Well, it's true, >99% of the population will never use differential equations (DE) in their ordinary life, so it might seem that it is a total wast to learn those things.
There are two points you are missing. 1) We have a culture with a built in knowledge, if we let only fewer and fewer people learn about DE, then this knowledge will finaly be lost. We must try to keep knowledge in our society.
2) There is no such thing as useless knowledge. Even knowing how many movies Link Kefir has appered in might be of use (in a quiz perhaps?). There are of course some knowledge that are perhaps of a more limited contemporary value, like the thing with actor Link Kefir,but still, aquiring new knowledge, what ever kind it might be, means "training" your brain. And that's the best thing you can do with it. When you learning stuff, you are able to learn new stuff, you can see new connections, etc. That's the same way you learn the commandline in Linux. You use cat, sed, grep, and then you learn about pipes, and you are then able to make more advanced things.
Mathematics is perhaps the most "pure" brain training you can get.And your precious commandline would not exist if people had not been forced to leadn about advanced math.
And a third point, 3) People are lazy, and they need to be forced to learn some things, If we only learned on a need-to-know basis, in a century we would be living in trash, eating what ever we could find on the ground.
Well, this is unfortunatly not a unique story, with kids reading ahead and beeing held back (or even punished).
Kids reading ahead is a problem, but it shouldn't have to be! The problem is that they will require some assistance to continue and the teacher has to split the limited time to teach two different topics. The easy solution is to ignore the read-aheaders and let them do the same thing over and over again until the others reach the same level. That will result in that the read-aheader will loose all interest in learning. I've seen it with my own eyes.
The better solution is to organize some extra lectures with a GOOD teacher to help the students go further, and KEEP their interest in the subject.
I have a collegue who has after-class lectures with some read-aheaders, and I truly admire him for this, and I would do the same if I had "read-ahead students". He gets no extra money for this, but he is truly trying to give each kid the best education.
Problem 1) One of the really big problems is that many teachers would be so very lost without their textbook. And if you can't add any personal thoughts, ideas, new angles on a subject, your students will most likely fall aslepp. You have most certainly said: "I could have stayed home and read this in the book insted" after a lecture.
We have all sle..listened to teachers, who certainly knows their stuff, but for some strange reason, they also manage to make it so extremly booring. That's also very much related to the lack of "plain english" that could help the students, if the teacher doesn't notice this, and come up with some own plain text, then it's bad, very bad!
Problem 2) Many teachers are very frightend to admit that they don't have any good ideas. (There are also many teachers that lack all kind of selfknowledge, and never spot their weakneses) Teachers could learn very much from eachother, if they just started talking to eachother. There are some communication, but it often ends with "I do it my way, you do it your way..." And they keep on using the same slides they've used for the last 30 years, never stop and thinking about what they're doing, if they are using the best method.
I think these two problems are the major ones with schools.
No, it's not dumb terminals. It's many individuals using a computer. The only revolutionary idea is that they are using the same computer and thus saving money by not buying them an individual machine. I think this is very great unless you have very high requirements!
Comment on this? Well Bush is a problem, but the biggest problem is the tallibans of the USA. There is absolutly no difference between the tallibans of Afghanistan and the people that woted for Bush... well their dressing is differnt, but that's it. I hope Bush is not elected gain but that there will be someone with a brain....
Why are the stupid people that makes these predictions allowed to live? TCPA, DMCA, IP-law IPv6.... oh yes, you can draw an exponential curve, extrapolating the current numbers, without taking notice about those things...
I just don't get it... I'm a single, male and I really like male gay people, not because I'm gay, but since that increases the chance for women to find gay men, which would theoretically increase my chances of finding a woman! (Or should I just stop beeing a geek?)
Female gay people on the other hand, I really don't like them for a similar reason!
To use them for your own hardware, don't you have to create the exact same hardware? So no use there, since you have your own hardware... To use the hardware independet part of the code? Well.. that ought to be a lot of code.
To use their algorithms? Well, there are a lot of code already they can have a look at (without telling they looked at it, if they are evil)..
And if they are to stupid to come up with an algorithm of their own, how expencive would it be to hire someone to do it?
I don't get it...
The difference between love and lust ...
on
The Science of Love
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Well, this axiom holds...
Attraction = Lust + i*Love
Lust is the "real" part, and "Love" is the imaginary part.
Does this mean that Saddam will have more time to be in South Park, now that he does not have to hide any more?
I hope he get the same lawyers that O.J Simpson had, so he can get away with murder and still be able to be in South park. I still think that Satan is prepared to take him back and I'm waiting for that episode.
It's not like theyre going to mess thingsup right away, they will wait until they get enough BIOS's out there... and then we will get Windows 2006.. and shit, then we have "trusted" computing...
Don't you remember the Win98 demo by Bill Gates, when it crashed?;-) They didn't use any speciall things then! Oh.. sorry, they used their best OS at that time...
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it's true, >99% of the population will never use differential equations (DE) in their ordinary life, so it might seem that it is a total wast to learn those things.
There are two points you are missing.
1) We have a culture with a built in knowledge, if we let only fewer and fewer people learn about DE, then this knowledge will finaly be lost. We must try to keep knowledge in our society.
