mathematical nonsense

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/15/california-weighs-equitable-math-goal-obtaining-correct-answer-racist/

There's a lot of this sort of thing going around.

This sort of thing, and the shutdowns, is going to drive a lot of kids
into private schools, to the detriment of public schools. A new
segregation in the making.

My high school was one of the first magnet schools in the USA, Ben
Franklin in New Orleans. A committee of rabid professional activists
want to rename it because Franklin owned a couple of slaves; later in
life he was an active abolitionist.

Most of the alumni say that if it's renamed, they will donate no more.

The same sort of activist nonsense is invading music and science and
STEM education, the idea of cultural dominance, basically guilt
tripping as a profession.

A minority of motivated kids will still do hard math and design
electronics that works. The real damage will be to the more average
kid. Imagine a technician who was educated to believe that math and
science are not objective, namely racist and euro-centric, that there
is no right answer.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The best designs are necessarily accidental.

[bitrex]

On 4/16/2021 11:13 AM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/15/california-weighs-equitable-math-goal-obtaining-correct-answer-racist/
>
> There's a lot of this sort of thing going around.

And 2800 comments by Breitbart readers 99% of whom can't do basic
algebra. Money well-spent.

> This sort of thing, and the shutdowns, is going to drive a lot of kids
> into private schools, to the detriment of public schools. A new
> segregation in the making.
>
> My high school was one of the first magnet schools in the USA, Ben
> Franklin in New Orleans. A committee of rabid professional activists
> want to rename it because Franklin owned a couple of slaves; later in
> life he was an active abolitionist.
>
> Most of the alumni say that if it's renamed, they will donate no more.
>
> The same sort of activist nonsense is invading music and science and
> STEM education, the idea of cultural dominance, basically guilt
> tripping as a profession.

Stymied in their sad attempt to overthrow a democratically-elected
government, the right is all-in on this "culture war" stuff, now, having
no ideas left of note.

I hope they run Tucker Carlson on his 100% white nationalist candidate
in 2024, I don't see any reason not to at this point. Fur die Volk
achtung mein Furher into zee boxcars wit die untermenschen, heil mein
Waffen SS!

> A minority of motivated kids will still do hard math and design
> electronics that works. The real damage will be to the more average
> kid. Imagine a technician who was educated to believe that math and
> science are not objective, namely racist and euro-centric, that there
> is no right answer.

The majority of pure-blood Aryan Americans of high genetic pedigree will
learn absolutely nothing from their high school mathematics classes, and
be proud of it. The motivated kids will always find a way.

[bitrex]

Americans are, in the main, the most innumerate people on God's earth.

[John Robertson]

I read some of the PDF the article is based on and I agree that while
much of it is in NewSpeak, some points were valid.

Suggesting considering the student's background for attaching relevancy
to their learning is certainly a valid teaching method.

Asking why Pythagorean’s system is named after the guy when it was in
use previously seems to ask the question of why name anything?

However it then goes on as a further example of a teaching style and
background with:

---------(quote)------------
Incorporate the history of mathematics into lessons.

Verbal Example: Why do you think we call it Pythagorean’s theorem,
when it was used before he was even born? What should we call it instead?

Classroom Activity: Learn about different bases and numerical ideas:
Base 2, binary and connections to computer programming, how the Yoruba
of Nigeria used base 20, and how the Mayans conceptualized the number 0
before the first recording of it.

Professional Development: Learn the history of mathematics. Take a
course, go to a conference, read historically and culturally accurate
books, and use the resources in this workbook. Focus on different
approaches to learning concepts.
---------(end quote)----------

In conclusion, not having read or digested the entire document, some
parts I disagree with, and many parts seem to be valid for asking
teachers to consider how they teach not just what they teach - and that
makes for a better teacher/student interaction as far as I can see.

I did not see any obvious examples where the correct answers to the math
questions (2 x 2 = 4) were not important.

--------(quote)------------
Addressing mistakes.

Though math teachers often tout the phrase “mistakes are expected,
respected, inspected, and corrected,” their practices don’t always
align. Teachers often treat mistakes as problems by equating them with
wrongness, rather than treating them opportunities for learning—which
reinforces the ideas of perfectionism (that students shouldn’t make
mistakes) and paternalism (teachers or other experts can and should
correct mistakes).
-------------(end quote)-----------

As a bit of background - I was a school trustee in Vancouver, BC for 6
years back in the 90s.

It never hurts to go to the source in my experience...

John

[bitrex]

The right-wing notion that "With this new stuff, right answer won't
matter at all. you can say 2 + 2 = 5 and the teacher will say this is
equally valid" is one of those sad inventions of propaganda designed to
scare lil ol ladies, and anyone who's never set foot inside a college or
university in 40 years.

All the wildest fantasies about what happens there are valid and very
terrifying. Millions of Americans will end up not being able to do "real
math"! Like the US educational system isn't very efficient at that
outcome already!

[John Larkin]

Compared to the residents of Burkina Faso? Brazil? Look it up.

Hating the USA and yourself results in absurd claims.

[bitrex]

Yeah I was assuming a comparison against first-world populations, got me
there. A comparison against humans who never even had the opportunity to
have 12 years of public education isn't a particularly high bar, though...

> Hating the USA and yourself results in absurd claims.

I'll need some kind of evidence you've never engaged in America-hating
type activities, citizen.

[Don Y]

On 4/16/2021 9:45 AM, John Robertson wrote:
> I read some of the PDF the article is based on and I agree that while much of
> it is in NewSpeak, some points were valid.
>
> Suggesting considering the student's background for attaching relevancy to
> their learning is certainly a valid teaching method.

A good teachers understands the context in which their students are learning
and sorts out how to best relate that material to them. The goal is to
*teach* -- i.e., elevate bring the students' level of knowledge.

> Asking why Pythagorean’s system is named after the guy when it was in use
> previously seems to ask the question of why name anything?

I think adding history to math makes it more relatable. Otherwise,
it's largely rote learning.

How would you measure the size of the earth BEFORE there were rockets?

How do Napier's Rods work?

How would you navigate the oceans (no LANDmarks) lacking an accurate
timepiece?

How would you estimate the load the blocks at the bottom of the pyramid would
have to support BEFORE building it? How many blocks would it take?

I.e., these are all real problems that folks had to address before
modern technology.

> However it then goes on as a further example of a teaching style and background
> with:
>
> ---------(quote)------------
> Incorporate the history of mathematics into lessons.
>
> Verbal Example: Why do you think we call it Pythagorean’s theorem, when it
> was used before he was even born? What should we call it instead?
>
> Classroom Activity: Learn about different bases and numerical ideas: Base 2,
> binary and connections to computer programming, how the Yoruba of Nigeria used
> base 20, and how the Mayans conceptualized the number 0 before the first
> recording of it.
>
> Professional Development: Learn the history of mathematics. Take a course, go
> to a conference, read historically and culturally accurate books, and use the
> resources in this workbook. Focus on different approaches to learning concepts.
> ---------(end quote)----------
>
> In conclusion, not having read or digested the entire document, some parts I
> disagree with, and many parts seem to be valid for asking teachers to consider
> how they teach not just what they teach - and that makes for a better
> teacher/student interaction as far as I can see.

The problem is that we always drop the "problem" into the teacher's lap.
"OK, we thought about it; now you FIX it!"

OTOH, if you "standardize" teaching, then you end up driving the education
to the level of the worst teachers (cuz THEY have to be able to teach it,
as well).

It was only after going to college that I realized how great the teachers
I'd had, previously, had been. But, I suspect it was a consequence of
the group of students in which I was lumped; I'm sure many other students
got "ho-hum" teachers.

(And, as teachers decided how they would teach -- and what ADDITIONAL
information they would include -- that meant for a difference in
outcomes)

> I did not see any obvious examples where the correct answers to the math
> questions (2 x 2 = 4) were not important.
>
> --------(quote)------------
> Addressing mistakes.
>
> Though math teachers often tout the phrase “mistakes are expected, respected,
> inspected, and corrected,” their practices don’t always align. Teachers often
> treat mistakes as problems by equating them with wrongness, rather than
> treating them opportunities for learning—which reinforces the ideas of
> perfectionism (that students shouldn’t make mistakes) and paternalism (teachers
> or other experts can and should correct mistakes).
> -------------(end quote)-----------

I've seen a shift towards being too patronizing with students.
The notion that one might "break their spirit" by pointing out
their errors. Or, dealing with irate parents who want to think
little Timmy is a genius (or, at least not a DOLT!)

Granted, if a kid hears "No, you're wrong" constantly, the
kid is likely going to disengage from the process. OTOH,
the teacher encountering such a student should be thinking,
"My God! How am *I* failing this kid so obviously??"

[Kevin Aylward]

"John Robertson" wrote in message
news:LPOdncJLIJCQIuT9...@giganews.com...

On 2021/04/16 8:13 a.m., jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/15/california-weighs-equitable-math-goal-obtaining-correct-answer-racist/
>
> There's a lot of this sort of thing going around.
>
> This sort of thing, and the shutdowns, is going to drive a lot of kids
> into private schools, to the detriment of public schools. A new
> segregation in the making.
>
> My high school was one of the first magnet schools in the USA, Ben
> Franklin in New Orleans. A committee of rabid professional activists
> want to rename it because Franklin owned a couple of slaves; later in
> life he was an active abolitionist.
>
> Most of the alumni say that if it's renamed, they will donate no more.
>
> The same sort of activist nonsense is invading music and science and
> STEM education, the idea of cultural dominance, basically guilt
> tripping as a profession.
>
> A minority of motivated kids will still do hard math and design
> electronics that works. The real damage will be to the more average
> kid. Imagine a technician who was educated to believe that math and
> science are not objective, namely racist and euro-centric, that there
> is no right answer.
>
>
>

>I read some of the PDF the article is based on and I agree that while much
>of it is in NewSpeak, some points were valid.

