XPost: alt.home.repair   
   From: keith_nuttle@sbcglobal.net   
      
   On 12/27/2021 1:29 PM, rbowman wrote:   
      
   >   We used Thomas and his first edition came out in 1952 and is in the   
   > 14th edition now. I forget the author of the differential equations text.   
      
   I used to read my father's physics books where I was amazed that in the   
   twenties they taught math the way we currently teach high school students.   
      
   I loved them.   
   Because I could understand them.   
      
   My college calculus and physics textbooks just gave us the equations for the   
   most part and then we had to learn how the game worked of applying them.   
      
   But in the olden days, they didn't do it that way even in college textbooks.   
      
   It may be they didn't regularly teach calculus in high school in those days.   
   Maybe that's why calculus started from the basics even in college textbooks.   
      
   > I haven't had a use for it for many years but I've started playing   
   > around with Arduinos and things that move around in the real world so I   
   > guessing I'll get back into it sooner or later if for nothing more than   
   > implementing PID controls in software.   
      
   You hit the nail on the head as to what I think is wrong with the way math   
   is taught, both at the college level and at the high school level today.   
      
   They hand a high school kid a test comprised of twenty five quadratic   
   equations (or whatever) that need to be solved (mechanically) to pass.   
      
   Yet not a single one of those equations was stated as a real world problem.   
   So they are just meaningless equations to these poor high school kids.   
   Why should they care about solving a bunch of meaningless equations?   
   I don't blame them for not being at all interested in playing the game.   
      
   The kids who excel are either those who just care about getting good grades,   
   or, more usefully, those who feel that the teachers must know something that   
   the students don't know in that they'll NEED this skill in the future.   
      
   Well, I took calculus in college. I never needed it. Did you?   
   (Of course I'm not a mechanical engineer or a rocket scientist but neither   
   are most people. Did you ever really NEED calculus in your entire life?)   
      
   At least physics is taught as problem sets.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)