When I was 12 I knew my multiplication tables like the back of my hand and I could do double digit arithmetic in my head quickly. For the most part, todays 12 year olds can't. The current generation of technology dependant youth may have gained typing skill, however, they've gained it at the loss of reasoning ability.
I work at a local university and part of my job is tutoring freshman math. The first thing they do when confronted with a problem they don't understand is reach for the calculator. They are usually baffled at my suggestion that they do the math in their head to visualize what's happening in the problem.
BTW: When you nerds talk about linux being the solution to every problem you sound like people in the early eighties talking about checkbook balancing as the ultimate reason why one should own a personal computer. If your sister could use a laptop buy her an apple or a PC with WINDOWS. There's no need for you to control her experience by dictating some restricted machine that you wouldn't use yourself. I use ubuntu on my main desktop machine and I still don't think it's quite ready for prime time.
That's cause you're not factoring in the great deal that can be had by selling your printer on ebay for a penny and charging $16.99 for shipping. Of course, the buyer won't know whether they're getting a 1/2 full pen, or a 1/20 full pen, they're gonna expect it to run out quickly cause it's a starter pen!!!
I'm excited by the prospect of an x86 mini. I find ppc linux annoying because a lot of things just don't work. Yes I realize that the slashdot crowd thinks flash is evil, but I like it to work thankyou, and on linux x86, it does. Java is also less hassle.
1) wait for the first upgrade of os x86
2) buy mac mini with upgraded os x
3) install linux
4) fleabay the the osx upgrade for $50
The end result is I get a small attractive linux box, for which there is currently no competitor, AND I save $50.
Yes I own modern ppc macs Yes I've used os x Yes I prefer linux.
As it should. Or maybe it should just be billed to parents with high enough income to pay it. I see so many parents get high and mighty about giving their kids money. Give your kids money so they learn how to deal with the feelings you get from having money in your pocket. If you don't, then don't act surprised when they spend the rent money on new rims.
As the other respondent said, that's only because it's a novelty. As soon as the novelty wears off they will tune out again. I wouldn't bother responding except he's at minus one and I'll be at plus one. Mod him up, cause that's what I would have done if I had mod points.
Yes, not only would I buy songs for.05, I'd buy a lot of them at once. Instead of doing my exploring on various online sources (I said nothing about illegal copying) I'd do it on whatever service was setup. I tend to grab about 100 to 200 (legal to download) songs at a whack so my average purchase would be about $5 to $10. Call it.10 a song, I'd still buy 100 to 200 at a time, so $10 to $20.
The alternative, for me, is to buy nothing, not less. I've long thought that the right price for a digital copy of an album is less than $1.00.
I can rent movies six at a time for $6.66 at the local video store and keep them for six days. I can copy the ones I like. Don't bother to tell me I shouldn't, that's not the point. The point is you can't really track that any more than you can track people videotaping a tv show. Whether or not it's fair use, people consider it so.
Now, I don't copy many videos. I copy a few that I might want to watch again. But, the point is, I can gain access to a video for about a buck.
I want access to a cd for less than a buck. I will copy a few more of those, but again, not all of them. When that happens, maybe I'll put $20 to $30 a month into the music industry like I do the movie industry, until then, they get $0.
Of course, there IS a SERIOUS downside. That is, you are going to be a lawyer.
Re:Totally offtopic: Is Slashdot dying?
on
Build Your Own PBX
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· Score: 2, Informative
That's because the articles haven't been very good. I know that I go through phases of interest and when the articles are as bad as they have been slashdot gets replaced with other activities.
The best time to quit would be in about three months after you had imersed yourself in C# and the new environment. That was a goldern opportunity to be the guy in demand. Then, once you are in that position you have found the best time to quit.
The best time to quit is when your employer needs you the most. You ALWAYS want to tell them what a tough decision it is and that this has been a fantastic place to work. You NEVER want to wait until you are redundant or unnecessary.