You don't seem to understand what is actually going on here. I am guessing
that you haven't studied the problem.

Its an implementation of the incredulous insane Critical Race Theory (CTR)
twaddle that will literally destroy all progress.

Its stating that "the goal of getting the correct answer is racist". This is
truly insane. Its gaslighting to the extreme.


CRT explicitly rejects logic, empirical evidence, and everything that make
the world go round. Sure, once in while it has a result that might make
sense. This is just an irrelevant random occurrence. Its a religious cult.
seriously. Its a religion. All religions pop out a valid point now and
again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTBOU77czpY - Why Postmodernists Reject
Logic & Evidence

https://newdiscourses.com/2021/03/letter-supporting-bill-ban-critical-race-theory/

-- Kevin Aylward
http://www.anasoft.co.uk - SuperSpice
http://www.kevinaylward.co.uk/ee/index.html

[Kevin Aylward]

wrote in message news:7i9j7ghn0gu5u2321...@4ax.com...

>https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/15/california-weighs-equitable-math-goal-obtaining-correct-answer-racist/

>The same sort of activist nonsense is invading music and science and
>STEM education, the idea of cultural dominance, basically guilt
>tripping as a profession.

More of the absolutely incredulous insane Critical Race Theory (CTR) twaddle
that will literally destroy progress.

[bitrex]

Guys who blather on about "cultural Marxism" like JP and never name the
Jew are bad at being based & pilled.

[bitrex]

On 4/16/2021 2:47 PM, Kevin Aylward wrote:

"Progress" is a very ambiguous term, what form of "progress" do you mean.

[Fred Bloggs]

U.S. wasn't exactly setting the world on fire with its intellectual brilliance prior to this. Never has. There was a brief cold war /space race type of phony intensification of developing some capability, but like most worthwhile endeavors, throwing money at it didn't work. Even harboring and using Nazi war criminals really didn't do it for them. The end result was tons of money flushed down the drain with nothing to show for it and a country facing imminent bankruptcy, starved of all the infrastructural and other essentials that define an advanced nation. The U.S. is not an advanced nation. Civilization will get along just fine without the "educated elite" of the U.S.

[John Larkin]

Brazil is not on God's earth?

OK, you are comparing the USA with all countries that are more
numerate than the USA. That puts us at the very bottom of the list.

Nice work.

>A comparison against humans who never even had the opportunity to
>have 12 years of public education isn't a particularly high bar, though...
>
>> Hating the USA and yourself results in absurd claims.
>
>I'll need some kind of evidence you've never engaged in America-hating
>type activities, citizen.

Multiply absurd.

I like the USA. It's been good to me. How did you get so damaged?

[John Larkin]

CRT isn't a religion, it's a power play.

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 13:51:57 -0700 (PDT), Fred Bloggs
<bloggs.fred...@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Friday, April 16, 2021 at 11:14:08 AM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>> https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/15/california-weighs-equitable-math-goal-obtaining-correct-answer-racist/
>>
>> There's a lot of this sort of thing going around.
>>
>> This sort of thing, and the shutdowns, is going to drive a lot of kids
>> into private schools, to the detriment of public schools. A new
>> segregation in the making.
>>
>> My high school was one of the first magnet schools in the USA, Ben
>> Franklin in New Orleans. A committee of rabid professional activists
>> want to rename it because Franklin owned a couple of slaves; later in
>> life he was an active abolitionist.
>>
>> Most of the alumni say that if it's renamed, they will donate no more.
>>
>> The same sort of activist nonsense is invading music and science and
>> STEM education, the idea of cultural dominance, basically guilt
>> tripping as a profession.
>>
>> A minority of motivated kids will still do hard math and design
>> electronics that works. The real damage will be to the more average
>> kid. Imagine a technician who was educated to believe that math and
>> science are not objective, namely racist and euro-centric, that there
>> is no right answer.
>
>U.S. wasn't exactly setting the world on fire with its intellectual brilliance prior to this. Never has.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_inventions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_country

[bitrex]

They're probably planning to give some people who aren't white some
power. I can certainly see how this would annoy followers of the
religion called "White Power!"

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

No, the exact opposite. They want to separate some people who aren't
white from the mainstream culture, and exploit the manufactured
difference.

[George Herold]

On Friday, April 16, 2021 at 11:14:08 AM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

You hear some push back from a few prof's. But I get the feeling most are keeping their heads down.
There are good people at universities, but the education system seems bent on breaking itself.

George H.

[bitrex]

I said "you got me there" with respect to this very pedantic rejoinder
to my offhand addendum, I'll send you an official victory certificate if
ya want, damn.

What's also remarkable though is just how much money the US spends to be
at the bottom of all the countries that are more numerate than the US,
and spend less.

<https://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/PISA-2012-results-US.pdf>

The problem areas seem to be in the man related to applying what's been
learned to real world situations. Like applied math, like one might do
in engineering. Kids test okay, so long as you don't go too far outside
the bounds of the test.

A good book on the topic, probably 30 years old now. Not a lot has changed:

<https://www.amazon.com/Innumeracy-Mathematical-Illiteracy-Its-Consequences/dp/0809058405>

It's strange how many people in the US seem to be openly proud of being
"bad with numbers." I've had people in coffee shops ask me what I'm
reading and when I say it's a book on mathematics they often reply "Oh,
I was never any good at math..." if I said I was reading a novel would
they say "Oh, I'm actually illiterate I was never any good at reading."

I'm not great at doing math in my head and I sometimes don't recall the
edge-cases of my multiplication tables. This isn't the kind of stuff
that matters for engineering, though, only party tricks.

[bitrex]

Last time the government around here tried to integrate some people who
aren't white into "mainstream culture" by fiat, the mainstream culture
tried to bash a man's head in with a flagpole.

<https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c9/Soiling_of_Old_Glory.jpg>

Maybe someday mainstream culture will figure out what it really wants.

[Bill Sloman]

Kevin studies lots of problems from his far-right point of view. Quite a few of them don't even look like problems until you've acquired the necessayr pre-conceptions.

> Its an implementation of the incredulous insane Critical Race Theory (CTR) twaddle that will literally destroy all progress.

A person can be incredulous. A theory can't. Kevin probably meant the incredibly insane Critical Race Theory, which seems to be one more right-wing invention.

> Its stating that "the goal of getting the correct answer is racist". This is truly insane. Its gaslighting to the extreme.

This is what got published by Breitbart. Their understanding of what was being said was driven by the desire to find something absurd to say that they thought they could get away with attributing to the people that they didn't like.

> CRT explicitly rejects logic, empirical evidence, and everything that make the world go round.

That what it was invented to look like. Kevin seems to believe in it, but only as an invented horrible object that he can claim other - non-right-wing - people take seriously. No doubt he will provide a link to a web-site that spells it out. The web-site will probably also a include a translation of "the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

> Sure, once in while it has a result that might make sense. This is just an irrelevant random occurrence. Its a religious cult. seriously. Its a religion. All religions pop out a valid point now and again.

Much like Kevin.

<snipped You Tube link - life's much to short to waste watching nonsnense>

> https://newdiscourses.com/2021/03/letter-supporting-bill-ban-critical-race-theory/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_A._Lindsay

He does seem to specialise in writing hoax papers.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[John S]

On 4/16/2021 12:35 PM, Don Y wrote:
> On 4/16/2021 9:45 AM, John Robertson wrote:
>> I read some of the PDF the article is based on and I agree that while
>> much of it is in NewSpeak, some points were valid.
>>
>> Suggesting considering the student's background for attaching
>> relevancy to their learning is certainly a valid teaching method.
>
> A good teachers understands the context in which their students are
> learning
> and sorts out how to best relate that material to them.  The goal is to
> *teach* -- i.e., elevate bring the students' level of knowledge.
>
>> Asking why Pythagorean’s system is named after the guy when it was in
>> use previously seems to ask the question of why name anything?
>
> I think adding history to math makes it more relatable.  Otherwise,
> it's largely rote learning.
>
> How would you measure the size of the earth BEFORE there were rockets?

Like Eratosthenes did in the 3rd century B.C.

[bitrex]

Otherwise well-meaning but less well-pedigreed people have been telling
the conspiratorial-prone like Kevin that demagogues like Peterson were
babbling frauds their whole lives. Naturally it only served to convince
them further that they were really onto some hidden truth.

Sometimes there's wisdom in the crowds.

[Sylvia Else]

I thought that had to be some kind of elaborate April fool thing, but
apparently it's not.

I downloaded the first of the "strides". It contains the following quote:

“Elsewhere, I have argued that the practice of school mathematics in the
US regulates the child by privileging: algebra/calculus over
geometry/topology/spatial reasoning."

Now I'm looking for someone to strangle in preference to tearing all my
own hair out.

Sylvia.

[whit3rd]

On Friday, April 16, 2021 at 8:33:01 PM UTC-7, John S wrote:
> On 4/16/2021 12:35 PM, Don Y wrote:

> > How would you measure the size of the earth BEFORE there were rockets?

> Like Eratosthenes did in the 3rd century B.C.

Yeah, there's a video on that...<https://youtu.be/yRY2SkMTafc>

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 22:21:11 -0400, bitrex <us...@example.net> wrote:

><https://www.amazon.com/Innumeracy-Mathematical-Illiteracy-Its-Consequences/dp/0809058405>
>
>It's strange how many people in the US seem to be openly proud of being
>"bad with numbers." I've had people in coffee shops ask me what I'm
>reading and when I say it's a book on mathematics they often reply "Oh,
>I was never any good at math..." if I said I was reading a novel would
>they say "Oh, I'm actually illiterate I was never any good at reading."

