(Reposted from another forum)
I was pondering this the other night. In the environment of a middle school, high school or college algebra class, why aren't[B] all [/B]of the problems that are given application problems instead of maybe 1 in 10?
It seems incredibly backwards for students to get good at algebraic thinking without context and then panic when the dreaded story problem comes along. It's like if somebody opened a boxing gym where the coach spent the whole time talking about boxing theory but never had anybody spar.
I've learned two things from my Uni's Calculus courses.
Firstly, is that extensive talk of practical application breaks in the concepts from mere mechanical number patterns to [I]understanding[/I] of mathematics.
Secondly, is that all math before Calculus is actually only being taught to you so that you have the potential to learn Calculus. In Calculus, math becomes extremely useful very suddenly.
[QUOTE=Smug Bastard;49770036](Reposted from another forum)
I was pondering this the other night. In the environment of a middle school, high school or college algebra class, why aren't[B] all [/B]of the problems that are given application problems instead of maybe 1 in 10?
It seems incredibly backwards for students to get good at algebraic thinking without context and then panic when the dreaded story problem comes along. It's like if somebody opened a boxing gym where the coach spent the whole time talking about boxing theory but never had anybody spar.[/QUOTE]
because there are very few real world scenarios in which you would have to find the roots of a 5th degree polynonimal
[QUOTE=bitches;49770084]I've learned two things from my Uni's Calculus courses.
Firstly, is that extensive talk of practical application breaks in the concepts from mere mechanical number patterns to [I]understanding[/I] of mathematics.
Secondly, is that all math before Calculus is actually only being taught to you so that you have the potential to learn Calculus. In Calculus, math becomes extremely useful very suddenly.[/QUOTE]
Is this to imply that proper understanding of mathematics from early on is bad?
[QUOTE=Smug Bastard;49770116]Is this to imply that proper understanding of mathematics from early on is bad?[/QUOTE]
I don't know where you got that idea.
I'm saying that real-world application of basic algebra are not a big deal comparatively speaking, but I agreed that real-world applications (even made up ones) definitely help with learning the material.
They don't make [I]all[/I] problems word problems because that would take too much time to go through, when it is more important to demonstrate quickly subtle differences between different problems in order to establish concepts with raw mathematics, before finishing it off with a real application.
All word problems would be as useless as all numeric problems.
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