ThunderSnow.us

NASA has recently turned up a pile of meticulous notebooks kept by Werner von Braun during the fifties and sixties Space Race projects. They’re seeking ideas from the public about how best to digitize and catalog them.

From a comment here

When I have students who suggest that they’ll never use the basic algebra I teach them, I first ask them a question: when will they use the material they learned in biology in their lives? When will they use what they learned in their history class in their careers? What percent of the things they learned in school will they directly use in the workplace?

Then I explain one of my philosophies about math classes. The fact of the matter is that most people don’t retain all of the math that they’ve ever learned. For someone in a developmental math course it might be something like 50%. For a grad student, it might be something like 80% (as a former math grad student, I can tell you that I retained significantly less than that). So if we need someone to be very comfortable with arithmetic to function in society, stopping at the end of arithmetic won’t be enough for them to retain it. They’ll need a bit more in order to retain everything.

Since math does build on itself, we can start teaching these students algebra. In using algebra, students will be challenged to use their arithmetic skills in many different ways, forcing them to actually own arithmetic. It will give them the practice of not only performing arithmetic, but also knowing when it’s appropriate to use different operations.

Finally, the problem solving and even logic skills one employs in an algebra class are really a dimension higher than that in an arithmetic class. Being introduced to a different way of thinking (using variables to represent unknown quantities, as well as using symbolic manipulation) is immensely helpful in any sort of problem solving arena, whether or not it involves math. Everyone needs problem solving skills: if jobs didn’t require them, everything would be run 100% by computers.

After explaining this to the few argumentative students I get, they generally stop complaining. And they’re art students. Sure, they might not ever need to solve an optimization problem involving a system of inequalities, but learning how to do it reinforces many of the more basic skills they will use and improves the problem solving skills they will need.

1. Even with the delayed onset of true summer weather, I’ve been wanting to be outdoors and doing stuff more than indoors and doing stuff. This has been good for the yard work, but less good for the work work.
2. Yard work: The massive bittersweet invasion is being slowly pushed back, and a former vegetable garden being reclaimed from underneath it. We may have space to grow things next year. Also, I keep discovering berry bushes. If they do in fact produce berries, I’m going to be thrilled.
3. Work work these days is full of writing up a project into some sort of coherent manuscript. I am very excited about this. I am also very frustrated by this - it’s yet another case of something that I think I should be efficient at and yet am not. I understand that figuring out a workflow and stuff is going to have a learning curve. But I should be special enough to not need such a thing, right? *headdesk*
4. Other-work is full of planning for the summer class. I’m super excited about this. It was a blast last year.
5. There is knitting going on, but only a little bit. Classes being out for the summer leads to reduced time to knit. Writing and graph-making requires my hands.