I've never met anyone who was proud of being bad at math. You must
hang with a different crowd.

>
>I'm not great at doing math in my head and I sometimes don't recall the
>edge-cases of my multiplication tables. This isn't the kind of stuff
>that matters for engineering, though, only party tricks.

We like to do math in our heads at whiteboards. I'm very good at it.
People are shocked.

There was a technique called "Lightning Empiricism" about this. It's
described in one of Jim Williams' books. It's more like using a slide
rule than a calculator, getting pretty close by basically guessing.
Getting something right to within 10 or 20% can be very useful. Or
even 10:1.

[Phil Allison]

jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
====================================

>
> >It's strange how many people in the US seem to be openly proud of being
> >"bad with numbers." I've had people in coffee shops ask me what I'm
> >reading and when I say it's a book on mathematics they often reply "Oh,
> >I was never any good at math..."
>>

> I've never met anyone who was proud of being bad at math. You must
> hang with a different crowd.
>

** The remark cited has nothing to do with being "proud".
It's just a piece of self effacing bullshit.

>
> There was a technique called "Lightning Empiricism" about this. It's
> described in one of Jim Williams' books. It's more like using a slide
> rule than a calculator, getting pretty close by basically guessing.
> Getting something right to within 10 or 20% can be very useful. Or
> even 10:1.
>

** Got good at that in high school and uni in the late 60s and early 70s.
Cos a slide rule was all I and most others had.
Mine was a Faber Castell " Elektro 1-98 " - like this:

https://collection.maas.museum/object/378521#&gid=1&pid=1

HP35s had just appeared and were a tad expensive, even if part of a buying group.

BTW Still got my Elektro in case all else fails:


..... Phil

[Don Y]

The lesson is that you don't need to be EXACT to be "right".
I think too many people see math as ONE correct answer and
a myriad of INCORRECT answers. I think that's a consequence of
how it is taught; here's an equation, solve it!

When friends ask me to help their kids with math, the first thing
I do is try to get them to get a "feel" for numbers.

"Show me 1" (invariably, ONE finger gets held up)
"Show me 5" (5 fingers)
"10" (both hands)
"100"... now they've got to THINK. They can't count out
100 of "something" and point to it. Instead, they have to
start approximating. They have to accept the fact that
their "answer" is likely NOT going to be EXACTLY "100".

So, it then becomes a puzzle. And, you can keep moving
up an order of magnitude at a time -- making the uncertainty in
their answers even greater!

But, it's not threatening. I'm not going to sit down and
COUNT the items they've presented for their answer.

From there, you can get more creative: how many jelly beans
in this jar? How would you come up with an estimate if you
couldn't individually count them? How many crows in that
murder overhead (think fast; they'll be gone in a second!)?

How many grains of salt in this salt shaker???

Once they have a feel for magnitudes, you can present
numeric problems and show them how to guestimate the
answer -- and, use that guestimate to see if their
ACTUAL (computed) answer makes sense.

[Bill Sloman]

On Saturday, April 17, 2021 at 4:00:00 PM UTC+10, Don Y wrote:
> On 4/16/2021 10:04 PM, whit3rd wrote:
> > On Friday, April 16, 2021 at 8:33:01 PM UTC-7, John S wrote:
> >> On 4/16/2021 12:35 PM, Don Y wrote:
> >
> >>> How would you measure the size of the earth BEFORE there were rockets?
> >
> >> Like Eratosthenes did in the 3rd century B.C.
> >
> > Yeah, there's a video on that...<https://youtu.be/yRY2SkMTafc>
> The lesson is that you don't need to be EXACT to be "right".

Perfectly true, but that's not mathematics.

> I think too many people see math as ONE correct answer and a myriad of INCORRECT answers.

Of course, they are exactly right. There are lots more incorrect answers than there correct answers, and of course a smaller number of answers that are almost right, but still wrong.

> I think that's a consequence of how it is taught; here's an equation, solve it!

It's consequence of what it is.

> When friends ask me to help their kids with math, the first thing
> I do is try to get them to get a "feel" for numbers.
>
> "Show me 1" (invariably, ONE finger gets held up)
> "Show me 5" (5 fingers)
> "10" (both hands)
> "100"... now they've got to THINK. They can't count out 100 of "something" and point to it. Instead, they have to start approximating. They have to accept the fact that their "answer" is likely NOT going to be EXACTLY "100".

They don't. They have to learn to group small numbers of object together, and count the groups.

> So, it then becomes a puzzle. And, you can keep moving up an order of magnitude at a time -- making the uncertainty in their answers even greater!

Teaching them measurement theory, rather than mathematics.

> But, it's not threatening. I'm not going to sit down and COUNT the items they've presented for their answer.

But you should have.

> From there, you can get more creative: how many jelly beans
> in this jar? How would you come up with an estimate if you
> couldn't individually count them? How many crows in that
> murder overhead (think fast; they'll be gone in a second!)?

They need a firm grasp of mathematics is before you get them going on more conceptually complicated stuff.

> How many grains of salt in this salt shaker???
>

> Once they have a feel for magnitudes, you can present numeric problems and show them how to guesstimate the answer -- and, use that guesstimate to see if their ACTUAL (computed) answer makes sense.

Not a good idea until they can grasp that there is actually only one correct answer.

This is a classic example of trying to teach people to run before they can walk. You do have to get the basic concepts first.

I shudder to think of the effort the teachers would have had to put in to undo the damage you did.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[bitrex]

This is America, George, you're almost equally as likely to find an
academic opposed to the idea of "gender studies" in principle on the
faculty of a university gender studies department, as you are to find a
left-wing zealot.

It's not one big happy band of brothers in academia, even in fields like
that.

Have you never heard of a conservative who's opposed to the idea of
public housing being appointed as director of a public housing
department in the US? Are they all managed by communists? The state's
sure not going to save any money that way...

[bitrex]

If the radical left had nearly as much power in America or its
educational system as wingnuts like to imagine in their minds, I think
both of them would already be very different places.

That left-wing academics publish documents of this type from time to
time does help to keep old ladies clutching their pearls, and helps to
keep thousands of younger men (who never learned anything from their
math classes, either, if they ever had them) with their fingers on their
triggers, looking around for a yoga studio or college campus to shoot
up, having been well-trained to believe that right now is truly the last
days, just seconds before their whole world collapses into a true
hellscape of equitable math and gay pride balloons.

And wouldn't that be just faaaaaaaaaaabulous!

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 22:57:49 -0700 (PDT), Phil Allison
<palli...@gmail.com> wrote:

> jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>====================================
>>
>> >It's strange how many people in the US seem to be openly proud of being
>> >"bad with numbers." I've had people in coffee shops ask me what I'm
>> >reading and when I say it's a book on mathematics they often reply "Oh,
>> >I was never any good at math..."
>>>
>> I've never met anyone who was proud of being bad at math. You must
>> hang with a different crowd.
>>
>
>** The remark cited has nothing to do with being "proud".
> It's just a piece of self effacing bullshit.
>
>>
>> There was a technique called "Lightning Empiricism" about this. It's
>> described in one of Jim Williams' books. It's more like using a slide
>> rule than a calculator, getting pretty close by basically guessing.
>> Getting something right to within 10 or 20% can be very useful. Or
>> even 10:1.
>>
>** Got good at that in high school and uni in the late 60s and early 70s.
> Cos a slide rule was all I and most others had.
> Mine was a Faber Castell " Elektro 1-98 " - like this:
>
> https://collection.maas.museum/object/378521#&gid=1&pid=1

I was in the yellow aluminum Pickett slide rule faction. We had
immense contempt for the bamboo boys. Well, I got the Picketts free. I
had a friend who, I think, stole them.

>
>HP35s had just appeared and were a tad expensive, even if part of a buying group.

I still have my first HP35. It cost $400, about as much as my Honda
S50 motorcycle. The 35's had the best keyboard ever.

>
>BTW Still got my Elektro in case all else fails:

I have several HP 32S2's, which are pretty good. I guess there is an
Android phone app that's a decent RPN calculator.

Quick estimations are still useful. Like, is that resistor going to
get hot from that pulse? Will the capacitance of that chip affect the
transmission line? If it's orders of magnitide away from mattering,
sloppy math is good enough.

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

On Sat, 17 Apr 2021 14:30:52 +1000, Sylvia Else <syl...@email.invalid>
wrote:

The majority of the population has no feel for physical magnitudes or
basic math or physics. But they manage to make coffee and drive and
paint their hallways and hit baseballs and not fall off cliffs.

It's sort of amazing.

[bitrex]

None of this requires counting things, intrinsically. That you can take
mathematics derived from the ability to count things and apply that to
the physical process of hitting a baseball in retrospect doesn't mean
that the process of hitting a baseball required counting anything to
begin with.

Cats judge distances and make jumps successfully all the time, they
don't have any mathematical ability and never will. Mostly successful:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4CmWZJZEfw>

[bitrex]

On 4/17/2021 10:30 AM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

You can train a neural network to drive a vehicle around and not hit
objects. The neural network isn't doing any math. The computer that the
neural network is running on is mapping input data to output effects and
computing numerical results of executing functions on their inputs, it's
not doing any math, either, the math to solve the problem of object
avoidance was already done by the person who programmed it.

Maybe someday they'll build a robot barista who comes up with a unified
field theory in its spare time. It wasn't even trained for that!

