Anyone good at math?

[Chargeride]

Believe me, STEM educators are trying hard to find new and better ways to teach their subjects. But in a youth culture that generally values none of this and thinks it's totally uncool, it's akin to educating rocks.

In other words, the problem's at least as much a cultural resistance as it is a didactic failure. And it's not just the kids.

In the US, all this occurs against the backdrop of an adult culture that increasingly delegitimizes STEM in favor of — and at the urging of — religious and political demagogues. When adults wearing their STEM phobias as badges of honor are everywhere in the media and real life, kids are going to take that as permission not to bother.

So how do you reshape the prevailing culture into something more STEM receptive? As with the Surron takeover artists, kids and many adults live in their own mutually reinforcing media silos. Odds that pro-STEM youth influencers will somehow emerge seem slim. Ditto for the odds that the adult anti-STEM tide will suddenly reverse.

Not sure how all this will play out, but blaming the educators and ignoring the cultural side of the problem will surely fail.

I have always said if you are explaining something and people dont listen or understand, its your problem not theirs.

One of the selling points and cost justification of AI has been reducing education costs.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said AI will change education, and he doubled down on his previous sentiment that college isn’t the best path for everyone. Altman noted education is “going to feel very different” possibly in 18 years when a new generation will have never known a world without AI. However, the CEO claimed education and human jobs won’t go away, but will merely evolve.

He might be completely wrong , but its hard to ignore the fact that it could if done properly.

Its all about where you make the automation line, Concorde was designed with slide rules.
Spacex uses AI to design the rockets and 3D metal printers to build them.

They take the test results and the AI makes the new parts.

SpaceX's Raptor engine series fully embodies the transformation brought by AI technology. The thrust of the Raptor 3 engine has almost doubled, but the cost has dropped to a quarter of its original level, earning it the nickname "Raptor 3"; The AI driven manufacturing revolution;.

In June 2024, Dubai based artificial intelligence engineering company LEAP 71 made history in the aerospace manufacturing industry - its developed large-scale computational engineering model Noyron completed the design of a rocket engine in just two weeks and successfully ignited and tested it. This breakthrough not only demonstrates the enormous potential of AI technology in the field of complex engineering design, but also heralds an efficiency revolution in the aerospace manufacturing industry.

Thats a lot of very clever people being replaced

 

[stompandgo]

Someone has to build and train/retrain the model. For engineering applications, I may be a luddite. I think this will take engineers, not coders.

 

[PedalUma]

What I did not like about math as a kid is that it was all about rote procedure and not about the bigger why and where this is going.

 

[PCeBiker]

What I did not like about math as a kid is,..

What I liked about math as a kid was that there was a right and wrong answer.

What I didn't like about English, art, religion, (everything Except the STEM classes) was that my opinion was being judged by the teacher, where a different teacher would judge me differently.

My gr. 8 teacher didn't like my writing and made me practice my penmanship.
I had 2 spelling corrections books to write out the alphabet 100 times a day.
(I cheated and taped 3 Bic pens together to write 3 lines at once.
4 taped pens were too many and the teacher would catch me cheating. )

My teacher wrote all pretty, but you couldn't read what she wrote.
You could read what I wrote but it wasn't pretty enough for my fancy teacher.


The only exam I had to write in gr. 9 (catholic high-school) was religion.

The teacher would ask for my opinion, then fail me because of it.
I was a wise ass in class though.
I remember the teacher talking about how his young son thought his dad knew everything (like God).

I blurted out "let me talk to him. I'll set him straight."
Everyone laughed, except the teacher of course.

 

[PedalUma]

What I liked about math as a kid was that there was a right and wrong answer.

But in the real world it is not like a school workbook. I like it when there are not correct answers and the problems require creativity and new approaches others may never have considered. It is applied math. Estimating is a better skill in the real world than getting the correct answer on a test. One year in particular I was doing a lot of estimating. There was a contest to guess the number of Jelly Belly beans in a large jar. I won the jar because I was within five beans. Closer than anyone else.

