Fractions are a stumbling block to learning math. Kids are turned off, confused and hate math right from the start, due to fractions. Very few other countries in the world use fractions (decimals are used instead), and we should get rid of them forever. In today's world, they are as old-fashioned as the slide rule. Even with a calculator, try adding a series of 20 or 30 mixed fractions quickly. You have to first convert each one to a decimal anyway, it's painfully slow and mistakes are common. Decimals are the only way to go. Tape measures and such should be modified to include decimals of an inch - not fractions!It's been a few years, but it seems to me algebra and calculus are full of, uh, fractional-like formulas and representations. Learning to manipulate fractions is essential to get through all that. No algebra and calculus means no physics. No physics, no science majors...if I remember correctly, chemistry and even genetics had lots of formulae that looked like fractions.
Has that all changed?
UPDATE: Not that I can tell! How do you do these with decimals? From Lesson 1:
12 comments:
Now this is funny! "Can you imagine the chaos in this country if our monetary system were based on dollars and fractions instead of hundredths of a dollar?"
Uhh - isn't 1/100th of a dollar a fraction? Heaven forbid we would have to rename the common quarter - to what I don't know. Maybe a .25? Or we could return to calling it "two bits" I suppose but then how would you know there are only "8 bits" in a dollar if you didn't use fractions?
I think it is easier to say a glass is 1/2 full than say .5 full or 50% full.
And this one "Even with a calculator, try adding a series of 20 or 30 mixed fractions quickly. You have to first convert each one to a decimal anyway, it’s painfully slow and mistakes are common. Decimals are the only way to go." Uhh - that wasn't the way I was taught - we never converted them to decimals to add them. You found the common denominator and then added them. Not rocket science!
And another one "Even the stock market finally got rid of fractions." This allowed for trading in cents rather than trading in 1/16ths so the spreads of the bid and ask could be tighter than 1/16th - that was a good thing, IMHO.
Wow - this guy is something else!
But he's an engineer who's been all over the world!
He's right about Singapore though. They're #1 and it's just good old memorization and drill.
Having done a lot of contract work at a Redmond based software company, I worked with a lot of people from other nations. I always figured I was working with the cream of the crop. I'd have to say that close to 30-40% of the people I worked with were not native Americans nor educated in American schools - and I'm sure you remember what Bill Gates had to say about the American education system.
At the deli counter: “I’ll have a zero point five zero pound of the Black Forest ham, a zero point two five pound of Swiss cheese, and one point seven five pounds of potato salad. Thanks.”
There's a concept floating around out there that he may find interesting. It's called the "least common denominator," or "LCD."
Very useful in adding fractions.
Actually I read where Bill Gates opened a "progressive" experimental school in the Seattle area that bombed because like this guy, he thinks you can somehow make it all fun, all day. The parents lined up to enroll the first year, then lined up to get them out the second.
Lots of surprising people drank the progressive ed Koolaid.
craig, tell me, have seen a calculus book lately? Did they make all the fractional type equations go away? Seriously, I'm gonna go check one out and see. I can't see how someone could navigate through Calc 1 without being able to manipulate all that. But it's been 25 years for me.
Wow, with a minor in Math from U of M...I haven't seen this stuff in a long time. Haven't used it either. Brings back nighthorseys.
Ayn Rand
For a second I thought this was a political post on the Democrats' math problem:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/118240
Newsweek
LOL!!
No, no, no. I refuse to live in a country where the McDonalds serve "Royales" with cheese.
Down with metrics! We want no foreign rulers.
Good old L'Hopital (although the first one doesn't need it)
This got me: "Just about everything man-made has been designed by using simple math: highways, cars, airplanes, bridges, buildings, roof trusses, beams, columns, machines, sports stadiums and super-structures like the Golden Gate Bridge and Seattle Space Needle. They all take a lot of math but trust me - it’s all quite simple and easy to use."
Really? Really? Suddenly tensor calculus is easy? The Navier-Stokes equations (non linear partial differential equations) yield to this buffoon's superior brain? I note he leaves anything to do with electronics off his list. Let's see you work out the sideband amplitudes for wideband FM without Bessel functions, Mr. Smartypants. Or how about the weights for the taps to implement a Butterworth filter in a DSP chip without a smidgen of Fourier analysis?
Anyone who says there's an easy route to a grasp of anything beyond arithmetic (which includes fractions. of course) is trying to sell you something.
Re:
craig said...
There's a concept floating around out there that he may find interesting. It's called the "least common denominator," or "LCD."
Very useful in adding fractions.
March 8, 2008 7:56 AM
It's also useful for comprehending certain political orientations---like liberalism.
Or, as President Lincoln once said, "You don't strengthen the weak, but weakening the strong."
Smiling at both of you, Hillary and Barack.
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