New employers will find you much more attractive when they have to pull you away from someone else. Not to mention that you'd have even MORE MORE MORE modern skills to puff that resume with.
I have nothing against the teaching profession. I just don't have much respect for what the vast majority of them do in the same way that I don't have much respect for what bus drivers or retail clerks do. Teaching is not that difficult of a job, it isn't that difficult of an academic challenge to earn credentials to teach either. By difficult I mean that it is neither mentally or physically taxing in any kind of extreme way.
btw, of course there's nothing wrong with the sentiment that you mention, but that's not saying much really, now is it?
If you aren't being paid enough, then ask for a raise, or move to a different job. But, please don't suggest that you're underpaid just because other people are paid more, that simply doesn't hold water. I'm sure most teachers make more than most cocktail waitresses, but that doesn't mean we should pay cocktail waitresses more.
What I'm saying about the "problems" is that they so frequently seem to be red herrings for bad teaching. It's about class size, or it's about the latest laws, or it's about technology, or it's about resources. I never hear, "oh, well, not all of the teachers are good and we need a way to fire the bad ones". Which, in my opinion, is one of the BEST places to start.
You need a box of chalk to teach algebra, and that's it. Can you make it exciting with just a box of chalk, I tell you what, some people can. Can you make it exciting with more if you can't make it exciting with a box of chalk? I don't think so.
Every person cares about how much they earn to some degree.
If you believe that then don't choose teaching if you don't want to earn what teachers earn. Saying that they don't earn enough is NOT justification that they should earn more. However, a lot of my friends choose comfort and happiness over money and seem to genuinely not care so long as they are reasonably comfortable. FWIW, $60k is MUCH larger than reasonably comfortable.
If you claim you don't care about pay, then don't complain about pay. If you do care about pay, as you suggest everyone does, then choose a profession that will pay you satisfactorially with regard to the degree that you care about pay.
As I said, it's ONLY about supply and demand. Teachers get paid EXACTLY what they are worth at the macro level. That is, there is no crisis in education salaries. There is no real need to increase the pay of teachers. There is no real need to change the working conditions. There is an ENDLESS stream of people at state universities who see teaching as a WELL PAID and STABLE profession that they can go into without taking calculus. If that were NOT true, you would see a significant reduction of the people going into education. That is, if what you say is true and everyone cares about what they make.
What you don't want to hear but is completely true is that there is nothing in the elementary curriculum that is particularly difficult. This is WHAT makes it attractive to students.
What other degree almost guarantees you a stable profession with minimal risk, summers off, and you don't have to take math/science? Nursing perhaps, but that can be acuatal hard work, that is, physically hard.
Huh? If putting up with shit and working long hours were sufficient reasons for more pay then there are a LOT of professions that aren't paid enough.
Every time I hear this crap about what it takes to be a great teacher is that you must have a "call to teach", I can't help but think, if you have a call to teach, why do you care so much about what you are paid to do it.
I went back to school to study mathematics, there is almost NO possiblity that I will make more money than I made while working as a software developer, however, to use your language, "my heart is in it". That is what you do if your heart is in something, you do it DESPITE what the pay might be. If you are doing something just for the pay, then do something else.
In fact, that is my key point. While granted when your mother went to school there were fewer choices for women, that is NOT true today. If people think teachers are underpaid then don't be a teacher. Instead, do something that will pay you well.
The upshot of this is that in reality, teachers have salaried stable jobs with summers off and a lot of people would give their right arm for that.
The only thing they had to do to get in the "system" is to put up with the bullshit that is teacher education, which, I might add, seems to train you quite well for the bureaucratic bullshit you will put up with as a teacher.
From time to time I meet a student teacher who makes me think "damn, I'm glad that person's going to be teaching children". For the most part, however, teachers tend to be students who are either too academically weak to pursue their field of major directly, or, they are people looking for that stable salaried job with summers off. If you know what it is all about before you get into it, I'm not buying your bitching about it once you do.