[bitrex]

On 4/17/2021 1:12 AM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 22:21:11 -0400, bitrex <us...@example.net> wrote:
>
>> <https://www.amazon.com/Innumeracy-Mathematical-Illiteracy-Its-Consequences/dp/0809058405>
>>
>> It's strange how many people in the US seem to be openly proud of being
>> "bad with numbers." I've had people in coffee shops ask me what I'm
>> reading and when I say it's a book on mathematics they often reply "Oh,
>> I was never any good at math..." if I said I was reading a novel would
>> they say "Oh, I'm actually illiterate I was never any good at reading."
>
> I've never met anyone who was proud of being bad at math. You must
> hang with a different crowd.
>
>>
>> I'm not great at doing math in my head and I sometimes don't recall the
>> edge-cases of my multiplication tables. This isn't the kind of stuff
>> that matters for engineering, though, only party tricks.
>
> We like to do math in our heads at whiteboards. I'm very good at it.
> People are shocked.

Why? You have a Pentium II for a brain this isn't shocking information
to most here, at least.

[bitrex]

Something like 50% of the population is functionally illiterate; how can
they be expected to do math at a high school level if they can only read
at an 8th grade level.

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

Why do you make up hate-USA nonsense when the Internet is available?

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 1:30:40 AM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Apr 2021 11:25:42 -0400, bitrex <us...@example.net> wrote:
>
> >On 4/16/2021 4:51 PM, Fred Bloggs wrote:
> >> On Friday, April 16, 2021 at 11:14:08 AM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> >>> https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/15/california-weighs-equitable-math-goal-obtaining-correct-answer-racist/
> >>>
> >>> There's a lot of this sort of thing going around.

Breitbart does publish a lot of right-wing nonsense. It is aimed more at the Cursitor Doom level of gullible idiot, but John Larkin is almost as gullible.
=

> >>> This sort of thing, and the shutdowns, is going to drive a lot of kids into private schools, to the detriment of public schools. A new segregation in the making.

Right-wing parents gullible enough to take Breitbart seriously probably make even worse mistakes. At least they will only mess up the private schools they send their kids to.

> >>> My high school was one of the first magnet schools in the USA, Ben Franklin in New Orleans. A committee of rabid professional activists
want to rename it because Franklin owned a couple of slaves; later in life he was an active abolitionist.

There are left wing idiots as well as right-wing idiots. They tend to have less money and are correspondingly less dangerous.

> >>> Most of the alumni say that if it's renamed, they will donate no more.

The ones that are silly enough to listen to you might.

> >>> The same sort of activist nonsense is invading music and science and STEM education, the idea of cultural dominance, basically guilt
tripping as a profession.

A profession is something you can do for money. Guilt-tripping doesn't sound as if it would pay well.

> >>> A minority of motivated kids will still do hard math and design electronics that works. The real damage will be to the more average kid. Imagine a technician who was educated to believe that math and science are not objective, namely racist and euro-centric, that there is no right answer.

And Breitbart thinks that this is what is going on? That takes a lot of imagination, and no grasp of reality at all.

> >> U.S. wasn't exactly setting the world on fire with its intellectual brilliance prior to this. Never has. There was a brief cold war /space race type of phony intensification of developing some capability, but like most worthwhile endeavors, throwing money at it didn't work. Even harboring and using Nazi war criminals really didn't do it for them. The end result was tons of money flushed down the drain with nothing to show for it and a country facing imminent bankruptcy, starved of all the infrastructural and other essentials that define an advanced nation. The U.S. is not an advanced nation. Civilization will get along just fine without the "educated elite" of the U.S.
> >
> >Something like 50% of the population is functionally illiterate; how can they be expected to do math at a high school level if they can only read at an 8th grade level.
>
> Why do you make up hate-USA nonsense when the Internet is available?

https://www.wyliecomm.com/2020/11/whats-the-latest-u-s-literacy-rate/

Because the internet is available, you could have checked whether the claim was nonsense - and it isn't.

You hate the US so fiercely that you want it to stay stuck in it's current unimpressive state - which isn't all that bad. Japan does better - average score 296 - and Finland, the Netherlands , Norway and Australia take you down to 280. The US is eleven countries further down - at 270 - and sits between Germany - also at 270 - and Austria at 269. France, Spain and Italy do significantly worse (262, 252 and 250).

Clearly, you could do better, but if complacent twits like you choose to ignore the problem, things aren't gong to get better.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[John Robertson]

US functional literacy is around 20% according to:

https://nces.ed.gov/datapoints/2019179.asp

Significant, but certainly not 50%. One must be careful of assumptions...

John

[bitrex]

Stats are in here, though there are different interpretations of what
constitutes "8th grade level" when making international comparisons. I
believe Level 3 is around a "high school" level.

<https://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/Country%20note%20-%20United%20States.pdf>

"U.S. performance is weak in literacy, very poor in numeracy, but only
slightly below average in problem solving
in technology-rich environments"

This was the OECD's take on it. The US has been a member of the OECD
since 1961.

[bitrex]

"Functional literacy" is a somewhat ill-defined term I admit, what level
of literacy do you need to be "functional." a 5th grade level? 8th
grade? Beats me.

[bitrex]

On 4/17/2021 12:23 PM, John Robertson wrote:
>

It's helpful to compare what "Level 2" is in reading vs what Level 2 is
in math to a get a sense of equivalence, maybe:

<https://www.oecd.org/skills/piaac/Country%20note%20-%20United%20States.pdf>

"Level 2" in math are grade-school tasks.

[bitrex]

That is to say, like 5th grade-level tasks.

[Piglet]

On 17/04/2021 15:22, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> I still have my first HP35. It cost $400, about as much as my Honda
> S50 motorcycle. The 35's had the best keyboard ever.
>
>>
>> BTW Still got my Elektro in case all else fails:
>
>
> I have several HP 32S2's, which are pretty good. I guess there is an
> Android phone app that's a decent RPN calculator.
>

Yes, I have an HP-35 and HP-67. Used to carry the HP-67 everywhere on my
belt but it caused trouble at airport security so now it stays in the
lab. There is an iphone emulator app I use on the go now, ios apps also
exist for HP-35 and HP-32 (and probably others too).

piglet

[Don Y]

On 4/16/2021 10:12 PM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 22:21:11 -0400, bitrex <us...@example.net> wrote:
>
>> <https://www.amazon.com/Innumeracy-Mathematical-Illiteracy-Its-Consequences/dp/0809058405>
>>
>> It's strange how many people in the US seem to be openly proud of being
>> "bad with numbers." I've had people in coffee shops ask me what I'm
>> reading and when I say it's a book on mathematics they often reply "Oh,
>> I was never any good at math..." if I said I was reading a novel would
>> they say "Oh, I'm actually illiterate I was never any good at reading."
>
> I've never met anyone who was proud of being bad at math. You must
> hang with a different crowd.

I doubt it's "pride"; rather, an excuse for their underdeveloped skill
set. It's much easier (lazier) to claim ignorance of something that
folks THINK OF as difficult than it is to actually step up to the
challenge.

Math isn't hard. It follows rules. Those rules actually make sense,
if you put your mind to thinking about them.

*History* is hard. Unless you can remember all of the causes and
effects AND timelines, when asked when/why some obscure event
happened, you'll likely have to ballpark your answer ("in the
late 18th century")

>> I'm not great at doing math in my head and I sometimes don't recall the
>> edge-cases of my multiplication tables. This isn't the kind of stuff
>> that matters for engineering, though, only party tricks.
>
> We like to do math in our heads at whiteboards. I'm very good at it.
> People are shocked.

Really? I went through 12 years of primary school with my classmates envious
of the fact that I could do the math in my head. No one was "shocked".
No one was "shocked" at the jocks who had prowess on the court.

When I was a young kid, I'd accompany my mom to the grocery store.
She'd invariably have some coupon that was only valid if you spent
a certain amount of money ($20). She'd ask me if she had spent
enough (in the checkout line).

As everything had price tags, back then, I would simply form a
running total, in my head, as I was placing the items on the
conveyor belt. I'd then announce the total to my mother.

A few seconds later, the cashier would make the same statement.

And, look at me with a strong sense of /deja vu/. I'd just smile at her.

More than once, I'd tell the cashier they had made a mistake.
(Oh, they love it when a little 8 year old tells them that!)
Mom would have them check the receipt (impartial third party).
Yup! They'd rung something up twice!

Or, forgotten some item(s).

Nowadays, I am forced to do this WHILE shopping as nothing has
price tags, anymore. But, the cashiers wonder why I always have
the correct amount of *cash* in my hands when they announce the
total! ("cents back")

When I was a pre-teen, my folks bought me a calculator. A month
or two later, I found myself unable to beat the cashier at totaling
mom's groceries. I never used the calculator again!

> There was a technique called "Lightning Empiricism" about this. It's
> described in one of Jim Williams' books. It's more like using a slide
> rule than a calculator, getting pretty close by basically guessing.
> Getting something right to within 10 or 20% can be very useful. Or
> even 10:1.

Or, one could actually have an innate skill and eliminate the guesswork!

[I actually met an /idiot savant/, once. He was *scary* fast! It made me
realize what other folks must think of *my* skillset!]

[Don Y]

On 4/17/2021 9:23 AM, John Robertson wrote:
> US functional literacy is around 20% according to:

That's a tail of the literacy curve. Many states have *laws* requiring
any legal documents be expressed at F-K "9th grade level or below". I.e.,
an open acknowledgement that a significant fraction of their citizenry
can't understand HIGH SCHOOL level!

> Significant, but certainly not 50%. One must be careful of assumptions...

