vendredi 30 mai 2014

Complaint about math education and a question

As I have mentioned before, I have decided to finally get a degree. Currently taking some classes at our very nice community college. It's been an interesting, mostly good experience, as I work my towards associates in mathematics.



Having said that, last semester, I had by far and away the worst teacher I can remember. Even from grade school. I was taking a supplemental trigonometry class, in preparation for engineering calculus. The teacher was beyond awful. He talked slowly with no inflection, his example and problems were literally straight out of the book. He sucked the life out of everyone in the class. His guy was the most enthusiasm killing teacher ever. To survive, I actually skipped most of the classes and self studied. I was not the only one, on test days the class had 30+ students. Otherwise, it was less than ten.



No wonder people grow up hating math. All it takes it one of these teacher and you'll hate it for life.



One other complaint and question about math education. It's been mentioned before in the “Mathematician's Lament”. Learning without context.



There is the “Fundamental theorem of algebra” which tells you the max number of polynomial roots for a given equation. I have done many exercises determining the real vs complex roots. What ever teacher has utter failed to mention, including my favorite sites like “Khan Academy”. Why in the hell do we even care what the roots are? Search for “Fundamental theorem of algebra”, it's very hard to find a reason why we even care about roots. I'm sure it's very important in some domain. Can someone please

explain where it's useful?





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