The fact is, teachers are paid what they are paid because the supply and demand is as it is. Decrease the supply and the price point will slide along the curve to match.
So, you might ask, why are there SO MANY people wanting to be teachers, well, the answer is right on this page, because it's not difficult academically to become a teacher (especially true for elementary teachers), and when you're done you get a secure salaried job with summers off.
I agree, furthermore, public schools have children for SIX HOURS PER DAY!!! Let me say that again, you have them for SIX HOUR PER DAY!!! That is ENOUGH time for them to listen to your lectures AND do MOST of the work they need to do.
As an adult I have a hard time paying attention to a lecture for that length of time even if there is a break every hour.
In my not so humble opinion you could cut the class time in half, eliminate other distractions like sports, idiotic "pep cons", absurd vocational courses, etc, and in its place provide a mentored, possibly graded, environment for students to study either alone or in groups.
The purpose of that envrionment would be to teach students how to study effectivly, and to just let them do their work that has to be done individually. This is what study hall OUGHT to be, but what it works out to be is a glorified prison with the PE teacher standing up front looking all authoritative.
btw, let's eliminate PE while we're at it, it CLEARLY hasn't worked in this country.
Then at the end of their six or seven hour day you send them home to do whatever they want. Maybe if kids didn't hate learning so much they wouldn't be so adverse to reading on their own in their free time.
One of the strange things about all of this is that in the US anyway more than 50% of all undergraduate degrees in mathematics are awarded to women. So it is not a case of the aptitude or interest in the quantitative world not being there.
At the state college where I earned my undergraduate degree this could only be close to being true if you included the secondary education math majors. While on paper a secondary ed math major doesn't look much different froma pure math major, in practice it is.
Since ed majors have to take so many ed classes they have fewer open electives available to them. Any good math major will end up taking upper division math classes for some/many of his or her electives. Ed majors, on the other hand, don't have as many choices, and in practice, don't tend to take the tough courses.
They also have to take methods classes which frequently have misleading 300/400 numbers in the math department. So these courses tend to fluf the academic resume so to speak. The ed majors MUST take these courses and hence have few restricted electives, that is, electives that come from upper division math classes.
So while on paper the ed major looks rigourous in that it gives fewer choices to the student on which courses they can take, in effect, it becomes a much softer degree than a pure math major.
As an example, both math degrees only require that you take analysis or (abstract) algebra, but not both, specifically, the ed program requires you take algebra but pure math majors are free to choose. Anyone who is even thinking about going to graduate school knows that not only MUST you take both, but you must take the second course in both. The idea of taking only one is absurd. Yet, few if any ed majors take real analysis. These are the people teaching your kids calculus in high school.
Lastly, as with any university, there are professors who teach the subject, and professors who teach to the student. The ed students know who is going to pander to their limited skills, thus, a weak degree is made even weaker by future teachers choosing to take the easiest of professors.
We had one prof in particular that was just too nice. Every semester, every one of his classes was full + overrides with teachers. Some teachers would wait up to two years just to take algebra from this guy.
Of course this is a generalization. Not EVERY teacher was a bad math student and not EVERY non-teacher was a good math student. BUT, it's a very obvious and noticable pattern that can be pointed out in almost every class in every semester.
And of course, not every teacher was female and not every non-teacher was male, but, there were/are CLEARLY more female ed students than male and CLEARLY more male pure math students than female.
I took college geometry just for fun/breadth, I didn't need it and it was a fairly low level course, it's required for teachers. That course was about 80% teachers and about 70% female. Whereas analysis was 0% teachers and about 20% female.
It seems fairly clear to me that the old adage about those who can do and those who can't teach is pretty spot on. What seems to happen frequently is that depending on how early in their college career people start strugling with the math they switch either to secondary ed, or elementary ed math majors.
Yes, they actually call the elementary ed major a math degree. The most difficult class you take is calculus one. Secondary ed majors who can't hack calc two usually switch to being elementary ed majors.