I know people that will stare at you in a stupor if you use a double negative.
(c'mon, it's not rocket science! parse the sentence!)

I've had some heated discussions with my lawyer, recently, over language
that they've created. "Oh! Yes, you're right! That *doesn't* say what
I was trying to say when I wrote it!"

My other half often asks me what some term means (she's reading about
CRISPR, presently).

When I prepare technical documentation, I invariably have to revise it
several times, before release, to lower the effective complexity of
my prose. Of course, the goal is to maximize the number of readers
who can accurately understand it as well as minimize the amount of
potential ambiguity.

[Don Y]

> The majority of the population has no feel for physical magnitudes or
> basic math or physics. But they manage to make coffee and drive and
> paint their hallways and hit baseballs and not fall off cliffs.

I suspect you've no knowledge of the chemistries involved in baking.
Yet likely enjoy sweets.

Or, the details of how your vehicle runs and moves between two points.
Yet, probably have no problem DRIVING!

Or, how a particular drug interacts with your body to combat a given
illness/disease process. Yet, you benefit from them.

And I'm *positive* you have no idea of the complexity of the code that makes
your cell phone work. Yet, you likely use it many times daily!

> It's sort of amazing.

Would you consider any of the above, "amazing"?

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

On Sat, 17 Apr 2021 09:23:02 -0700, John Robertson <sp...@flippers.com>
wrote:

20% literate? Insane.

>
>Significant, but certainly not 50%. One must be careful of assumptions...
>
>John

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States

"The World Factbook reports that the U.S. has a literacy rate of 99
percent, and is number 28 of the 214 nations included. Using its
definition, literacy refers to the percentage of people age 15 or
older who can read and write.[19][18]"

[whit3rd]

On Saturday, April 17, 2021 at 9:23:13 AM UTC-7, John Robertson wrote:

> US functional literacy is around 20% according to:
>
> https://nces.ed.gov/datapoints/2019179.asp

That's not what the bar graph shows; the 'Level 1' number plus 'could not participate' is
under 20 percent. Level 2 and above should probably be considered functionally literate.

[Jeroen Belleman]

On 2021-04-17 18:23, John Robertson wrote:
>
[Snip!]

>
> US functional literacy is around 20% according to:
>
> https://nces.ed.gov/datapoints/2019179.asp
>
> Significant, but certainly not 50%. One must be careful of assumptions...
>
> John

This sort-of proves the point.

Jeroen Belleman

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

Not a lot of chemistry, but I can tweak quantities and adjust for
altitude.

>
>Or, the details of how your vehicle runs and moves between two points.
>Yet, probably have no problem DRIVING!

I'm an engineer. I've rebuilt engines and transmissions top to bottom.
Designed ignitions. My first closed-loop controller ran a 32,000
horsepower engine.

>
>Or, how a particular drug interacts with your body to combat a given
>illness/disease process. Yet, you benefit from them.
>
>And I'm *positive* you have no idea of the complexity of the code that makes
>your cell phone work. Yet, you likely use it many times daily!

I've written roughly a million lines of code, but I haven't seen the
source code for a cell phone. Don't think I want to.

I use my phone, as a phone, a few times a week. I use it as a camera a
lot more.

>
>> It's sort of amazing.
>
>Would you consider any of the above, "amazing"?

It's amazing to me that most people don't understand physics or math
or biology or anatomy or finance or the law but get along very well.

My wife has no instincts for time or temperature so I'm the fry chef.
She has no feel for energy, so makes silly decisions, like constantly
turning off 5 watt LED lights but leaving windows open when it's cold
outside.

[Don Y]

The american educational system is a hodge-podge of ill-conceived,
poorly executed "ideas" (a polite way of saying "experiments")

Imagine a control system with sufficient lag in which you are
continuously changing the control criteria *and* making decisions
about those changes before the results have filtered through to the
output.

Then, seeing sub-optimal (by some definition of "optimal") results
and using that to justify still *more* changes.

And, others pointing at lack of progress from YOUR changes and using
that to justify changes in yet another direction.

"We need more testing" -- as if testing (measurement) was a panacea.
(how are you going to adjust your process once you have those results?)

"We need smaller class sizes" -- as if fewer students meant better
instruction.

"We need a laptop per student" -- as if reading on a screen magically
improved comprehension.

"We need increased parental involvement" -- as if one could magically
change the motivation of (and resources available to) parents.

Etc.

I "help" (avoiding the term tutor as that's an ongoing, structured
relationship) many of my friends kids. I suspect "individual attention"
can be credited (by folks who advocate smaller class sizes) with
their resulting successes ("Look, Don, I got a 92 on my math test!").
But, I think my knowledge of them, as individuals, is more to credit
for these successes.

As I know their interests, I can present ideas in ways to which they
can more naturally relate.

TL;DR

A neighbor's high-school son was having problems with trig. Dad asked
me, on the QT, if I could help him out -- cuz I'm not seen as a "parental
authority" and he's more comfortable talking with me, than them.

(Oh, if they only knew of the stuff he's confided in me, over the years!)

I stopped by a few days later and asked him (kid) if he could give me a
hand for a few minutes.

"I want to cut down this tree in front of the house. But, as you can see,
if I fell it THAT way, it will crash into your house, your trees, your saguaro,
etc. If I fell it the other way, it crashes into Tim's stuff. And, I
certainly don't want to drop it on MY house!

So, the only option is to drop it directly away from the house and lay it in
the street! But, even there, I have to worry about those neighbors' properties
across from me.

How tall do you think it is?"

"Gee, that's hard to say. At least 50 ft! It looks like it's going to be
*close*..."

"OK, we'll have to measure it, then."

I dug out a folding chair and set it up on the far side of the street,
opposite my tree. Then, asked him to crouch down so his eyes were level
with the top of the chair's back. And, look directly at the top of
the tree.

"Now, I'm going to stand between you and the tree with my hand held above my
head. I'll walk away from you, towards the tree. I want you to tell me
when the tip of my fingers APPEARS to be located at the top of the tree."

I then measured the distance from that point to his "eyes". And, the
height of my fingertips above the roadway. And, the distance to the
tree. Then, announced the height.

"How did you do that?"

"The tree is ~8.25 times farther from your eyes than I was (40'/4'10").
So, the tree must be ~8.25 times taller than me!"

"Yeah, but you're 6' tall; wouldn't that make the tree 50 ft? Yet,
you claim the tree is only 47.5 ft!"

"But the tips of my fingers are much higher than my head! Seven and
a half feet!"

"OK, then that would make the tree closer to *60* feet!"

<grin>

"Yeah, but your eyes weren't at the level of my feet! They were
two feet off the ground. So, you were only comparing 5.5 ft of
'me' (7.5-2) to the tree!"

"But, still, that means the tree would be 45 feet!"

<bigger grin>

"But, you're not including the lower 2 ft of the tree in that
comparison!"

So, I fetched a piece of paper/pen and made a sketch.

"Similar triangles..."

No mention of sines, or cosines, or tangents...

Now, it looked like one of his homework problems. I could
almost hear the gears sliding into place in his mind...

I bumped into his dad a few weeks later and he commented on
how much more confident his son was in his math class. And,
how quickly his test scores had climbed.

"I don't know what you told him, but it sure worked!"

A couple of years later, when the son was headed off to college,
he mentioned that he had previously wanted to get a liberal
arts education, "because that would be the most flexible"
(I bit my tongue). But, had decided, instead, to go into
engineering. He could *see* how that sort of education
could be directly applied to problem solving. (like figuring
out the heights of trees without climbing them!)

[Sadly, he died, suddenly, a year and a half later]

[Don Y]

On 4/17/2021 11:32 AM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>> Or, the details of how your vehicle runs and moves between two points.
>> Yet, probably have no problem DRIVING!
>
> I'm an engineer. I've rebuilt engines and transmissions top to bottom.
> Designed ignitions. My first closed-loop controller ran a 32,000
> horsepower engine.

So, you DON'T know how YOUR CAR gets from point A to B.
I could open your hood, ask you to turn away, and you'd
never be able to start the car, again. Let alone
figure out *why*.

>> Or, how a particular drug interacts with your body to combat a given
>> illness/disease process. Yet, you benefit from them.
>>
>> And I'm *positive* you have no idea of the complexity of the code that makes
>> your cell phone work. Yet, you likely use it many times daily!
>
> I've written roughly a million lines of code, but I haven't seen the
> source code for a cell phone. Don't think I want to.

A million lines of code? If you are *really* proficient, you can
probably write 100 SLOC of debugged code in a day. So, 10,000 days
to write a million lines of code.

Let's assume you work 50 weeks yearly. So, 250 days/year. That's
40 years of writing code.

You must be incredibly proficient if you can do that AND design all
of that hardware and have time for your cabin and...

OTOH, if you are a part-time programmer and/or of "average"
proficiency, you're more likely in the 25-50 SLOC ballpark.
So, 80 - 160 years to create that large a codebase.

Or, a much lower total SLOC figure!

I can do 10K SLOC in about 4 months for *small* projects.
People in 9-to-5's often take a year or more to do similarly
(meetings, overhead, distractions, changes of direction, etc.)

*Real* projects (50K+) take closer to two years (for a single coder
focused on a well-defined problem).

You seem to have an overly inflated idea of your own productivity!
(or, are many decades older than you appear)

> I use my phone, as a phone, a few times a week. I use it as a camera a
> lot more.

So, you are comfortable not understanding how it works!

>>> It's sort of amazing.
>>
>> Would you consider any of the above, "amazing"?
>
> It's amazing to me that most people don't understand physics or math
> or biology or anatomy or finance or the law but get along very well.

Why should that be amazing? People lived for many generations before
any of these sciences were codified.

