necco wafers became skin cells, marshmallows became fat cells, Twizzlers became striated muscle cells... hey look Mrs. Pousman, I remembered that term!)

The math teachers just didn't have the same enthusiasm or tools. A high school calculus teacher tried - we got Hershey Kisses during the lesson on parabola osculations - but lab time in math classes was not often enough.

Re:Focus On Self Esteem Leads to Selling French Fr

[JeanCroix]

I consider the teachers' methods a direct result of helicopter parenting. Thirty years ago, when a kid got a bad grade, the parent would take it up with the kid to do better. Flash forward to now, and as often as not, the parent takes it up with the teacher - "why aren't you giving my kid a better grade?" Teachers have lost the support of the parents, who've switched sides to their little self-esteem monsters.

It's because the teachers SUCK.

[MarkvW]

If you can figure it out yourself, go for the math and science education. If you can't, don't even try.

Your professors are generally not teachers--they're publishers of academic articles. Your teaching assistants are inexperienced grad students who are paid shit.

For this your student loans have doubled interest rates and your student loan debt is nondischargeable in bankruptcy.

This is the Republican "free market." Enjoy it.

Re:Go outside on a sunny day.

[Your.Master]

You didn't make the big spherical yellow apparatus.

Re:dumb

[brunnegd]

If you interviewed at my company, and I asked you a question, if your answer was " I need my computer or calculator," you would be shown the door.

Drawing parallels

[cundare]

My BS was in Physics & Math and one thing I noticed was that, if you had the knack (and, just as importantly, the background), even topics like quantum mechanics were not all that difficult. That wasn't a huge surprise, although the converse was: Students who weren't suited for the field, even those who had done well in high-school and Freshman college science course, could not, under any circumstances brute-force their way through the more advance courses. Study all day & night, hire tutors, do everything you can think of, if you're not a physicist or a mathematician by temperament, you can't truly know the material. FWIW.

When I went to law school decades later, it was deja vu all over again. If you've got an aptitude for legal reasoning, almost any law school can give you a deep understanding how legal systems work. But if you're at the other end of the spectrum, then no matter how much you work, no matter how much you spend on study aids, the best you can ever hope for is a sad existence posting snarky, unintentionally funny, comments about patent law on Slashdot.

(Sorry, couldn't resist!)

My own path through science

[RedEaredSlider]

OK, I started out as a Physics/ Astronomy major, and even got through three semesters of intro (all the way to elementary QM) and three semesters of math (thru diffy Q) as an undergrad. My problem, and why I became an English major: I was in the 3rd semester phys class and the math breaks out, and I am fine until they started using bra-ket notation. (If you don't know what I mean it's stuff like and used a lot in QM) I had no idea what it was. I hadn't seen it in a math class yet. the math and physics departments evidently never spoke to one another so there wasn't ay "matching" of the curricula, so if you got to the right notation in math you were ok but god help you if it was unfamiliar. I was too embarrassed to ask about it, probably. I didn't give up a sci major for *just* that reason. Originally I wanted to do both a liberal arts and a science degree. Yeah, I bit off more than I could chew. And I got interested in a lot of other things, like language learning (which I was more naturally talented at no question). But I did feel that I was falling behind in physics and was getting a bit frustrated I think. Even with pretty OK grades. But all that said, math builds up from one step to the other. I think it's like bicycle riding -- a lot of things stay once burned in. Anyhow, I did OK in my physics classes, and even the math. I was a B student and probably could have stuck it out. Interestingly, 20 years down the line I am back in math again. And I did Vector Calc and loved the class. My prof gave a take-home exam and I loved the fact that me and other students could argue over solutions. In one interesting instance I had the answer to a problem and I had to convince 2 other people I was right. I really learned that one! I think, even though I got a B-, (I glitched on the final, blanking on L'Hopital's rule for more than one variable, for christ's sake, I was so anxious) but my teacher was so good I felt like I learned a lot. And I still remembered, with a little prodding, the calc I took 20 years ago. Funny how it stays with you. Then this summer I was in Linear Algebra. And it was the most frustrating math class ever, for me. Lots of memorization of proofs. Abstractions way more than Vector Calc. I found it VERY hard. Much more so than vector calc even. A totally different skill set. I find that kind of abstract math more challenging for some reason. (Though I finally learned what the hell bra-ket notation meant. If someone had told me that in 1989... ) I think it's a combination of difficulty, preparedness, and the hit-or-miss setup of curricula at various colleges. And you have to have - as others here have said -- instructors who can help students with the things they struggle with. That's an art and there are no hard and fast answers or easy methods. I'll be taking partial diffs at some point soon I think. Will have to break out my old calc book and study ahead tho. (Finishing that physics BA. I really kind of dug intermediate E&M this time around).

Seems like a stupid article to me.

