Stitching away

Posted by Ericka Kammerer on August 6, 2009, 6:22 pm

Olwyn.Mary wrote:

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The curricula have changed. They cover more things in
those classes, and some kids are making it all the way through
multivariate calculus before graduating from HS.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Posted by ellice on August 6, 2009, 11:26 pm

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Just what I was going to say. Even in subjects like geometry or trig, they
can do more with a calulator. The bigger problem is the kids that don't
understand the basics of algebra, or actual arithmetic. Even when I went to
school, I had to have a slide rule in high school for calculus and AP
Physics & Chem. Don't need a calculator IMHO for algebra, geometry or trig
- but it definitely helps with trig.

The goddaughter that's entering her junior year at MIT - she had the basics
of multivariate calc in high school senior year. Not quite the full blown
college semester would have, but certainly beyond basic calculus. And the
calculator was definitely a graphing one with trig functions.

I suppose it helps with getting students thru the basics, and being able to
arrive at number solutions. OTOH, we definitely weren't allowed to use them
in any math classes in university or grad school. But could, did have to
use them with functions, in a lot of engineering classes. I remember
proctoring a make-up exam for an Ops Rsrch class - and loaning a calculator
to someone that had forgotten theirs - only to then get stuck finding a crew
passing calculators with answers (which meant getting the prof out of the
grad class he was teaching to come and destroy the miscreants). I had
several classes where you were checked to be sure that your calculator did
not have memory storage that had lasted beyond last power on. You'd have to
show that the memory was empty. No calculators that could store formulas
were allowed.

Times change, and still stay the same. We still have a few HPs from college
hanging around here.

Ellice

Posted by Ericka Kammerer on August 6, 2009, 11:58 pm

ellice wrote:

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Based on what my kids have used calculators for (through
geometry, at this point), it's not that they use the calculator
instead of learning to solve things the "old fashioned way."
It's true they don't use a slide rule and they don't use logarithms
much, but they also have a much heavier emphasis on real world
sorts of problems where the math doesn't work itself out nicely.
They still learn the usual methods, and work the practice problems
sans calculators, but then they go on to do more applied problems
for which they are more likely to use the calculator. I don't
have any objections to that, and actually think that it improves
the program to have them do more real world sorts of problems.
I'd say that to date, the kids have only used calculators for
maybe 10-20 percent of their math classes, but the use has seemed
quite sensible to me. Once the basic ability to solve a particular
type of problem has been mastered, the important thing is to get
a lot of practice figuring out when to apply that technique and
using it to solve a variety of problems.

There are definitely kids who don't understand basic
arithmetic or algebra or whatever the topic is at hand--but
I don't think that's because they've used calculators. There
were kids who didn't master arithmetic or algebra or what
have you before calculators as well ;-) Not only are more
things being covered in these math courses, but many more
students are taking higher level math courses than previously,
which would also lead one to expect some dilution in accomplishments.
There may be some kids who aren't getting algebra all that well,
but a generation ago, they might not have even attempted algebra.
Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing can, of course, be
debated ;-)

Best wishes,
Ericka

Posted by 1961girl@gmail.com on August 7, 2009, 10:16 am

While some of that applied math is okay, the method my kids were
taught didn't teach the basics nearly well enough. I've said it
before here: they can tell you five different ways to figure out what
a 15% tip should be, but can't tell you what the actual answer is!
(Doesn't help most cell phones actually come with a tip calculator).

The parents finally had enough and they are now going to start
teaching more traditional methods of rote memorization. To this day,
I am not sure my kids can do long division manually. And I know my
son's biggest mistakes in algebra were math errors - because they just
don't do enough practice.

linda

Posted by ellice on August 7, 2009, 11:52 am

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I am so with you on this. My favorite example - I taught a 300 level
engineering class when my last year in grad school. Homework counted.
Thermo calculations mean doing real numbers, and the kids could use
calculators for tests. I would get homework turned in from a certain group
of frat boys that clearly had an old copy of the answer manual. Now, the
text is a classic, and the manual had been written by some similar grad
student so had plenty of errors in it. Which meant that when I graded I
would have to redo all the problems for correct answers - especially the
math errors in the manual. The idiot kids would turn in their homework with
the copied work - and not even bother to check the math. So, they'd get "0"
and finally I put a note on saying "if you're going to cheat, at least be
smart enough to check the math" . If work was presented so I could figure
out that they at least had the right path working, they'd get most of the
credit, with minimal math points off (depending). It amazed me, both for
laziness, and stupidity - things as simple as 5X2=7 . And they'd just copy
it. The moral of the story - those three did so poorly on the exams
(despite their lovely, neat, presentations) that they had to retake the
class to graduate. Yup.

Anyhow, sadly, it's the kind of thing that would happen with my co-op
students, young engineers - they just hadn't enough work with the basics in
a problem and would be so fast to grab a calculator, or look in the back of
some book that they had to learn the hard way to check their work for maybe
a misentered number.

Ellice

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Stitching away - Page 5