I can enjoy a movie without having a clue as to how the producer,
writer, director, etc. managed to make it so appealing!

And, I can point to other movies that were absolutely DREADFUL -- yet
not be able to point a finger on WHAT made them so!

[John S]

Absolutely! I frequently work on interesting problems at night with the
lights off. It is all approximations. It relaxes me and helps me get to
sleep. Fun.

[George Herold]

On Saturday, April 17, 2021 at 9:44:12 AM UTC-4, bitrex wrote:
> On 4/16/2021 10:16 PM, George Herold wrote:

> > On Friday, April 16, 2021 at 11:14:08 AM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> >> https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/15/california-weighs-equitable-math-goal-obtaining-correct-answer-racist/
> >>
> >> There's a lot of this sort of thing going around.
> >>
> >> This sort of thing, and the shutdowns, is going to drive a lot of kids
> >> into private schools, to the detriment of public schools. A new
> >> segregation in the making.
> >>
> >> My high school was one of the first magnet schools in the USA, Ben
> >> Franklin in New Orleans. A committee of rabid professional activists
> >> want to rename it because Franklin owned a couple of slaves; later in
> >> life he was an active abolitionist.
> >>
> >> Most of the alumni say that if it's renamed, they will donate no more.
> >>
> >> The same sort of activist nonsense is invading music and science and
> >> STEM education, the idea of cultural dominance, basically guilt
> >> tripping as a profession.
> >>
> >> A minority of motivated kids will still do hard math and design
> >> electronics that works. The real damage will be to the more average
> >> kid. Imagine a technician who was educated to believe that math and
> >> science are not objective, namely racist and euro-centric, that there
> >> is no right answer.

> > You hear some push back from a few prof's. But I get the feeling most are keeping their heads down.
> > There are good people at universities, but the education system seems bent on breaking itself.
> >
> > George H.
> This is America, George, you're almost equally as likely to find an
> academic opposed to the idea of "gender studies" in principle on the
> faculty of a university gender studies department, as you are to find a
> left-wing zealot.
>
> It's not one big happy band of brothers in academia, even in fields like
> that.
>
> Have you never heard of a conservative who's opposed to the idea of
> public housing being appointed as director of a public housing
> department in the US? Are they all managed by communists? The state's
> sure not going to save any money that way...
I guess it depends on what you read.
https://quillette.com/2021/04/09/georgetowns-cultural-revolution/
what you believe.

George H.

[Bill Sloman]

On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 3:50:20 AM UTC+10, Don Y wrote:
> On 4/17/2021 9:23 AM, John Robertson wrote:
> > US functional literacy is around 20% according to:
> That's a tail of the literacy curve. Many states have *laws* requiring
> any legal documents be expressed at F-K "9th grade level or below". I.e.,
> an open acknowledgement that a significant fraction of their citizenry
> can't understand HIGH SCHOOL level!
> > Significant, but certainly not 50%. One must be careful of assumptions...
> I know people that will stare at you in a stupor if you use a double negative.
> (c'mon, it's not rocket science! parse the sentence!)

Sadly, some people use a double negative as an emphasis of the negation, which makes them ambiguous.
Parsing that kind of sentence is risky.

> I've had some heated discussions with my lawyer, recently, over language
> that they've created. "Oh! Yes, you're right! That *doesn't* say what
> I was trying to say when I wrote it!"

Lawyers do look out for potential ambiguities.

> My other half often asks me what some term means (she's reading about CRISPR, presently).

Why doesn't she look it up?

> When I prepare technical documentation, I invariably have to revise it several times, before release, to lower the effective complexity of
my prose. Of course, the goal is to maximize the number of readers who can accurately understand it as well as minimize the amount of potential ambiguity.

My father's prescription was to leave in a drawer for six months. That was usually enough time to allow you to forget what you'd originally intended it to mean, so you could appreciate what other people might think it might mean. Getting somebody else to read it is quicker.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[whit3rd]

On Saturday, April 17, 2021 at 7:39:28 AM UTC-7, bitrex wrote:

> None of this requires counting things, intrinsically. That you can take
> mathematics derived from the ability to count things and apply that to
> the physical process of hitting a baseball in retrospect doesn't mean
> that the process of hitting a baseball required counting anything to
> begin with.
>
> Cats judge distances and make jumps successfully all the time, they
> don't have any mathematical ability and never will.

Yeah, but they also analyze odors (as do dogs) with exquisite
precision. That means they compute correlations of the
various aroma receptors with memorized patterns, which in
a mechanism for chemosensing is a sophisticated
mathematical analysis. Sniffing around the garden,
those cats are doing a high-throughput bunch of multiply-accumulates.

[John S]

On 4/16/2021 10:13 AM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/15/california-weighs-equitable-math-goal-obtaining-correct-answer-racist/
>
> There's a lot of this sort of thing going around.
>
> This sort of thing, and the shutdowns, is going to drive a lot of kids
> into private schools, to the detriment of public schools. A new
> segregation in the making.
>
> My high school was one of the first magnet schools in the USA, Ben
> Franklin in New Orleans. A committee of rabid professional activists
> want to rename it because Franklin owned a couple of slaves; later in
> life he was an active abolitionist.
>
> Most of the alumni say that if it's renamed, they will donate no more.
>
> The same sort of activist nonsense is invading music and science and
> STEM education, the idea of cultural dominance, basically guilt
> tripping as a profession.
>
> A minority of motivated kids will still do hard math and design
> electronics that works. The real damage will be to the more average
> kid. Imagine a technician who was educated to believe that math and
> science are not objective, namely racist and euro-centric, that there
> is no right answer.
>

Alternative Math | Short Film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh3Yz3PiXZw

[Wond]

Wow.excellent article, thanks!

[bitrex]

Ya, and they forced a Yale psychiatry professor to resign for saying
Trump supporters were delusional morons. Money talks, and free speech walks.

"Progressive liberals are blind to the fact that there is a regime
take-over apace everywhere in academic institutions."

Been the same paranoia about academia for the better part of a hundred
years, now.

"The reason that challenging any aspect of this dominant ideology is
taboo is because it leaves you vulnerable to the charge that you are
uncomfortable with the project of empowering minorities"

Tends to be correct a lot of the time

"If this echoes a Maoist take-over, that’s because it is."

LOL, this author thinks Maoism started in universities.

"The rise of the technocrat"

The Maoist revolution and the Soviet revolutions were reactionary
agrarian revolutions, a rebellion against "modernity", a populist
rejection of the ideas of the same kind of "technocrats" and academics
that populists in America would prefer to reject, also.

[bitrex]

There's little evidence human or animal brains work like a Turing
machine. And if returning results of functions put into memory by humans
is "doing math" then my laptop is among the best mathematicians in the world

[bitrex]

The sadly amusing thing is adjuncts are the university equivalent of
call center employees - they are fucking temps, they're relatively
low-paid, and there's zero opportunity for advancement in academia
unless you're PhD-track. Turnover is high. The type of employee who gets
treated worse as time goes on and not better because they think you're
silly for staying in that job so long.

That is to say they're hired and fired all the time over all sorts of
stuff, probably fifty of them will be fired in the US tomorrow for all
sorts of reasons.

So it's amusing that presumably tenured or tenure-track "boomer
professors" would come out in this employees defense on this particular
issue as they'd never reliably lift a finger to defend a friggin'
ADJUNCT against being fired for so much as being regularly late coming
back from their lunch break.

This particular one was too dumb to know how to turn off her Zoom
meeting before making her comments about her students being dumb.
Guaranteed it wasn't the first retarded thing she ever did there.

[bitrex]

What a waste of effort. If you want your kid to go somewhere in life
knowing 2 + 2 = 5 you just pay $100,000 to have their test scores
inflated and another $100,000 to your contact at Yale or Georgetown to
admit them. Like people who really matter do...

[bitrex]

A guy I went to art school with wrote a rock opera about 9/11.

It was in three sections. The first was a ballad section that went like
"Buildings crashing, people dying...Bill Clinton's betrayal of
Americaaaa...."

The second was more of a rap-rock part (this genre was in vogue at the
time.)

It went like "Awww yeah booooy...George Bush the master of disaster,
bombing all the hajis, kicking all the lib assess. Killing all the
commies, shooting all the traitors. WORD UP!"

The third was just him kinda screaming "US MARINES! UNITED STATES MARINE
CORPS! U. S. MARINES!!!!!" in front of the class audience.

[bitrex]

Like idk if he ended up at the wrong college by mistake or something.

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

On Sat, 17 Apr 2021 12:14:45 -0700, Don Y
<blocked...@foo.invalid> wrote:

>On 4/17/2021 11:32 AM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>>> Or, the details of how your vehicle runs and moves between two points.
>>> Yet, probably have no problem DRIVING!
>>
>> I'm an engineer. I've rebuilt engines and transmissions top to bottom.
>> Designed ignitions. My first closed-loop controller ran a 32,000
>> horsepower engine.
>
>So, you DON'T know how YOUR CAR gets from point A to B.

What could that question mean?

>I could open your hood, ask you to turn away, and you'd
>never be able to start the car, again. Let alone
>figure out *why*.
>

I fix things. I make things work.

I'd never turn my back on you.

[Don Y]

On 4/18/2021 4:36 PM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Apr 2021 12:14:45 -0700, Don Y
> <blocked...@foo.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 4/17/2021 11:32 AM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>>>> Or, the details of how your vehicle runs and moves between two points.
>>>> Yet, probably have no problem DRIVING!
>>>
>>> I'm an engineer. I've rebuilt engines and transmissions top to bottom.
>>> Designed ignitions. My first closed-loop controller ran a 32,000
>>> horsepower engine.
>>
>> So, you DON'T know how YOUR CAR gets from point A to B.
>
> What could that question mean?

