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Can we talk about me now? (Open bar thread #3,494)

Started by Juana, October 04, 2012, 04:31:11 PM

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Don Coyote

I'm going to sound crazy, but I think you have a shitty teacher.

LMNO


LMNO


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: American Jackal on October 06, 2012, 01:56:43 AM
I'm going to sound crazy, but I think you have a shitty teacher.

I have had that idea, but I don't think she is. I think she may just have a teaching style so radically different from what I'm used to that I don''t understand it at all. I THINK (and this is just a conjecture) that she teaches math like other teachers teach art; I think she is trying to get us to just FUCK WITH IT and throw things at the wall to see if they stick. This just happens to be at odds with all my former experiences with math teachers, who just want you to follow the rules and get it right.

Unfortunately, one of the things I love about math, after years of art, is that I can just follow the rules and get it right.

So I suspect that I have some learning to do, with this chick.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

I stopped at the office on the way home from the hospital

at the hospital they forgot to give me a soaky-thing to soak up the blood

I was at the office for so long that now the hem of my T-shirt is soaked in blood

Maybe I should go go a bar, see how that goes.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

I had to make so many phone calls tonight. The irony of it is that in between phone calls I was frantically texting my kids, where the fuck are you is everything ok, yeah, your mom is busy NOT TAKING CARE OF YOU while she files incident reports on a suicidal pre-teen whose mom was inexplicably unable to care for him.

Meanwhile, the doctors on the hill say they have this new cream that could cut my healing in half, while I leak blood and serum out of a 4 cm open wound with another 6 cm behind it

Something is wrong with EVERYTHING.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Nephew Twiddleton

Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on October 06, 2012, 04:19:10 AM
I forgot to post: It's Friday.





TO THE GAY BAR!

I tend to post "Friday Time" "FRIDAY TIME" or "THANK FUCKING GOD FRIDAY TIME" to my Facebook status.

If you like we can have a weekly race to post our respective things here in Open Bar.
Strange and Terrible Organ Laminator of Yesterday's Heavy Scene
Sentence or sentence fragment pending

Soy El Vaquero Peludo de Oro

TIM AM I, PRIMARY OF THE EXTRA-ATMOSPHERIC SIMIANS

Nephew Twiddleton

Quote from: Nephew Twiddleton on October 06, 2012, 05:30:47 AM
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on October 06, 2012, 04:19:10 AM
I forgot to post: It's Friday.





TO THE GAY BAR!

I tend to post "Friday Time" "FRIDAY TIME" or "THANK FUCKING GOD FRIDAY TIME" to my Facebook status.

If you like we can have a weekly race to post our respective things here in Open Bar.

"Thursday Time" is the ambivalent realization that I got paid, I have band practice, and I have one more work day left.
Strange and Terrible Organ Laminator of Yesterday's Heavy Scene
Sentence or sentence fragment pending

Soy El Vaquero Peludo de Oro

TIM AM I, PRIMARY OF THE EXTRA-ATMOSPHERIC SIMIANS

Freeky

It's Saturday morning.

TO THE BED IN WHICH I SHALL ENDEAVOR TO SLEEP ALL DAY!

Verbal Mike

Quote from: A Very Hairy Monkey In An Ill-Fitting Tunic on October 06, 2012, 05:04:19 AM
Quote from: American Jackal on October 06, 2012, 01:56:43 AM
I'm going to sound crazy, but I think you have a shitty teacher.

I have had that idea, but I don't think she is. I think she may just have a teaching style so radically different from what I'm used to that I don''t understand it at all. I THINK (and this is just a conjecture) that she teaches math like other teachers teach art; I think she is trying to get us to just FUCK WITH IT and throw things at the wall to see if they stick. This just happens to be at odds with all my former experiences with math teachers, who just want you to follow the rules and get it right.

Unfortunately, one of the things I love about math, after years of art, is that I can just follow the rules and get it right.

So I suspect that I have some learning to do, with this chick.
I totally hear you, but I suspect that if this teacher truly sees math as art, she has the right of it, and is a rare and special snowflake in that. Are you familiar with Lockhart's Lament? (http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html)
IIRC, the gist of it is that teaching math as "just following the rules" is as silly as it would be to do the same with art, except that with math it's the norm. As a mathematician, Lockhart sees math as the purest form of art (because it is as abstract as humanly possible, meaning everything is potentially possible.) But it's been a few years since I read it, so I'm probably remembering it kinda wrong.
Unless stated otherwise, feel free to copy or reproduce any text I post anywhere and any way you like. I will never throw a hissy-fit over it, promise.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: VERBL on October 06, 2012, 02:05:00 PM
Quote from: A Very Hairy Monkey In An Ill-Fitting Tunic on October 06, 2012, 05:04:19 AM
Quote from: American Jackal on October 06, 2012, 01:56:43 AM
I'm going to sound crazy, but I think you have a shitty teacher.

