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Re:Poll: How much calculation work should be taught in schools? by jerf on Monday February 14, 2011 @01:05AM (#2215530)
Calculation is important, but not strictly because it contributes much to math, it's important because you ought to be able to do basic number manipulations in your head or you'll be taken for a ride in all kinds of ways. Bad sales pitches, obviously flawed political polemics, business plans that can't possibly fly, there's endless practical reasons to be able to do this stuff in your head rapidly and comfortably. Kids need to spend about the same time learning calculations, but it also needs to be somehow deprioritized so it is made more clear that it is in fact "calculation" and not "math".

You need comfort with numbers to learn math, but as any number of math professors can demonstrate on demand, you can get an awfully long way with single-digit multiplication and addition and not being able to do much else. It's the rare algebra problem that has you multiplying 37 by 23 if it isn't explicitly a fraction problem.

I'd support splitting the terminology up.

Or I would support a terminology split, if I had any confidence there was anybody left in the education system that actually has any clue about what "math" is anymore. Until you solve this problem it's all moving deck chairs around on the Titanic. And I mean the Titanic of today, sitting there long sunk, not the usual metaphorical sinking Titanic.

Re:Poll: How much calculation work should be taught in schools? by solipsist on Monday February 14, 2011 @01:17AM (#2215572)
> ...if I had any confidence there was anybody left in the education system that actually has any clue about what "math" is anymore

Yes, I think you are right. Reminds me of Richard Feynman's views of the education system as expressed in his book, Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman.

http://books.google.com/books?id=7papZR4oVssC&lpg=PA60&#...