Yeah, about what I expected. You haven't thought about this very hard--or if you have, it hasn't amounted to much. I guess you think that everyone who e.g. lost a chunk of their retirement in the recession (or went through a divorce or death of a spouse, or had a serious illness, or, or, or...) and now has to work harder to keep the family afloat was just irresponsible for procreating in the first place. Typical Slashdot knee-jerk "born on third base and thinks he hit a triple" libertarianism.
Oh, and if you had bothered to read before your knee jerked into your keyboard, you'd realize that I asked you a practical question, not an ethical or policy question: how do you think the (significant fraction of all American) families who can't easily find another few hundred dollars every month are actually going to cope with something like this? Or was "tough shit" indeed your entire answer?
Not really. Are you (or have you considered the case of) a single parent or a partner in a dual-income family that requires both incomes to make ends meet? Would you care to offer your perspective on how such a family would deal with a four-day school week?
I bet the biggest complaint about the four day week comes from the parents who treat school as free daycare. Say all the bad things you want about homeschooling, home schooled students perform better, on average, than public school students, period.
And I bet you're not a parent. Have you considered what it takes to make a two-income or single-parent household with children actually work? School is free daycare (inasmuch as anything funded by taxes is free). That's not all it is, of course, but that free daycare is absolutely critical for any family that needs both parents (or the single parent) working full-time.
So, yes, absolutely the biggest complaint will be from those parents. And they're goddam right for complaining about it.
I started programming on Apple ][ BASIC, and for a long time I believed that anything the computer could do, it could be programmed to do in BASIC. Eventually, I found out that you needed some machine language code to do a lot of things (even sound--the way you generated a tone on that computer was to "tick" the speaker in an explicit loop, and in BASIC you could practically hear the individual ticks!), but that didn't happen until I'd encountered and solved many problems on my own.
Even playing the best games of the time, I felt like given enough time and mastery of the language, I could produce something comparable in BASIC, and that drove me on, for a long time. Give a bright kid a BASIC interpreter now, and they'll ask you, "what's the point of this?"
Because it would be impossible for a malicious app to access anything else through its own "high-score" URL, right?. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what you have in mind with this?
That's great if the batteries are standard and easily accessible. Aren't many (even most?) batteries either built-in or specially shaped for the specific vehicle?
It's unreasonable if they're forcing everyone to memorize unnecessary information.
Math relies less on memorization than any other topic (that I've had to study, at least). If you know mostly know what's going on, but you just forgot one detail, you can figure it out based on the stuff you do remember---because everything in math is there because it has to be there, and any other way just wouldn't work.
Also, another problem with many schools is that they care and rely far too much on arbitrary "reputations."
By the same token, you could take 10 minutes (okay, maybe a day or so) to teach the axioms of set theory to a smart high school graduate. All of math (at least the mainstream stuff) reduces to that, right?
Then they can take it of their own volition. They should not force random knowledge upon people because they might need it
Did someone hold a gun to your head and make you sign up for that degree at that school?
Math is not anything more nor less than reasoning correctly about that which can be made precise. It's not unreasonable for any school interested in maintaining its reputation to require its science graduates to be able to demonstrate some ability there.
Math is very stable knowledge [...] It simply makes more sense to learn proper theory and then specialize as needed for the problems at hand. Moreover, teaching such unstable things in universities is borderline idiotic, since they may no longer be relevant after graduation!
IMO this is the most insightful comment in the whole discussion.
Um, the prof was saying calculus and continuous math have little to do with CS. Discrete math, etc, is always going to be a big part of CS/algorithms.
Ever hear of the integral test for convergence of a sequence? Or more generally, the entire field of analytic number theory? Continuous methods are used all the time, and with great profit, to investigate discrete problems.
Even the industry-standard 'SPEC' CPU benchmarks use the wrong type of averaging which leads to incorrect results -- in some cases a faster computer (which completes all benchmarks faster than a slower computer) can have a *worse* score than the slower computer].