 

[PCeBiker]

I remember being in gr 12 chemistry class when our teacher was going through the Exam after we wrote it.

He kept saying to the class (he was obviously annoyed)
"The Molecular Mass Is 42 !!!"

I had my hand up waving it back and forth saying loud enough for everyone to hear, "You're Wrong".

The guy behind me said "You're Fukin Nuts Brandon !!!"


My teacher Finally looked at me, Red in his face, and said,.. "MR. BRANDON ??!!!"

I simply said,
"The question asks for the number of neutrons."

(I listened to three other classmates ask about the question and our teacher Yelled "The Molecular Mass Is 42 !! The Number Of Neutrons DOESN'T MATTER !!!")


He picked up the Exam.
Read the question.
Started smiling and said
"I just told two classes that they were wrong".


That teacher was the most inspiring teacher I've Ever Had.
He was brilliant and amazing, but he made a very stupid mistake.

He had been using the same exam compilation for more than 20 years. (he was head of the science department)

He would just swap out the 3 point questions, and the 20 point questions, and the essay questions, with a few changes to make the Exam "original", so people couldn't cheat by studying exams from earlier years.
(A girl in class was caught with her brothers exam from a few years earlier.
She was in tears after our teacher nearly bit her head off.)



Then our teacher relented and asked,..
"Is there any other mistakes?"

Four more mistakes were found in the exam.
The guy behind me that said I was nuts was as happy as a clam.
While we were "taking up the Exam" he was rubbing out all his wrong answers and writing in the "correct" answers overtop, then had a chance to rewrite the right answer.


So he got to correct and recorrect all 5 questions to get a Perfect score on those questions !!

Our teacher then had to try and clean up the mess he made in the two previous classes.

Those students had plenty of time to write and rub out all the write and wrong and right answers.
(We used pencils with erasers to write exams in the olden days so the teachers could see what we rubbed out.)

 

[stompandgo]

What I did not like about math as a kid is that it was all about rote procedure and not about the bigger why and where this is going.

That's a curriculum issue. I remember quite a bit of my high school, and definitely college math being all about solving word problems. Our tests did have a lot of rote math, but the there were plenty of word problems that took a while to solve. There were multiple choice answers, where one was right, and a few of the others were close, solved by missing a step or a part of an equation.

 

[stompandgo]

But in the real world it is not like a school workbook. I like it when there are not correct answers and the problems require creativity and new approaches others may never have considered. It is applied math. Estimating is a better skill in the real world than getting the correct answer on a test. One year in particular I was doing a lot of estimating. There was a contest to guess the number of Jelly Belly beans in a large jar. I won the jar because I was within five beans. Closer than anyone else.

How did you arrive at your answer? There's a difference between guessing and estimating. Estimating usually involves math, even rough, in your head math.

 

[Gionnirocket]

But in the real world it is not like a school workbook. I like it when there are not correct answers and the problems require creativity and new approaches others may never have considered. It is applied math.

Somewhat true... but you need an education to be good at applied math.

Estimating is a better skill in the real world than getting the correct answer on a test.

Wow.... I hope you were in a giant vado cloud when you tap'd out this terd

One year in particular I was doing a lot of estimating. There was a contest to guess the number of Jelly Belly beans in a large jar. I won the jar because I was within five beans. Closer than anyone else.

Yeah... If your goal in life is a jar of jelly beans

I think it fair to say that a good estimator/creative thinker is going to be educated... Then experience can play a big roll.

 

[PedalUma]

Is there left brain math? That is what I wanted as a kid.

 

[Chargeride]

2/3rds of architects using AI.
Im thinking more the number crunching in the background,
Designing with the latest materials, a bazillion factors and parameters.
AI aesthetics would soon become cringe.

AI in Architecture – How is AI Impacting Building Design? | RDA Journal

From smart designs to automation, AI is changing architecture. Discover its impact on efficiency, creativity, and sustainability in our blog post.

rodicdavidson.co.uk

 

[Mr. Coffee]

I think one of the bigger risks of the decline of STEM education is that it makes it much, much easier for misinformation to spread like wildfire through the population. And it also makes it far more difficult to have an adult conversation about actual risks and actual benefits of any technology.