2) There is no such thing as useless knowledge. Even knowing how many movies Link Kefir has appered in might be of use (in a quiz perhaps?). There are of course some knowledge that are perhaps of a more limited contemporary value, like the thing with actor Link Kefir,but still, aquiring new knowledge, what ever kind it might be, means "training" your brain. And that's the best thing you can do with it. When you learning stuff, you are able to learn new stuff, you can see new connections, etc. That's the same way you learn the commandline in Linux. You use cat, sed, grep, and then you learn about pipes, and you are then able to make more advanced things.
Mathematics is perhaps the most "pure" brain training you can get.And your precious commandline would not exist if people had not been forced to leadn about advanced math.
And a third point,
3) People are lazy, and they need to be forced to learn some things, If we only learned on a need-to-know basis, in a century we would be living in trash, eating what ever we could find on the ground.
Well, this is unfortunatly not a unique story, with kids reading ahead and beeing held back (or even punished).
Kids reading ahead is a problem, but it shouldn't have to be!
The problem is that they will require some assistance to continue and the teacher has to split the limited time to teach two different topics.
The easy solution is to ignore the read-aheaders and let them do the same thing over and over again until the others reach the same level. That will result in that the read-aheader will loose all interest in learning. I've seen it with my own eyes.
The better solution is to organize some extra lectures with a GOOD teacher to help the students go further, and KEEP their interest in the subject.
I have a collegue who has after-class lectures with some read-aheaders, and I truly admire him for this, and I would do the same if I had "read-ahead students". He gets no extra money for this, but he is truly trying to give each kid the best education.
Problem 1)
One of the really big problems is that many teachers would be so very lost without their textbook. And if you can't add any personal thoughts, ideas, new angles on a subject, your students will most likely fall aslepp. You have most certainly said: "I could have stayed home and read this in the book insted" after a lecture.
We have all sle..listened to teachers, who certainly knows their stuff, but for some strange reason, they also manage to make it so extremly booring. That's also very much related to the lack of "plain english" that could help the students, if the teacher doesn't notice this, and come up with some own plain text, then it's bad, very bad!
Problem 2)
Many teachers are very frightend to admit that they don't have any good ideas. (There are also many teachers that lack all kind of selfknowledge, and never spot their weakneses) Teachers could learn very much from eachother, if they just started talking to eachother. There are some communication, but it often ends with "I do it my way, you do it your way..." And they keep on using the same slides they've used for the last 30 years, never stop and thinking about what they're doing, if they are using the best method.
I think these two problems are the major ones with schools.
No, it's not dumb terminals. It's many individuals using a computer. The only revolutionary idea is that they are using the same computer and thus saving money by not buying them an individual machine. I think this is very great unless you have very high requirements!
"Ha-ha"
then I would be freezing. It is cold outside.
Isn't there some feature in Xeon that makes them able to use 36 bit adressing?
Can I tell my brower not to tell that I'm following a link when I enter a site?
Wouldn't that solve the problem?
Comment on this?
Well Bush is a problem, but the biggest problem is the tallibans of the USA. There is absolutly no difference between the tallibans of Afghanistan and the people that woted for Bush... well their dressing is differnt, but that's it.
I hope Bush is not elected gain but that there will be someone with a brain....
You don't think that a DRM PC will be cheaper than a non-DRM PC?
Why are the stupid people that makes these predictions allowed to live?
TCPA, DMCA, IP-law IPv6.... oh yes, you can draw an exponential curve, extrapolating the current numbers, without taking notice about those things...
I just don't get it...
I'm a single, male and I really like male gay people, not because I'm gay, but since that increases the chance for women to find gay men, which would theoretically increase my chances of finding a woman! (Or should I just stop beeing a geek?)
Female gay people on the other hand, I really don't like them for a similar reason!
what is so secret about them, really?
To use them for your own hardware, don't you have to create the exact same hardware? So no use there, since you have your own hardware...
To use the hardware independet part of the code? Well.. that ought to be a lot of code.
To use their algorithms? Well, there are a lot of code already they can have a look at (without telling they looked at it, if they are evil)..
And if they are to stupid to come up with an algorithm of their own, how expencive would it be to hire someone to do it?
I don't get it...
Well, this axiom holds...
Attraction = Lust + i*Love
Lust is the "real" part, and "Love" is the imaginary part.
to try to copy real money or game money, like monopoly money?
Counterfeit or copyright infringment... ohh.. I don't know which is the worst...
for everyone to download LaTeX and emacs to live disconnected from the internet!
and www.wesnoth.org! That's another great game I think.
Does this mean that Saddam will have more time to be in South Park, now that he does not have to hide any more?
I hope he get the same lawyers that O.J Simpson had, so he can get away with murder and still be able to be in South park. I still think that Satan is prepared to take him back and I'm waiting for that episode.
"There will not be any need for paper in the future. Everything will be stored in computers"
It's not like theyre going to mess thingsup right away, they will wait until they get enough BIOS's out there... and then we will get Windows 2006.. and shit, then we have "trusted" computing...
for i=0.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255
check $i;
That is all you have to do!
In the US isn't something like 1% of the population in jail? So there are a lot of people up to no good.... or at least was up to no good...
ogg.org?
If Netcraft would use an upper case 'C', Blizzard would send them a theratening cease and desist letter (http://www.freecraft.org/).
Don't you remember the Win98 demo by Bill Gates, when it crashed? ;-) They didn't use any speciall things then! Oh.. sorry, they used their best OS at that time...