[DarthVain]

I would have to see the data, however:

1) 655 is a small statistical sample for the claims they are making. Perhaps they should have taken some statistics prior to their Journalism degree.
2) See #1
3) Prerequisites. I can go take a 300 level English literature course if I like. I cannot take an advanced mathematics course without the foundation.
4) Many Universities require a broad spectrum of 1st year courses to be taken, including math and science as sometimes mandatory.
5) Many non-math or non-science degrees may have math or science requirements that need (or wish) to be taken (2).
6) Many students may have noticed that other degrees might have better job prospects. I know many hard science grads not employed in their field of study for one reason or another.
7) Teachers. Required to take so many teachable credits, however actual degree in field may not be required to graduate.

I could probably go on. Suffice it to say that much depends on the data, how it was collected, how they defined "Math" and "Science" etc...

Anyway explaining away everything as simple "MATH HARD, SCIENCE HURT HEAD. HERP DERP!" is seemingly about as intelligent as that sounds.

Re:The system devalues good educators

[kaatochacha]

I'm giving you a high five, mainly because there seem to be far too many people trying to do what's right, and getting hammered for it.
I'm not sure what that's worth, but there you go.

Because its cumulative.

[jxander]

The fundamental "problem" with STEM fields is that they build on the information and understanding of previous years. If you have a hard time with algebra, you are boned when it comes to trig or calc.

All it takes is one bad year. Maybe it was a teacher that couldn't connect with you, or maybe a bad breakup got you distracted and mopey for a semester, maybe too much partying cut into study time ... whatever the reason, if you screw up a single link in the chain, everything after it will suffer and become exponentially harder.

Compare to history, economics, arts and crafts, interpretive dance, or whatever other non-STEM fields people major in. There may be some carry over from one year to the next, but if you forget Hannibal's motivation for trudging over mountains on elephants, it's not really going to impact your understanding of what caused the Great Depression.

"Hard Fun" by Papert; also Greenspun, Goodstein

[Paul Fernhout]

From: http://www.papert.org/articles/HardFun.html
---
Way back in the mid-eighties a first grader gave me a nugget of language that helps. The Gardner Academy (an elementary school in an under-privileged neighborhood of San Jose, California) was one of the first schools to own enough computers for students to spend significant time with them every day. Their introduction, for all grades, was learning to program, in the computer language Logo, at an appropriate level. A teacher heard one child using these words to describe the computer work: "It's fun. It's hard. It's Logo." I have no doubt that this kid called the work fun because it was hard rather than in spite of being hard.
Once I was alerted to the concept of "hard fun" I began listening for it and heard it over and over. It is expressed in many different ways, all of which all boil down to the conclusion that everyone likes hard challenging things to do. But they have to be the right things matched to the individual and to the culture of the times. These rapidly changing times challenge educators to find areas of work that are hard in the right way: they must connect with the kids and also with the areas of knowledge, skills and (don't let us forget) ethic adults will need for the future world.
---

Also, a focus on early abstract academics (ABCs and gold stars) has deprived young children of time spent in nature and playing with sand, water, rocks, leaves, sticks, sunlight, and such. This means they have little physical appreciation for what abstractions like quantity, mass, heat flow, energy, and so on relate to, so kids have less physical intuition to bring to math and science. See John Holt and John Taylor Gatto for alternatives.

I think it may be more that kids realize that people who study STEM tend to get shafted economically relative to the degree of work. Example:
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science
"Why does anyone think science is a good job?
The average trajectory for a successful scientist is the following:
age 18-22: paying high tuition fees at an undergraduate college
age 22-30: graduate school, possibly with a bit of work, living on a stipend of $1800 per month
age 30-35: working as a post-doc for $30,000 to $35,000 per year
age 36-43: professor at a good, but not great, university for $65,000 per year
age 44: with (if lucky) young children at home, fired by the university ("denied tenure" is the more polite term for the folks that universities discard), begins searching for a job in a market where employers primarily wish to hire folks in their early 30s
This is how things are likely to go for the smartest kid you sat next to in college. He got into Stanford for graduate school. He got a postdoc at MIT. His experiment worked out and he was therefore fortunate to land a job at University of California, Irvine. But at the end of the day, his research wasn't quite interesting or topical enough that the university wanted to commit to paying him a salary for the rest of his life. He is now 44 years old, with a family to feed, and looking for job with a "second rate has-been" label on his forehead.
Why then, does anyone think that science is a sufficiently good career that people should debate who is privileged enough to work at it? Sample bias."

There was another article on how there are less Electrical Engineers. I read the EE Times forums and many EEs say they tell their kids not to go into the field based on career prospects and working conditions.

Also on the failure of the US academic system for STEM:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html
"I would like to propose a different and more illuminating metaphor for American science education. It is more like a mining and sorting operation, designed to cast aside most of the mass of common human

Re:Math & Science isn't hard, other subjects a

[HornWumpus]

Damn, you all are starting to sound like dad.