As a result you get the most math phobic people teaching in elementary schools helping to perpetuate the myth that math isn't for everyone.
I should point out that when I am talking about math ed majors being sub-standard students I'm talking about both male and female equally, I don't notice that men who chose to be math ed majors are on average any better than the women.
Your argument might have some merit if the only thing bob did was attack wikipedia for its spelling, grammar, and text flow.
However, if you read the article, like I did, you would realize that those weren't the only things he attacked.
I used paper encyclopedias in grammar school and haven't used them since. For any topic of depth they were never any good. Wikipedia on the other hand serves the role as summary reference much better in that direct links to more depth can be placed directly within the article.
Of course bob knows this and that is what he is really bemoaning. Electronic versions of paper encyclopedia never really took off because the media simply couldn't contain enough data for them to be really useful. The internet IS the electronic library that is essentially, free as in beer, and free as in speech.
Wikipedia is the the the super version of britanica that the library gets. You start there and move to other parts of the library as needed.
Any more, even if I need journal articles, I get to pdf files of them via my uni's online archives.
There is NO need to be politically correct and balanced here. Paper encyclopedias really don't serve much of a purpose any more. Had britanica been on the ball they would have setup britanica online back in the mid nineties with an ad supported model. There silly little free concise version is absolutely worthless compared to wikipedia. Had they started early they could have established market presence but it's a bit late now.
It's time to say goodbye to paper encyclopedias. The main reason they existed is so that parents didn't have to drive their kids to the library to do book reports, that is EXACTLY what the internet is for now.
In general I agree, however, this isn't always true. Manual loop unrolling can offer significant improvement over what the compiler can do for you in certain circumstances. The problem is that it's probably not obvious what is the precise amount of unrolling that will work well.
Now, that said, I'm not talking about the kind of code that most people write, I'm talking about highly cpu intensive and very repetitive numeric code. I can't remember doing that sort of speed optimization in any commercial application.
I have done things for size optimization for embedded systems. However, they typically have simple architectures that are faily easily understood.
"Ask slashdot elementary facts about programing in C."
As several readers have already pointed out, not only does the author not grasp the basics of C but he doesn't really understand what good optimization is all about. Why does this qualify as "news for nerds"? There are plenty of good sites that discuss this topic in general. Here are a couple from the FIRST PAGE of a google search
The single most effective optimization technique is to use a profiler to identify performance bottlenecks. It's often difficult to guess what part of your program is consuming the most resources, and if you base your optimization efforts on speculation instead of real data, you'll waste a lot of time speeding up the parts of your program that were fast already.
All of that found in ONE google search on the FIRST page and I'm QUITE SURE it took far less time than submitting a "story" to slashdot.
Here's a hint editors. Take a lameass story like this and turn it into something worth discussing.
Instead of letting someone ask "what's the difference between these two things that are clearly the same to any experienced programmer", how about rephrasing that to one or more of the following questions which are more general and might trigger LESS inane banter.
What kinds of low level optimizations do C compilers do for you automatically and what kinds of things are they unable to determine?
Under what conditions is it worthwhile to hand optimize C code and are there situations where writing assembler is necessary or recommended?
What specific profiling techniqes do you use to determine where your code is spending its time and what kind of gains can you expect to receive by tweaking the existing code vs rewriting it in a different algorithm?
In what ways do you apply the 90/10 rule when developing and optimizing code?
People with no sense of humor do the same for me. Well, on the internet that is.
But seriously, I just don't get TV, it's so damn stupid, how can you even watch it without immediately feeling intellectually inferior?
If I'm at someone's house and I catch myself watching it, I have to look around to see if anyone saw me. The shame is overwhelming. Then I go meditate for an hour or two on the experience.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was 12 I knew my multiplication tables like the back of my hand and I could do double digit arithmetic in my head quickly. For the most part, todays 12 year olds can't. The current generation of technology dependant youth may have gained typing skill, however, they've gained it at the loss of reasoning ability.