I'm going to call you out on this one. Which averaging method assigns a higher average to a strictly coordinatewise-lower set of inputs?
Fewer symbols, less ambiguity. You have to be enormously careful and pedantic if you actually want to derive "everyday" arithmetic (and everything else, of course) from some set of first principles such as set theory.
Somewhere upthread someone asked, "what do these symbols 2, 2, 4, +, = mean?" These s's and curly braces are messy and tedious to work with, but at least their meaning is well-defined, in a formal sense.
Plenty of mathematicians work in industry--"mathematician" most certainly is a job, and not only (though yes, mostly) tenured big-university professors do it.
Here's a challenge for you: explain to us what exactly is so phenomenal about the "flow" of that sentence that merits using an imaginary word with exactly the same meaning as an existing one?
The problem with something like calculus is that if a student's grasp of a single prerequisite skill falls short, say in factoring polynomials, his advancement in calculus is crippled
It's not as bad as it sounds. Everyone I know (I'm in a PhD math program) has this or that area that they never quite got when they were supposed to. When it bites us later on, we just go back and learn it properly--with all the other stuff we know now that we didn't know then, it's easy, and we wonder how it wasn't obvious in the first place..
In my experience (about to finish up the coursework part of a mathematics PhD), math doesn't get more difficult. It does certainly get more abstract and sophisticated, but you come into each successive course with a more abstract and sophisticated background, so it's not actually any harder. I can't say that I had any more trouble understanding singular homology of a topological space (second-year algebraic topology) than I did with the derivative of a real-valued function of one real variable (high school calculus). The chain rule from calc 1 was just as hard for me to master as anything in my graduate classes. It's all the same--hard when it's new, obvious later.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, about what I expected. You haven't thought about this very hard--or if you have, it hasn't amounted to much. I guess you think that everyone who e.g. lost a chunk of their retirement in the recession (or went through a divorce or death of a spouse, or had a serious illness, or, or, or...) and now has to work harder to keep the family afloat was just irresponsible for procreating in the first place. Typical Slashdot knee-jerk "born on third base and thinks he hit a triple" libertarianism.
Oh, and if you had bothered to read before your knee jerked into your keyboard, you'd realize that I asked you a practical question, not an ethical or policy question: how do you think the (significant fraction of all American) families who can't easily find another few hundred dollars every month are actually going to cope with something like this? Or was "tough shit" indeed your entire answer?
Not really. Are you (or have you considered the case of) a single parent or a partner in a dual-income family that requires both incomes to make ends meet? Would you care to offer your perspective on how such a family would deal with a four-day school week?
I bet the biggest complaint about the four day week comes from the parents who treat school as free daycare. Say all the bad things you want about homeschooling, home schooled students perform better, on average, than public school students, period.
And I bet you're not a parent. Have you considered what it takes to make a two-income or single-parent household with children actually work? School is free daycare (inasmuch as anything funded by taxes is free). That's not all it is, of course, but that free daycare is absolutely critical for any family that needs both parents (or the single parent) working full-time.
So, yes, absolutely the biggest complaint will be from those parents. And they're goddam right for complaining about it.
I started programming on Apple ][ BASIC, and for a long time I believed that anything the computer could do, it could be programmed to do in BASIC. Eventually, I found out that you needed some machine language code to do a lot of things (even sound--the way you generated a tone on that computer was to "tick" the speaker in an explicit loop, and in BASIC you could practically hear the individual ticks!), but that didn't happen until I'd encountered and solved many problems on my own.
Even playing the best games of the time, I felt like given enough time and mastery of the language, I could produce something comparable in BASIC, and that drove me on, for a long time. Give a bright kid a BASIC interpreter now, and they'll ask you, "what's the point of this?"
Because it would be impossible for a malicious app to access anything else through its own "high-score" URL, right?. Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what you have in mind with this?
That's great if the batteries are standard and easily accessible. Aren't many (even most?) batteries either built-in or specially shaped for the specific vehicle?
