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Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth

By Murray Bourne, 13 Aug 2007

This is a thought-provoking video. Should we teach math via algorithms? Should we be concerned about whether students understand what they are doing, or whether they can just get the right answer? How does technology fit into this? Should 10 year-olds use calculators for multiplication?

I am left wondering whether McDermott is getting a commission from the book she is promoting...

It's worth getting to the end when she talks about why she is fired up over this topic. She took a math course a few years back and was amazed at the problems exhibited by recent high school graduates:

  • Inability to work alone (because of an emphasis on group work in schools)
  • Lack of math fluency
  • Lack of basic math skills
  • Dependence on calculators

She plugs the Singapore mathematics textbooks, too.

See the 6 Comments below.

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  1. Use simple calculator-like input in the following format (surround your math in backticks, or qq on tablet or phone):
    `a^2 = sqrt(b^2 + c^2)`
    (See more on ASCIIMath syntax); or
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    \( \int g dx = \sqrt{\frac{a}{b}} \)
    (This is standard simple LaTeX.)

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