I work at a local university and part of my job is tutoring freshman math. The first thing they do when confronted with a problem they don't understand is reach for the calculator. They are usually baffled at my suggestion that they do the math in their head to visualize what's happening in the problem.
BTW: When you nerds talk about linux being the solution to every problem you sound like people in the early eighties talking about checkbook balancing as the ultimate reason why one should own a personal computer. If your sister could use a laptop buy her an apple or a PC with WINDOWS. There's no need for you to control her experience by dictating some restricted machine that you wouldn't use yourself. I use ubuntu on my main desktop machine and I still don't think it's quite ready for prime time.
"I don't see the math."
That's cause you're not factoring in the great deal that can be had by selling your printer on ebay for a penny and charging $16.99 for shipping. Of course, the buyer won't know whether they're getting a 1/2 full pen, or a 1/20 full pen, they're gonna expect it to run out quickly cause it's a starter pen!!!
I'm swithing to inkjets today.
I'm excited by the prospect of an x86 mini. I find ppc linux annoying because a lot of things just don't work. Yes I realize that the slashdot crowd thinks flash is evil, but I like it to work thankyou, and on linux x86, it does. Java is also less hassle.
1) wait for the first upgrade of os x86
2) buy mac mini with upgraded os x
3) install linux
4) fleabay the the osx upgrade for $50
The end result is I get a small attractive linux box, for which there is currently no competitor, AND I save $50.
Yes I own modern ppc macs
Yes I've used os x
Yes I prefer linux.
Oh cmon moderators, the parent is funny, Cause it's gonna be so important to stay serious on a topic like this. hmmmmm.
As it should. Or maybe it should just be billed to parents with high enough income to pay it. I see so many parents get high and mighty about giving their kids money. Give your kids money so they learn how to deal with the feelings you get from having money in your pocket. If you don't, then don't act surprised when they spend the rent money on new rims.
As the other respondent said, that's only because it's a novelty. As soon as the novelty wears off they will tune out again. I wouldn't bother responding except he's at minus one and I'll be at plus one. Mod him up, cause that's what I would have done if I had mod points.
http://www.thewalters.org/archimedes/frame.html
pfft!
Who gives hotmail real information?
I'm work in ALL the industries, use my mail accounts for EACH of purposes and I am EVERY age group. I choose at random EVERY time.
Yes, not only would I buy songs for .05, I'd buy a lot of them at once. Instead of doing my exploring on various online sources (I said nothing about illegal copying) I'd do it on whatever service was setup. I tend to grab about 100 to 200 (legal to download) songs at a whack so my average purchase would be about $5 to $10. Call it .10 a song, I'd still buy 100 to 200 at a time, so $10 to $20.
The alternative, for me, is to buy nothing, not less. I've long thought that the right price for a digital copy of an album is less than $1.00.
I can rent movies six at a time for $6.66 at the local video store and keep them for six days. I can copy the ones I like. Don't bother to tell me I shouldn't, that's not the point. The point is you can't really track that any more than you can track people videotaping a tv show. Whether or not it's fair use, people consider it so.
Now, I don't copy many videos. I copy a few that I might want to watch again. But, the point is, I can gain access to a video for about a buck.
I want access to a cd for less than a buck. I will copy a few more of those, but again, not all of them. When that happens, maybe I'll put $20 to $30 a month into the music industry like I do the movie industry, until then, they get $0.
Of course, there IS a SERIOUS downside. That is, you are going to be a lawyer.
That's because the articles haven't been very good. I know that I go through phases of interest and when the articles are as bad as they have been slashdot gets replaced with other activities.
We should just beat up the enterprise fans with their lunchboxes and take their money.
Yeah, you didn't pick the best time to quit.
The best time to quit would be in about three months after you had imersed yourself in C# and the new environment. That was a goldern opportunity to be the guy in demand. Then, once you are in that position you have found the best time to quit.