Your car is sitting in your garage. Explain to me, in detail,
how it gets you across town.

What exactly is happening when you press the start button?

How does the car know when the engine has "caught"?

What happens when you turn the steering wheel (ELECTRIC
power steering)?

Or, slam on the brakes? When does the ABS kick in?
Would you know if it was malfunctioning, if you didn't have
an idiot light to tell you that?

Yet, you have no problem getting across town in it. Despite
your understanding of it boiling down to nothing more
detailed than "spark + fuel"...

[Bill Sloman]

On Monday, April 19, 2021 at 9:36:21 AM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Apr 2021 12:14:45 -0700, Don Y
> <blocked...@foo.invalid> wrote:
>
> >On 4/17/2021 11:32 AM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> >>> Or, the details of how your vehicle runs and moves between two points.
> >>> Yet, probably have no problem DRIVING!
> >>
> >> I'm an engineer. I've rebuilt engines and transmissions top to bottom.
> >> Designed ignitions. My first closed-loop controller ran a 32,000
> >> horsepower engine.
> >
> >So, you DON'T know how YOUR CAR gets from point A to B.
> What could that question mean?

It is open-ended.

> >I could open your hood, ask you to turn away, and you'd never be able to start the car, again. Let alone figure out *why*.
> >
> I fix things. I make things work.

But you don't seem to be all that good at working out why or how they work.

> I'd never turn my back on you.

Distrust isn't a great substitute for comprehension

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[whit3rd]

Oh, your laptop does electric thresholds and logic functions, not math; only with
a lot of software, does a numeric output get to the display. While it's Turing-complete,
it is NOT a Turing machine, it has lots of other functionality.

A cat brain does neural thresholds and behavioral functions, not math; the display
is ... feline behaviors. The fact that the brain isn't computer-similar doesn't mean it
doesn't do mathematical operations. Heck, a slide rule is nothing like a Turing machine,
but it "does math".

[Bill Sloman]

On Monday, April 19, 2021 at 5:39:51 PM UTC+10, whit3rd wrote:
> On Sunday, April 18, 2021 at 9:28:25 AM UTC-7, bitrex wrote:
> > On 4/18/2021 5:45 AM, whit3rd wrote:
> > > On Saturday, April 17, 2021 at 7:39:28 AM UTC-7, bitrex wrote:
>
>
> > >> Cats judge distances and make jumps successfully all the time, they
> > >> don't have any mathematical ability and never will.
> > >
> > > Yeah, but they also analyze odors (as do dogs) with exquisite
> > > precision. That means they compute correlations of the
> > > various aroma receptors with memorized patterns, which in
> > > a mechanism for chemosensing is a sophisticated
> > > mathematical analysis. Sniffing around the garden,
> > > those cats are doing a high-throughput bunch of multiply-accumulates.
> > >
> > There's little evidence human or animal brains work like a Turing
> > machine. And if returning results of functions put into memory by humans

> > is "doing math" then my laptop is among the best mathematicians in the world.

>
> Oh, your laptop does electric thresholds and logic functions, not math; only with
> a lot of software, does a numeric output get to the display. While it's Turing-complete,
> it is NOT a Turing machine, it has lots of other functionality.
>
> A cat brain does neural thresholds and behavioral functions, not math; the display
> is ... feline behaviors. The fact that the brain isn't computer-similar doesn't mean it
> doesn't do mathematical operations. Heck, a slide rule is nothing like a Turing machine,
> but it "does math".

It does arithmetic - specifically multiplication - but only in the hands of somebody who knows what they are doing and can read its markings to turn them into results.

A human brain can be used as a Turing machine - we can read paper tape and act on the instructions encoded in the tape. How it does that is not understood in detail, but Turing machines all the way down would work.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[judge...@iudeia.empire]

On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 22:59:36 -0700, Don Y wrote:

> On 4/16/2021 10:04 PM, whit3rd wrote:
>> On Friday, April 16, 2021 at 8:33:01 PM UTC-7, John S wrote:
>>> On 4/16/2021 12:35 PM, Don Y wrote:
>>
>>>> How would you measure the size of the earth BEFORE there were
>>>> rockets?
>>
>>> Like Eratosthenes did in the 3rd century B.C.
>>
>> Yeah, there's a video on that...<https://youtu.be/yRY2SkMTafc>
>
> The lesson is that you don't need to be EXACT to be "right".
> I think too many people see math as ONE correct answer and a myriad of
> INCORRECT answers. I think that's a consequence of how it is taught;
> here's an equation, solve it!
>
...

Bollocks!

In mathematics, or, at least, in problems that use mathematics as the
primary tool, there is the one and only one correct answer to a given
question.

[John S]

+1

[Don Y]

Reading comprehension apparently not one of your strong suits!

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, April 23, 2021 at 10:47:07 PM UTC+10, Don Y wrote:
> On 4/23/2021 5:01 AM, judge...@iudeia.empire wrote:
> > On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 22:59:36 -0700, Don Y wrote:
> >
> >> On 4/16/2021 10:04 PM, whit3rd wrote:
> >>> On Friday, April 16, 2021 at 8:33:01 PM UTC-7, John S wrote:
> >>>> On 4/16/2021 12:35 PM, Don Y wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>> How would you measure the size of the earth BEFORE there were
> >>>>> rockets?
> >>>
> >>>> Like Eratosthenes did in the 3rd century B.C.
> >>>
> >>> Yeah, there's a video on that...<https://youtu.be/yRY2SkMTafc>
> >>
> >> The lesson is that you don't need to be EXACT to be "right".
> >> I think too many people see math as ONE correct answer and a myriad of
> >> INCORRECT answers. I think that's a consequence of how it is taught;
> >> here's an equation, solve it!
> >

> > Bollocks!
> >
> > In mathematics, or, at least, in problems that use mathematics as the primary tool, there is the one and only one correct answer to a given
> > question.
>
> Reading comprehension apparently not one of your strong suits!

And mathematics isn't one of yours.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

On Fri, 23 Apr 2021 12:01:35 -0000 (UTC), judge...@iudeia.empire
wrote:

What is the square root of 16?

[George Herold]

+4 and -4. But the -4 doesn't make a lot of sense sometimes.
You give me four apples, for four days.
You take away four apples.... (for some negative days?) And I end up with 16?

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

Sure. The square root of apples doesn't make a lot of sense.

The square root of volts-squared does.

[Don Y]

Which one do you want?

What is the square root of *17*. Remember, I want *THE* SOLE ANSWER.

We'll be waiting...

[I won't even consider asking what the circumference of a particular
circle happens to be!]

How many 1023.45 ohm resistors do you find *specified* in designs?
How many folks actually *measure* the resistance of the component
they install in a particular board site? How many 10-turn pots?

Weren't you "doing math" when you selected those components?
Didn't you get *an* answer? Yet, likely chose to use a component
that was "close enough".

After high school, we rarely (if ever) encounter "solve for X"
questions. There's always a context that makes a *range* of solutions
"correct".

4.12, 4.123105, 4.1231056256176605498214098559741

Most people can't handle more than two digits of precision, in their
heads. So, unless they're extremely lucky, all of that "math"
they are doing is INCORRECT. Yet, they can estimate what it will cost
for a meal at a restaurant. Or, how many minutes until they get to
their destination. Or even how long it will be before they are seated!

Vaccinating nurse told me: "It's 10:09. So, you can leave at 10:26"
(OK, so you can't add two digit numbers in your head? Regardless,
*I* know when I can leave -- because I *can*!)

[And, I got up from my seat at 10:23:45 as I had estimated it would take 15
seconds for me to arrive at the "exit gatekeeper" -- even though she clearly
saw me stand up *before* the appointed time! If they were sticklers for
"15.00" minutes, then they would have recorded the time of my injection
to greater precision!]

[judge...@iudeia.empire]

4

Square root is a function defined over non-negative real numbers, giving
non-negative values.

Whilst, equation x^2 = 16 has two roots, +4 and -4.

But, how about this: You want some cash from you bank account,
and you ask for 150 dollars. Your account is duly charged
for 150 dollars, and you are given seven 20$ notes.

Is it still that it does not have to be exact to be right?

[Piotr Wyderski]

jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

> https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/15/california-weighs-equitable-math-goal-obtaining-correct-answer-racist/
>
> There's a lot of this sort of thing going around.

Not only in the US and not only in math. Behold:

https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/oxford-university-decolonising-music-syllabus/

We are doomed.

> and euro-centric

Euro-centric??? What do they mean and what is wrong with that, anyway?

Best regards, Piotr

[ABLE1]

Three travelers register at a hotel and are told that their rooms will
cost $10 each so they pay $30. Later the clerk realizes that he made a
mistake and should have only charged them $25. He gives a bellboy $5 to
return to them but the bellboy is dishonest and gives them each only $1,
keeping $2 for himself. So each man paid $9 each, and $9 times 3 equals
$27 and the bellboy kept $2. Simple math is now $27 plus $2 equals $29.
What happened to the other dollar of the original $30?

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

On Fri, 23 Apr 2021 09:59:27 -0700, Don Y
<blocked...@foo.invalid> wrote:

>On 4/23/2021 7:37 AM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>> On Fri, 23 Apr 2021 12:01:35 -0000 (UTC), judge...@iudeia.empire
>> wrote:
>
>>> Bollocks!
>>>
>>> In mathematics, or, at least, in problems that use mathematics as the
>>> primary tool, there is the one and only one correct answer to a given
>>> question.
>>
>> What is the square root of 16?
>
>Which one do you want?