Are you a (one man) content farm? You're pretty vague about what kind of data you provide.
It's unreasonable if they're forcing everyone to memorize unnecessary information.
Math relies less on memorization than any other topic (that I've had to study, at least). If you know mostly know what's going on, but you just forgot one detail, you can figure it out based on the stuff you do remember---because everything in math is there because it has to be there, and any other way just wouldn't work.
Also, another problem with many schools is that they care and rely far too much on arbitrary "reputations."
What should they rely on? Marketing?
By the same token, you could take 10 minutes (okay, maybe a day or so) to teach the axioms of set theory to a smart high school graduate. All of math (at least the mainstream stuff) reduces to that, right?
Then they can take it of their own volition. They should not force random knowledge upon people because they might need it
Did someone hold a gun to your head and make you sign up for that degree at that school?
Math is not anything more nor less than reasoning correctly about that which can be made precise. It's not unreasonable for any school interested in maintaining its reputation to require its science graduates to be able to demonstrate some ability there.
A calculus sequence is, what, three courses? At most it kept you from taking three other courses, even if by "less calculus" you mean none.
"Purpose" varies by individual, naturally, but you might consider that "my future job" is not equivalent to "my future life" for some of us.
Math is very stable knowledge [...] It simply makes more sense to learn proper theory and then specialize as needed for the problems at hand. Moreover, teaching such unstable things in universities is borderline idiotic, since they may no longer be relevant after graduation!
IMO this is the most insightful comment in the whole discussion.
Um, the prof was saying calculus and continuous math have little to do with CS. Discrete math, etc, is always going to be a big part of CS/algorithms.
Ever hear of the integral test for convergence of a sequence? Or more generally, the entire field of analytic number theory? Continuous methods are used all the time, and with great profit, to investigate discrete problems.
I'm going to call you out on this one. Which averaging method assigns a higher average to a strictly coordinatewise-lower set of inputs?
Who gets a masters in theoretical physics? Or do you mean you're a year or so into a PhD?
Good point. Reminds me of those assholes who were playing at being waterboarded to show how it's "not that bad".
Fewer symbols, less ambiguity. You have to be enormously careful and pedantic if you actually want to derive "everyday" arithmetic (and everything else, of course) from some set of first principles such as set theory.
Somewhere upthread someone asked, "what do these symbols 2, 2, 4, +, = mean?" These s's and curly braces are messy and tedious to work with, but at least their meaning is well-defined, in a formal sense.
Plenty of mathematicians work in industry--"mathematician" most certainly is a job, and not only (though yes, mostly) tenured big-university professors do it.
You offer this as evidence FOR that job being intellectually fulfilling?
The salaries at my flagship state U are public record, and most of the math profs are topping 90k.
As a mathematician who used to be a software engineer, I laughed. I guess if you were really hard up for the extra $X/year, though...
Here's a challenge for you: explain to us what exactly is so phenomenal about the "flow" of that sentence that merits using an imaginary word with exactly the same meaning as an existing one?
The problem with something like calculus is that if a student's grasp of a single prerequisite skill falls short, say in factoring polynomials, his advancement in calculus is crippled
It's not as bad as it sounds. Everyone I know (I'm in a PhD math program) has this or that area that they never quite got when they were supposed to. When it bites us later on, we just go back and learn it properly--with all the other stuff we know now that we didn't know then, it's easy, and we wonder how it wasn't obvious in the first place..
In my experience (about to finish up the coursework part of a mathematics PhD), math doesn't get more difficult. It does certainly get more abstract and sophisticated, but you come into each successive course with a more abstract and sophisticated background, so it's not actually any harder. I can't say that I had any more trouble understanding singular homology of a topological space (second-year algebraic topology) than I did with the derivative of a real-valued function of one real variable (high school calculus). The chain rule from calc 1 was just as hard for me to master as anything in my graduate classes. It's all the same--hard when it's new, obvious later.