The best time to quit is when your employer needs you the most. You ALWAYS want to tell them what a tough decision it is and that this has been a fantastic place to work. You NEVER want to wait until you are redundant or unnecessary.
New employers will find you much more attractive when they have to pull you away from someone else. Not to mention that you'd have even MORE MORE MORE modern skills to puff that resume with.
How do you suggest performance reviews be accomplished? How do you evaluate the performance of a second grade teacher? Student test scores?
On another note, what do you think of john talyor gatto's perspective on public schooling?
What kind of entry standards do you think are reasonable?
btw: I think the poster who was upset was talking to me, not you.
Don't you mean dubly? I like mine in dubly.
I have nothing against the teaching profession. I just don't have much respect for what the vast majority of them do in the same way that I don't have much respect for what bus drivers or retail clerks do. Teaching is not that difficult of a job, it isn't that difficult of an academic challenge to earn credentials to teach either. By difficult I mean that it is neither mentally or physically taxing in any kind of extreme way.
btw, of course there's nothing wrong with the sentiment that you mention, but that's not saying much really, now is it?
If you aren't being paid enough, then ask for a raise, or move to a different job. But, please don't suggest that you're underpaid just because other people are paid more, that simply doesn't hold water. I'm sure most teachers make more than most cocktail waitresses, but that doesn't mean we should pay cocktail waitresses more.
What I'm saying about the "problems" is that they so frequently seem to be red herrings for bad teaching. It's about class size, or it's about the latest laws, or it's about technology, or it's about resources. I never hear, "oh, well, not all of the teachers are good and we need a way to fire the bad ones". Which, in my opinion, is one of the BEST places to start.
You need a box of chalk to teach algebra, and that's it. Can you make it exciting with just a box of chalk, I tell you what, some people can. Can you make it exciting with more if you can't make it exciting with a box of chalk? I don't think so.
If you believe that then don't choose teaching if you don't want to earn what teachers earn. Saying that they don't earn enough is NOT justification that they should earn more. However, a lot of my friends choose comfort and happiness over money and seem to genuinely not care so long as they are reasonably comfortable. FWIW, $60k is MUCH larger than reasonably comfortable.
If you claim you don't care about pay, then don't complain about pay. If you do care about pay, as you suggest everyone does, then choose a profession that will pay you satisfactorially with regard to the degree that you care about pay.
As I said, it's ONLY about supply and demand. Teachers get paid EXACTLY what they are worth at the macro level. That is, there is no crisis in education salaries. There is no real need to increase the pay of teachers. There is no real need to change the working conditions. There is an ENDLESS stream of people at state universities who see teaching as a WELL PAID and STABLE profession that they can go into without taking calculus. If that were NOT true, you would see a significant reduction of the people going into education. That is, if what you say is true and everyone cares about what they make.
What you don't want to hear but is completely true is that there is nothing in the elementary curriculum that is particularly difficult. This is WHAT makes it attractive to students.
What other degree almost guarantees you a stable profession with minimal risk, summers off, and you don't have to take math/science? Nursing perhaps, but that can be acuatal hard work, that is, physically hard.
And you say
Nice strawman, now if you don't like your $60k a year babysitting job, go back to school and study something else.
Huh? If putting up with shit and working long hours were sufficient reasons for more pay then there are a LOT of professions that aren't paid enough.
Every time I hear this crap about what it takes to be a great teacher is that you must have a "call to teach", I can't help but think, if you have a call to teach, why do you care so much about what you are paid to do it.
I went back to school to study mathematics, there is almost NO possiblity that I will make more money than I made while working as a software developer, however, to use your language, "my heart is in it". That is what you do if your heart is in something, you do it DESPITE what the pay might be. If you are doing something just for the pay, then do something else.
In fact, that is my key point. While granted when your mother went to school there were fewer choices for women, that is NOT true today. If people think teachers are underpaid then don't be a teacher. Instead, do something that will pay you well.
The upshot of this is that in reality, teachers have salaried stable jobs with summers off and a lot of people would give their right arm for that.