The one and only correct answer.

[Don Y]

On 4/23/2021 7:26 PM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Apr 2021 09:59:27 -0700, Don Y
> <blocked...@foo.invalid> wrote:
>
>> On 4/23/2021 7:37 AM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>>> On Fri, 23 Apr 2021 12:01:35 -0000 (UTC), judge...@iudeia.empire
>>> wrote:
>>
>>>> Bollocks!
>>>>
>>>> In mathematics, or, at least, in problems that use mathematics as the
>>>> primary tool, there is the one and only one correct answer to a given
>>>> question.
>>>
>>> What is the square root of 16?
>>
>> Which one do you want?
>
> The one and only correct answer.

There is a correct answer -- but it does not refer to one and only one *value*!

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

On Fri, 23 Apr 2021 17:32:59 +0000 (UTC), judge...@iudeia.empire

Funny coincidence, but wiki addressed that same case:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_root

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

On Fri, 23 Apr 2021 19:41:45 +0200, Piotr Wyderski
<pete...@neverland.mil> wrote:

>jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>
>> https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/15/california-weighs-equitable-math-goal-obtaining-correct-answer-racist/
>>
>> There's a lot of this sort of thing going around.
>
>Not only in the US and not only in math. Behold:
>
>https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/oxford-university-decolonising-music-syllabus/
>
>We are doomed.

We are becoming more valuable as all the kids are becoming idiots. The
geography and sociology grads can groom our yards and babysit our
pets.

>
> > and euro-centric
>
>Euro-centric??? What do they mean and what is wrong with that, anyway?

All those culture warriors are wearing jeans and shoes and bras and
toting cell phones and living in houses with electricity and clean hot
and cold water.

If they get a strep infection, they aren't going to a traditional
healer, they want penicillin.

[Don Y]

On 4/23/2021 7:39 PM, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Apr 2021 19:41:45 +0200, Piotr Wyderski
> <pete...@neverland.mil> wrote:
>
>> jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>>
>>> https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/15/california-weighs-equitable-math-goal-obtaining-correct-answer-racist/
>>>
>>> There's a lot of this sort of thing going around.
>>
>> Not only in the US and not only in math. Behold:
>>
>> https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/oxford-university-decolonising-music-syllabus/
>>
>> We are doomed.
>
> We are becoming more valuable as all the kids are becoming idiots. The
> geography and sociology grads can groom our yards and babysit our
> pets.

No, we are becoming more reliant on those kids as they will be the ones
who work in the pharmacies, hospital admission offices, billing departments,
call centers, restaurant servers/chefs, etc.

"Oh, yeah... I remember you said the customer had a tomato allergy! Sorry!"

Even the "smart ones" are tied to automated devices to give them the
answers that they should be able to intuit.

So, any knee-jerk actions are likely to have an equal chance of being
absolutely wrong as well as right. "Taser, Taser, Taser -- Ooops!"

[Sit in on a hospital committee's review of "anomalous treatment events"
and listen to the sorts of screw ups that led to the issue coming to
their attention. You'll never want to spend a day in a hospital
WITHOUT an advocate by your side!]

[Bill Sloman]

On Saturday, April 24, 2021 at 12:39:09 PM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Apr 2021 19:41:45 +0200, Piotr Wyderski
> <pete...@neverland.mil> wrote:
>
> >jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> >
> >> https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/15/california-weighs-equitable-math-goal-obtaining-correct-answer-racist/
> >>
> >> There's a lot of this sort of thing going around.
> >
> >Not only in the US and not only in math. Behold:
> >
> >https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/oxford-university-decolonising-music-syllabus/
> >
> >We are doomed.
>
> We are becoming more valuable as all the kids are becoming idiots. The
> geography and sociology grads can groom our yards and babysit our pets.

Odd that Socrates is claimed have said much the same thing around 400BC. He does seem to have been quoting something that had been around for a few hundred years even then.

"“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”

> > > and euro-centric
> >
> >Euro-centric??? What do they mean and what is wrong with that, anyway?
>
> All those culture warriors are wearing jeans and shoes and bras and
> toting cell phones and living in houses with electricity and clean hot
> and cold water.
>
> If they get a strep infection, they aren't going to a traditional healer, they want penicillin.

Of course most strains of streptocci are penicillin resistant these days. A cephalosporin might be a better choice. Penicillin might be the traditional choice.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[judge...@iudeia.empire]

On Fri, 23 Apr 2021 19:29:19 -0700, jlarkin wrote:

>>>>
>>>>
>>> What is the square root of 16?
>>
>>
>>4
>>
>>Square root is a function defined over non-negative real numbers, giving
>>non-negative values.
>
> Funny coincidence, but wiki addressed that same case:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square_root

We had very strict teachers.

[judge...@iudeia.empire]

On Fri, 23 Apr 2021 14:30:11 -0400, ABLE1 wrote:


>>
>>
> Three travelers register at a hotel and are told that their rooms will
> cost $10 each so they pay $30. Later the clerk realizes that he made a
> mistake and should have only charged them $25. He gives a bellboy $5 to
> return to them but the bellboy is dishonest and gives them each only $1,
> keeping $2 for himself. So each man paid $9 each, and $9 times 3 equals
> $27 and the bellboy kept $2. Simple math is now $27 plus $2 equals $29.
> What happened to the other dollar of the original $30?

That is a very old one.

The sum goes like this 3*9 = 25+2

[Don Y]

Or, 3*9 + the three singles in the guests pockets = 30.

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 08:13:58 -0700, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com

wrote:

>https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/15/california-weighs-equitable-math-goal-obtaining-correct-answer-racist/
>
>There's a lot of this sort of thing going around.
>

>This sort of thing, and the shutdowns, is going to drive a lot of kids
>into private schools, to the detriment of public schools. A new
>segregation in the making.
>
>My high school was one of the first magnet schools in the USA, Ben
>Franklin in New Orleans. A committee of rabid professional activists
>want to rename it because Franklin owned a couple of slaves; later in
>life he was an active abolitionist.
>
>Most of the alumni say that if it's renamed, they will donate no more.
>
>The same sort of activist nonsense is invading music and science and
>STEM education, the idea of cultural dominance, basically guilt
>tripping as a profession.
>
>A minority of motivated kids will still do hard math and design
>electronics that works. The real damage will be to the more average
>kid. Imagine a technician who was educated to believe that math and
>science are not objective, namely racist and euro-centric, that there
>is no right answer.

More fun:

Google newton physics racist

[Martin Brown]

On 23/04/2021 15:37, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Apr 2021 12:01:35 -0000 (UTC), judge...@iudeia.empire
> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 22:59:36 -0700, Don Y wrote:
>>
>>> On 4/16/2021 10:04 PM, whit3rd wrote:
>>>> On Friday, April 16, 2021 at 8:33:01 PM UTC-7, John S wrote:
>>>>> On 4/16/2021 12:35 PM, Don Y wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>> How would you measure the size of the earth BEFORE there were
>>>>>> rockets?
>>>>
>>>>> Like Eratosthenes did in the 3rd century B.C.
>>>>
>>>> Yeah, there's a video on that...<https://youtu.be/yRY2SkMTafc>
>>>
>>> The lesson is that you don't need to be EXACT to be "right".
>>> I think too many people see math as ONE correct answer and a myriad of
>>> INCORRECT answers. I think that's a consequence of how it is taught;
>>> here's an equation, solve it!
>>>
>> ...
>>
>> Bollocks!
>>
>> In mathematics, or, at least, in problems that use mathematics as the
>> primary tool, there is the one and only one correct answer to a given
>> question.

There can easily be more than one way of obtaining that correct answer -
some of them quicker and much more elegant than others.

There can also be analytical approximations that are good enough for all
practical purposes even though they are known to be incorrect.

WKB integral approximation being a case in point. Merely good enough.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WKB_approximation

Or if you are really interested in the details:

http://people.bss.phy.cam.ac.uk/~emt1000/tp1/approx.pdf

Turbulence calculations are another area where approximations abound.

> What is the square root of 16?

Much more interesting here is what is the square root of -1?
(and the answer depends on how much mathematics you know)

That keystone answer has direct relevance for most electronics and all
modern signal processing. Euler's equation is particularly beautiful.

exp(i.pi) + 1 = 0

The electronic engineers answer is j since i was already used for current.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ntd0phhlp1t2nik/SidewalkGraffiti.JPG?raw=1

Kids these days.

[Spehro Pefhany]

On Thu, 29 Apr 2021 06:57:21 -0700, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com
wrote:

My favorite graffiti was in front of the main University of Toronto
library, a massive brutalist concrete structure in the vague shape of
a goose.

233°C


If you had a stack pass the 10th floor Romance Languages section had
some comfy chairs to bag some zeds.

https://preview.redd.it/mhu0dgol7yk51.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=c5065b1334fb1b959d60b1cc051ef5a299a5f3cd

--
Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

[Phil Hobbs]

They also use the opposite sign convention for Fourier transforms, so by
using j for EE calculations and i for physics and math you can easily
keep everything straight.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

[Phil Hobbs]

Given the vintage of that new-looking Caddy, that kid probably has kids
in college at this point.

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

One of my cusomers was a grad of UT and took me for a tour. It was
very nice in the old parts, wood paneling and such.

If you ever are in the neighborhood, the A D White library at Cornell
is one of the most beautiful rooms I've ever seen. Pull up an easy
chair near the window overlooking the river.

The Brat went to Cornell. It's a stunningly beautiful campus.

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

That pic is probably about 15 or so years old, uphill from our old
place on Judah Street. I parked up the hill to get exercize.