What's worse is that most of the intermediaries whose job it is to explain those subtleties to the masses don't have that education or background either.

It is tough to figure out how we have a functioning democracy in a technology-laden world without ordinary people understanding at least the basics of all that technology.

But an even more pernicious problem is basic innumeracy. If you asked random people which of a million, a trillion, or a billion were bigger do you really think they'd all (or even most of them) would get it right? And most people take numbers they read on the internet as automatically true without a critical thought and zero thought about what those numbers would mean. One application of being able to do quick back-of-the-envelope calculations is to confirm whether the numbers you just heard on yootoob even make sense -- and all too often they do not.

 

[PedalUma]

quick back-of-the-envelope calculations is to confirm whether the numbers you just heard on yootoob even make sense

I agree. Also things as basic a how much paint to buy.

My office is by a dog park. I can see a border collie intently watch the snap of its human's wrist and start running. It will then leap into the air and catch the Frisbee. But what if you had to do those same calculations on a blackboard?

 

[Jeremy McCreary]

It is tough to figure out how we have a functioning democracy in a technology-laden world without ordinary people understanding at least the basics of all that technology.

Also tough to have a democracy when critical thinking's become a lost art in the general population. And it's well on the way to lost here in the US.

If nothing else, STEM education teaches critical thinking and the importance of evidence. Autocrats and religious zealots do everything they can to become the only sources of "truth" — based solely on their word for it.

Critical thinking's the first line of defense against their propaganda.

 

[PCeBiker]

,.. There was a contest to guess the number of Jelly Belly beans in a large jar. I won the jar because I was within five beans.

Yeah... If your goal in life is a jar of jelly beans

basic innumeracy. If you asked random people which of a million, a trillion, or a billion were bigger

You forgot Quadrillion?

@PedalUma
What size jar would you need to hold a Quadrillion jelly beans?

And, how long would it take to eat a Quadrillion jelly beans?

 

[Mr. Coffee]

You forgot Quadrillion?

@PedalUma
What size jar would you need to hold a Quadrillion jelly beans?

And, how long would it take to eat a Quadrillion jelly beans?

I know!!!!

A jar that held a quadrillion jelly beans would be more than 2000m on a side (more like 2300m), assuming a "squared-off" jar and that you smooshed the jelly beans a bit.

 

[PCeBiker]

Thats the process that turns a million school kids off math..

We can simplify this by inventing another language that you'll need to understand the numbers.

I invented a math question in Gr 12 that appeals to school kids,..

You're heading to a bush party on the weekend, and you've got a 2 liter bottle of Coke, and a mickey of Whiskey (40% alcohol).

How much Coke do you pour out of the 2 liter bottle, so when pour in the Whiskey, you end up with Exactly 5% alcohol in the bottle?
(remember you're not adding the whiskey to 2 liters of Coke.
You end up with 2 liters of mixed drink)

 

[PCeBiker]

I know!!!!

A jar that held a quadrillion jelly beans would be more than 2000m on a side (more like 2300m), assuming a "squared-off" jar and that you smooshed the jelly beans a bit.

That's all ??
That's not even a 2½ km cube!!??

I would have guessed the size of the or the solar system or something?

I suck at guesstimation.

 

[ChezCheese:)]

"Then our teacher relented and asked,..
"Is there any other mistakes?" "

Ummm, that should be "Are there any other mistakes?" But my mama was an English professor .

Jeremy, it is interesting that you see a lack of interest in STEM, whereas, coming from the social sciences and liberal arts, I bemoan the lack of interest and support for those fields as STEM is seen as the only way to a decent salary.

As for space travel being the wave of the future or the most pressing need, what we really need is more plumbers and home healthcare workers.

But I don't see young people willing to do the needful, either because it is hard work and takes time to do the training (whiners), or because it is low pay (valid complaint).

 

[Chargeride]

Im pretty sure Indian and Chinese children are nailing math.

Im not sure we can or want to match the levels of peer and parent pressure to achieve this, but the money is watching.