Gradients

com...

There is simply too much to learn these days, probably even more so in the sciences (just look at the advances in the last 50 years, let alone since victorian times).

MBQ

Don't blame the teachers, blame the curriculum devisers. They have this habit of dumping stuff because some wrinkle in technology seems to have made it obsolete. Think of Latin: I still maintain that a couple of years of Latin would help English speakers understand their language better (as long as nobody was fool enough to try to impose Latin's grammar categories onto it).

Also keep in mind that the Golden Days less than 10% of 18-year-olds were in school. In Victorian days it was even worse: even at the end of Her reign less than half of the 14-year-olds got some schooling, never mind 18-year-olds. Secondary education was very much the preserve of the middle and upper classes. Now even in the UK well over half of

18-year-olds are finishing their secondary education, and in most of the developed world it's 80% or more. Do you think they're all capable of Euclid?

Not to mention the appallingly opaque notation used for geometry in the UK: I went to both English and Austrian primary schools, and I can tell you that the notations used back then were like a moonless night and thick fog on the one hand, and brilliant sunshine in a cloudless sky on the other. (I understand the UK uses modern notation now.)

Wolf K.

Good point. By the time I taught at the secondary school level, atomic/chemical theory that was still in grad school 15 years earlier had been included into the senior science curriculum.

Wolf K.

My own father, who was a specialist in remedial education, and on the curriculum development panel for his school opined that it was no longer necessary to teach mathematics because of the availability of cheap electronic calculators.

(Ignoring the matter of great concern that someone associated with curriculum development should have such a poor grasp of what mathemetics is all about!)

When I left Uni in 1972 with an electronics degree (with a computer bias), this qualified me to be a programmer of minicomputers in assembly language.

My starting salary was £1.3K, and 4K of extra memory for the PDP-11 cost £2K

Nowadays, any unqualified electronic hobbyist can do the same with a PIC for £2, and graduate starting salaries are £20K!

Are you saying that in Austria the railhead is 100mm (i.e. approx 4 inches) wide?

Unfortunately, of course, not everyone does use the same designations. This is particular irritating for model railways, whose track components, rolling stock and even built track travel the world very readily.

The fact that you have to know the length between "stations", and that there isn't a standard answer, makes the "degrees of curvature" particularly poor. And "#1" vs "#3" etc. is of course abysmal.

The radius on the other hand is unambigous, and if you need to convert it to something else it's a trivial moment with a calculator.

I do so agree regarding the dumping argument. I lived through significant decades of continuous education at degree and post degree levels. This because of the changeing requirements of "the state of the art"! I was into my forties when I realised that no matter how promoted I had been there was still no one following me who could apply principles to a problem. My grand children withtheir fistfulls of "A" levels had less useful maths and science than a 4th year apprentice in my world. At own childrens secondary school they taught computer mathematics (sets etc) to uncomprehending kids who could not add, subtract or divide! The science teachers were at constant war with the maths guys over this problem not to mention the "english" dept who had given up on spelling thus making scientific explanations rather haphazard! Things had become so bad at one point that I was holding remedial A level maths and physics classes at the local library! At that time I blamed the over population of schools by female staff

--- I have had no reason to change my view this 40 years on!

So, not a hope, then, of applying etymology to the word, "entomology"? :-)

I said "roughly". In terms of a 1,000 m radius, that's close enough, I think. ;-) It's the same order of magnitude as the rail's head. The rail's head is actually about 2-1/2" wide, just like everywhere else.

To put it another way: surveying the curve radius to 1 part in 10,000 is good practice for locating the track's centre line, but in terms of building, specifying the radius to that precision makes no practical difference. A complete circle of 1000,1 m radius is about 0,6 m longer than one of 1000,0 m radius. On shorter curves (and most curves are only a few degrees of arc), the difference is on the order of a cm or two.

After building, the track shifts, partly because of the weather, and partly because of maintenance work.

HTH Wolf K.

On UIC60 rail the head is 72mm wide (2.835"), quite a bit more than

2-1/2"

People who think standards of maths have declined have never been behind a pensioner in the "10 items or fewer" queue. Or seen a kid solve an actual problem in the time it takes someone else to say "in my day we had slide rules but the kids of today... blah ... never did me any harm ... blah ... Daily Express..."

When I were an undergrad the lecturers moaned that we hadn't done much

3d geometry at school. Then they wanted to teach final year students the kind of stats we'd all done at GCSE.

Quite.

Though not always fast enough; I hear anecdotal evidence that IT lessons can still lag behind what kids can intuitively do in their sleep. Back In My Day we were making the turtle move 10 pixels left at school, then going home and writing basic (in both senses) programs, or using word processors without having to pretend that they were funny typewriters.

Yet hundreds of millions of people successfully use English every day without ever have studied Latin, and the only significant fall-out is that a few people get annoyed about split infinitives. How many of the people who have ever spoken something identifiable as English have had any training in Latin?

In the same way, millions of people catch trains without the faintest idea of how they work, and kids push Thomas across the floor without studying valve gear designs.

Plus these days there is more communication, so it is possible to tell what people (don't) know.

Yes, 0.385", or about 8mm, which is less than the width of my little finger.

"About 2 -1/2 in" is close enough.

Wolf K.

That's not math, it's ethics. And it's just as bad, or maybe worse, in the US.

Yep, but those aren't the ones working in retail. If the computer doesn't tell them how to make change they are lost. And the legend of the cashier who would sell you 12 but not a dozen (or the other way around) has a strong probability of being fact.

I don't know much about the UK school system, but one of the problems in the US is that the taxpayer supported schools have to accept everyone from genius to moron. And they often teach to the lowest standard because of that. Add tenure for incompetent teachers to that and the result is foreordained.

At least it's better than when I went to school 50+ years ago. There were *no* special classes for either extreme. I dropped out as soon as I was 16 out of sheer boredom. I once had a school principal thank me for being so nasty to a teacher that he resigned - said it would have taken her years to get rid of him :-).

On 15/03/2011 9:21 PM, Larry Blanchard wrote: [...]

Why is that a problem?

[...]

Wolf K.

Because if the headteacher cares the moron [1] can take up a disproportionate amount of resources (teachers, money, effort). Theres no benefit in doing that except for the child and (if they care) the childs parents, in fact theres a demerit on the stats. Consequently the headteacher can get the pupil excluded, even go as far as to making sure any behavioral problems are increased and exaggerated. Problem child now off the books.

Cheers, Simon

[1] For moron read of lesser intelligence (academic), dyslexic, ADHD, aspergers, behavior problems (not associated with learning difficulties) etc, etc. Plus anything else not yet classified,

And in thurrey.

And it's just as bad, or maybe worse, in

Because if they don't do what the computer says they risk being accused of fraud and possibly being sacked. Many customers rely on computers to pay, but no-one claims it is because they can't do the maths....

You do occasionally get small shops with some old git trying to slowly (mis)calculate prices manually, but many customers don't have the time for that these days.

One thing that puzzles me, is why younger male staff never have any problem giving a GBP5 note as change if you offer a GBP10 note and 5p coin for a GBP5.05 bill, but middle-aged female staff always start counting coins.

And the legend of

Obviously. Are you really suggesting that denying people access to schools would make them /better/ at maths?! Surely no-one (this side of southern Afghanistan) opposes universal education?

One of the big problems is the number of classifications we now have. So many parents want to a label to excuse their childs behaviour and lack of basic parenting.

MBQ