I have had that idea, but I don't think she is. I think she may just have a teaching style so radically different from what I'm used to that I don''t understand it at all. I THINK (and this is just a conjecture) that she teaches math like other teachers teach art; I think she is trying to get us to just FUCK WITH IT and throw things at the wall to see if they stick. This just happens to be at odds with all my former experiences with math teachers, who just want you to follow the rules and get it right.

Unfortunately, one of the things I love about math, after years of art, is that I can just follow the rules and get it right.

So I suspect that I have some learning to do, with this chick.
I totally hear you, but I suspect that if this teacher truly sees math as art, she has the right of it, and is a rare and special snowflake in that. Are you familiar with Lockhart's Lament? (http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html)
IIRC, the gist of it is that teaching math as "just following the rules" is as silly as it would be to do the same with art, except that with math it's the norm. As a mathematician, Lockhart sees math as the purest form of art (because it is as abstract as humanly possible, meaning everything is potentially possible.) But it's been a few years since I read it, so I'm probably remembering it kinda wrong.

That was a very interesting essay, and he makes a number of good points. What he, unfortunately, fails to recognize is that what he finds interesting and fun is pretty much exactly what I find boring and dry. He makes the very typical mistake of assuming that all people enjoy learning in the same ways he enjoys learning (false consensus) and, sadly, proceeds to spend some time more or less bashing scientists for their scientific curiosity, as if science and art are opposites. They are not opposite, and the artistic mind, which asks "can I create?" is often the same as the scientific mind, which asks "what can I do with this creation?"

The rivalry between mathematicians and scientists seems to be old and possibly permanent. Mathematicians seem to view scientists as hopelessly pragmatic; a mathematician says "Squeeeee! I made a pretty thing with numbers!" and a scientist looks and says "Squeeeee! Look what I can DO with it!"

The "Art vs. Science" categories he seems to want to divide things into are simply invalid. I've been an artist for roughly my entire life, and a career artist for nearly ten years. I started training in the art I'm most skilled at about 21 years ago. In order to get as good as I am, I had to learn a phenomenal amount of chemistry and physics, but I learned them primarily not in words, but visually and through touch.  Where I agree with him is that while children need to learn the "boring" facts and formulas, the best way for them to learn that is through play. It's through play that you can "see" the math in your head... well, that might be false consensus again. It's through play that I can see it in mine. Knowing the science allows you to express it as art.

Take his example of the triangle; he is glum that it is reduced to just a formula. Honestly, on their own, neither the nifty visualization nor the formula do much for me. It's not until the two are combined that they become exciting - when I can visualize WHY the area is 1/2 base times height, because that unlocks things I can actually do with it. Lockhart, like many mathematicians I have met, seems to be under the impression that if only people understood why math is fun for mathematicians, everyone would find math fun. I like math. I find it fun. But I find it fun mostly, if not entirely, because it helps me interpret the world around me.

I am sure that Lockhart is right about the way we teach math, and the way we SHOULD teach math. I'm sure we would have  more mathematicians if we taught it better. But for many of us, doing math games and puzzles and explorations all day is almost exactly as fun as being plunked into a room full of musical instruments for eight hours, which is to say, not fun at all.


"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Also, I find mathematicians fixation on "purity" pretty weird. :lulz: It comes up a lot. Have you noticed?
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

I guess I should also confess that, other than the one ill-fated (don't ask) semester in Junior High on the island, I didn't have any schooling after 3rd grade and took my first math class in college, so I wasn't exposed to any of the boring whatever it is that kids get.

Frankly, I think kids should learn to count and do basic math in kindergarten, and then math should be an elective until senior year. The fact that I was raised in the woods by wild badgers and nonetheless was able to learn the entirely of high school math in three terms really drives home how absurd it is that we for some reason spend years teaching children things that they could learn in weeks, and probably far more easily than my aging and occasionally damaged brain did.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: A Very Hairy Monkey In An Ill-Fitting Tunic on October 06, 2012, 05:11:26 AM
I had to make so many phone calls tonight. The irony of it is that in between phone calls I was frantically texting my kids, where the fuck are you is everything ok, yeah, your mom is busy NOT TAKING CARE OF YOU while she files incident reports on a suicidal pre-teen whose mom was inexplicably unable to care for him.

Meanwhile, the doctors on the hill say they have this new cream that could cut my healing in half, while I leak blood and serum out of a 4 cm open wound with another 6 cm behind it

Something is wrong with EVERYTHING.

I feel a horror story building.  Whether I like it or not.

I hope things shape up.

TGRR,
Off to get the bullet hole in his car fixed.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.