He had a regular stream of pre-meds and later 6 year med students that NEEDED an A. They had all already gotten an A in high school chemistry.

10% couldn't balance a redox equation to save their lives. 4.0 students in high school. Sometimes it got ugly, begging was involved.

Some couldn't plug numbers into formulas. He always wondered how they got their, especially the 6 year med school students. Can you really memorize yourself a 4.0 in high school?

Quit finding excuses

[rhalstead]

The sciences are difficult for the unprepared. Kids raise in a learning environment will do well. Science is hard because the kid never liked school, was never encouraged at home, figured 3 square, a steady job a beer, and time to watch the game. School was taught as one size fits all, or to the lowest denominator, don't let some advance or you'll hurt the feelings of the less capable. Home environment, schools, unions, peer pressure, see school as something to be endured and escaped as soon as possible, ridicule those who do better than you. If you put a kid into a learning environment early on, there are few limits to what most kids could do. Me? I never had to study, made top grades, and the first thing college taught me was I was SOL because I didn't know how to study. So..I got a good tech job, kept going to college part time with a couple classes per year. Finally learned how to study effectively, picked up the basics, quit work, went to college, earned a bachelors of science degree and was picked up on a graduate assistant-ship for my Masters. It was the long way around, but I did it and if I can do it, most any kid that wants to and is willing to work can too. The ones who just go into debt to get a useless degree are also SOL, but due to lack of ambition and expecting the government to do it for them will likely never become much of anything worthwhile.

A lot of subjects are hard at university level.

[Cobonobo]

I cannot speak for my own degree as I study film. However, I have friends studying mathematics, physics, computer science etc. in Oxbridge, Exeter and the like. Indeed, my sister studied linguistics in Exeter and is going to Oxford for an MA. Now, the point I'm making is that all of these subjects are hard at this level (welcome to university, folks.) What is lacking, a lot of the time, is the drive and passion for the subject. Maths and sciences are, more often than the arts, taken as a means to a career. This means that people are doing them as a necessity, not as a subject of passion. Therefore, the subject feels more relentless and unbending. Of course, this doesn't apply to all students of these subjects (my aforementioned friends who study mathematics and sciences etc. are hugely enthusiastic and enamoured with the subjects) but I think it is certainly more true than, say, a person studying film as a gateway to a career.

No, the liberal arts are too easy

[NitWit005]

Every major field that's taught in university has vastly more information than can be taught to students. The STEM fields are hardly unique that way.

What's odd is that the science and technology majors make an effort to push students as hard as possible, and the other majors choose not to. Look back on the standards at schools 100 years ago and you'll often see that the liberal arts curium seems way more difficult and thorough than it is today.

Re:Fails to control for college

[redlemming]

It's been my observation that the vast majority of adults, even engineers and scientists, aren't particularly good at learning. How many people, for example, are committed to a lifetime learning program and read one or more textbooks every year after leaving college? How many engineers rigorously educate themselves in all those subjects they didn't have time for while in college, such as literature, humanities, art, the social sciences, and history, as well as educating themselves in areas of physical science that go beyond their own specialization? How many will bother to learn a foreign language? I know very few who even try to do this, and even within that group most don't seem to be particularly good at it.

I suspect most people in US society will spend most of their post-college lives in front of their television sets watching entertainment programs with little or no educational content, or will spend most of their lives playing computer games, instead of engaging in lifetime learning. We are not a society that is good at learning.

Within the college setting, it has been my observation that there are vast differences in both the efficiency of learning and in what students retain over the long term, comparing their experiences with the top 20% or so of instructors (the ones that actually care about teaching and are good at it) versus the research-first herd (the other 80%, otherwise known as the "I have a PhD, therefore I don't have not know how to teach" group).

As a teaching assistant in many different computer science and engineering classes, I worked with quite a few struggling students. In the vast majority of cases, it was not the case that the student needed to be spoon fed, rather it was the case that I needed to correct deficiencies in how the instructor was teaching the material with otherwise intelligent and motivated students.

Re:Really? derp derp

[Zmobie]

http://www.dol.gov/

There is all the proof you need. The prices you cite as 'not going up', the shortage of workers in these fields, the statistical analysis on a yearly basis of how an influx of STEM graduates has affected the fields in question. Hell, do a 5 second Google search and you could have 15 billion articles digest the information that is readily available to you from the department of labor.

It really isn't that hard to see, but hey if you want to be stubborn and try to back your point by saying 'hand waving' or 'show me the stats' that isn't my fault. I actually AM one of those not too far removed STEM graduates that now works as a software engineer and have seen a lot of this first hand and heard from plenty of people that have been in these fields for 10 to 15+ years (not just in software either, I work with electrical, mechanical, and even some chemical and energy engineers). You can dismiss this as 'anecdotal' if you want, but the fact remains, look at the stats and the numbers don't lie.