Think in Math, Write in Code

Re:Think in Math, Write in Code by Junk_Collector on Thursday July 18, 2019 @09:29AM (#20469534)

It's also worth thinking about that you don't really learn math in primary school so much as you learn numbers and computation, so when a teacher says a child is good at math they usually mean good at numbers. Very few teachers understand math well enough to identify who would be good at it and a lot of unfortunate students find this out when they get to college.

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Re:Think in Math, Write in Code by geomark on Thursday July 18, 2019 @10:45AM (#20470338)

Sure, I can see that. But isn't it similar with language and other subjects? You just learn the basics, nothing deep, no turns of phrases, little expressiveness.

Perhaps there is little correlation between those who excel at coding at a young age and those who go on to be good programmers when they get older. I just find it interesting that at this young age I see a correlation between coding skills and language skills more than math (really just arithmetic) skills.

Another observation was that we did the Hour of Code activity in December last year with Year 2 to Year 6 students (equivalent to Grade 1 to Grade 5 in the US). And in each group there was one or two student who really stood out. And every one of them was a girl. Small sample size of only about 100 students so maybe I shouldn't be wondering what is going on here.

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Re:Think in Math, Write in Code by justinmeiners on Thursday July 18, 2019 @01:38PM (#20472151)

Math is somewhat unique in that the high-school and early college version is not at all representative of the real thing. Its not "just a taste", its qualitatively different.

As the other comment above mentioned, I think this has to do with education of the teachers. Very few teachers know what math is either.

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