The only thing they had to do to get in the "system" is to put up with the bullshit that is teacher education, which, I might add, seems to train you quite well for the bureaucratic bullshit you will put up with as a teacher.
From time to time I meet a student teacher who makes me think "damn, I'm glad that person's going to be teaching children". For the most part, however, teachers tend to be students who are either too academically weak to pursue their field of major directly, or, they are people looking for that stable salaried job with summers off. If you know what it is all about before you get into it, I'm not buying your bitching about it once you do.
The fact is, teachers are paid what they are paid because the supply and demand is as it is. Decrease the supply and the price point will slide along the curve to match.
So, you might ask, why are there SO MANY people wanting to be teachers, well, the answer is right on this page, because it's not difficult academically to become a teacher (especially true for elementary teachers), and when you're done you get a secure salaried job with summers off.
ymmv.
I agree, furthermore, public schools have children for SIX HOURS PER DAY!!! Let me say that again, you have them for SIX HOUR PER DAY!!! That is ENOUGH time for them to listen to your lectures AND do MOST of the work they need to do.
As an adult I have a hard time paying attention to a lecture for that length of time even if there is a break every hour.
In my not so humble opinion you could cut the class time in half, eliminate other distractions like sports, idiotic "pep cons", absurd vocational courses, etc, and in its place provide a mentored, possibly graded, environment for students to study either alone or in groups.
The purpose of that envrionment would be to teach students how to study effectivly, and to just let them do their work that has to be done individually. This is what study hall OUGHT to be, but what it works out to be is a glorified prison with the PE teacher standing up front looking all authoritative.
btw, let's eliminate PE while we're at it, it CLEARLY hasn't worked in this country.
Then at the end of their six or seven hour day you send them home to do whatever they want. Maybe if kids didn't hate learning so much they wouldn't be so adverse to reading on their own in their free time.
At the state college where I earned my undergraduate degree this could only be close to being true if you included the secondary education math majors. While on paper a secondary ed math major doesn't look much different froma pure math major, in practice it is.
Since ed majors have to take so many ed classes they have fewer open electives available to them. Any good math major will end up taking upper division math classes for some/many of his or her electives. Ed majors, on the other hand, don't have as many choices, and in practice, don't tend to take the tough courses.
They also have to take methods classes which frequently have misleading 300/400 numbers in the math department. So these courses tend to fluf the academic resume so to speak. The ed majors MUST take these courses and hence have few restricted electives, that is, electives that come from upper division math classes.
So while on paper the ed major looks rigourous in that it gives fewer choices to the student on which courses they can take, in effect, it becomes a much softer degree than a pure math major.
As an example, both math degrees only require that you take analysis or (abstract) algebra, but not both, specifically, the ed program requires you take algebra but pure math majors are free to choose. Anyone who is even thinking about going to graduate school knows that not only MUST you take both, but you must take the second course in both. The idea of taking only one is absurd. Yet, few if any ed majors take real analysis. These are the people teaching your kids calculus in high school.
Lastly, as with any university, there are professors who teach the subject, and professors who teach to the student. The ed students know who is going to pander to their limited skills, thus, a weak degree is made even weaker by future teachers choosing to take the easiest of professors.
We had one prof in particular that was just too nice. Every semester, every one of his classes was full + overrides with teachers. Some teachers would wait up to two years just to take algebra from this guy.
Of course this is a generalization. Not EVERY teacher was a bad math student and not EVERY non-teacher was a good math student. BUT, it's a very obvious and noticable pattern that can be pointed out in almost every class in every semester.
And of course, not every teacher was female and not every non-teacher was male, but, there were/are CLEARLY more female ed students than male and CLEARLY more male pure math students than female.
I took college geometry just for fun/breadth, I didn't need it and it was a fairly low level course, it's required for teachers. That course was about 80% teachers and about 70% female. Whereas analysis was 0% teachers and about 20% female.
It seems fairly clear to me that the old adage about those who can do and those who can't teach is pretty spot on. What seems to happen frequently is that depending on how early in their college career people start strugling with the math they switch either to secondary ed, or elementary ed math majors.
Yes, they actually call the elementary ed major a math degree. The most difficult class you take is calculus one. Secondary ed majors who can't hack calc two usually switch to being elementary ed majors.
As a result you get the most math phobic people teaching in elementary schools helping to perpetuate the myth that math isn't for everyone.
I should point out that when I am talking about math ed majors being sub-standard students I'm talking about both male and female equally, I don't notice that men who chose to be math ed majors are on average any better than the women.
Of course I'm not saying women can't do
Your argument might have some merit if the only thing bob did was attack wikipedia for its spelling, grammar, and text flow.
However, if you read the article, like I did, you would realize that those weren't the only things he attacked.
I used paper encyclopedias in grammar school and haven't used them since. For any topic of depth they were never any good. Wikipedia on the other hand serves the role as summary reference much better in that direct links to more depth can be placed directly within the article.
Of course bob knows this and that is what he is really bemoaning. Electronic versions of paper encyclopedia never really took off because the media simply couldn't contain enough data for them to be really useful. The internet IS the electronic library that is essentially, free as in beer, and free as in speech.
Wikipedia is the the the super version of britanica that the library gets. You start there and move to other parts of the library as needed.
Any more, even if I need journal articles, I get to pdf files of them via my uni's online archives.
There is NO need to be politically correct and balanced here. Paper encyclopedias really don't serve much of a purpose any more. Had britanica been on the ball they would have setup britanica online back in the mid nineties with an ad supported model. There silly little free concise version is absolutely worthless compared to wikipedia. Had they started early they could have established market presence but it's a bit late now.
It's time to say goodbye to paper encyclopedias. The main reason they existed is so that parents didn't have to drive their kids to the library to do book reports, that is EXACTLY what the internet is for now.
In general I agree, however, this isn't always true. Manual loop unrolling can offer significant improvement over what the compiler can do for you in certain circumstances. The problem is that it's probably not obvious what is the precise amount of unrolling that will work well.
Now, that said, I'm not talking about the kind of code that most people write, I'm talking about highly cpu intensive and very repetitive numeric code. I can't remember doing that sort of speed optimization in any commercial application.
I have done things for size optimization for embedded systems. However, they typically have simple architectures that are faily easily understood.
"Ask slashdot elementary facts about programing in C."
As several readers have already pointed out, not only does the author not grasp the basics of C but he doesn't really understand what good optimization is all about. Why does this qualify as "news for nerds"? There are plenty of good sites that discuss this topic in general. Here are a couple from the FIRST PAGE of a google search
Optimizing for embedded systems
From the dsp perspective
paper from a professional on the subject
That last paper begins with this sage advice
All of that found in ONE google search on the FIRST page and I'm QUITE SURE it took far less time than submitting a "story" to slashdot.
Here's a hint editors. Take a lameass story like this and turn it into something worth discussing.
Instead of letting someone ask "what's the difference between these two things that are clearly the same to any experienced programmer", how about rephrasing that to one or more of the following questions which are more general and might trigger LESS inane banter.
What kinds of low level optimizations do C compilers do for you automatically and what kinds of things are they unable to determine?
Under what conditions is it worthwhile to hand optimize C code and are there situations where writing assembler is necessary or recommended?
What specific profiling techniqes do you use to determine where your code is spending its time and what kind of gains can you expect to receive by tweaking the existing code vs rewriting it in a different algorithm?
In what ways do you apply the 90/10 rule when developing and optimizing code?
ymmv.
People with no sense of humor do the same for me. Well, on the internet that is.
But seriously, I just don't get TV, it's so damn stupid, how can you even watch it without immediately feeling intellectually inferior?
If I'm at someone's house and I catch myself watching it, I have to look around to see if anyone saw me. The shame is overwhelming. Then I go meditate for an hour or two on the experience.