Maths: "too scary", "time-consuming".

bnt

The Irish Times is reporting the results of an Engineers Ireland survey on attitudes to Maths in Leaving Certificate students. Quote:

When asked about their perception of maths, 41 per cent of ordinary-level students surveyed believed higher-level maths was “too time-consuming”, almost one-quarter said they found it “scary” and 21 per cent felt they wouldn’t need maths when they left school.
Fionnuala Kilbane, communications director at Engineers Ireland, said “It’s clear that bonus points on their own are not the solution to getting more students to choose higher-level maths.”
...
Ms Kilbane said, “The Government must do more around standards in maths teaching to ensure the smart economy has the requisite supply of graduates with strong maths skills.”

(Requisite supply of graduates? The technical graduates of today aren't all finding jobs, so just how many graduates make up a "requisite supply"? IMHO, if we're going to ask students to make the effort to study Maths and related subjects (e.g. Engineering) at university, we'd better be able to guarantee something really good afterwards, and that's not the case today.)

SuperInfinity

I don't see why they are always trying to push math on people anyway. If people don't like it or are no good at it then why not leave them be? 21% of ordinary level students say that they don't see how they would use it afterwards, and that's supposed to be a bad thing? They're probably right, in fact it's probably a much higher percentage. You can't turn someone into an engineer. It's like in soccer, you have to be trained early and then lots of people will still never make it.

I wouldn't agree that there should be any guarantee or forcing of fabricated jobs for graduates. It's time to get away from the mysticism and alleged infinite grandness and valuableness of math and science (or any other academic subject).

bnt

SuperInfinity wrote: »

I wouldn't agree that there should be any guarantee or forcing of fabricated jobs for graduates. It's time to get away from the mysticism and alleged infinite grandness and valuableness of math and science (or any other academic subject).

I don't agree that there should be, either - just that I think that's what would be required to get more LC students in to Maths, among other things. It's not going to happen, so I disagree with the Engineers Ireland spokesperson on that score.

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alan4cult

And it's guaranteed this Wednesday to hear the media going on about students failing maths/science in the LC. Every single year the LC results come out they always latch on to the maths/science grades. Even though they've got the facts there is no point in scaring future LC students out of HL maths.

Shelga

I am female, and just graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering. I don't know why Leaving Cert students don't seem to take to Maths, but it makes me sad and worried for the future of the country. To my mind, Maths is the single most important subject taught in school and its success or failure has far-reaching ramifications for the economy; most importantly, the attraction of FDI and the large multi-nationals.

I sometimes wonder why so few people study it at Honours level- tbh, it stumps me. It is really, really not that difficult to attain a D or C grade. It certainly doesn't require innate mathematical skill or more work than, for example, Honours English (which 64% studied at HL in 2009).

Maybe it's this idea that's propagated among students concerning its perceived level of difficulty, which increases fears about the subject. I certainly agree with Donegalfella about the need for good teachers in this area and the ridiculous implied notion that Irish is more important.

Speaking of which, I was recently informed that my degree allows me to teach Applied Maths, but not Maths, for some reason. Luckily I have no desire to become a teacher :pac:

johnmcdnl

I did higher maths for the leaving cert this year and found it ok once you could understand why you were doing when you started into a sum - the following methods didn't work for me at all as I feel like I have to understand something to be able to do it myself

the reason I think so few student do maths is because so many courses require it and a leaving cert without maths is no good attitude that's developed - so anyone who isn't strong at maths is going to obviously take the easy way out and get the pass at ordinary - there's no incentive to do the harder option and do higher maths and risk getting a college course at all if you do bad

then we have the problem of the bell curve graph marking schemes - X% must fail to fit the SEC's graph so the marking schemes are twisted and mangled to make sure the results fall into the graph - this is completely unjust and means that the lowest X% of students who actually attempted higher maths rather than take the easy way out end up failing despite them having far more initiative and perhaps drive to actually pass... this X% is going to have to repeat the leaving again to get their Maths qualification so they can get into pretty much any college course...

now I know that the SEC can't just pass everyone but surely they should make the marking scheme in advance and stick religiously to it every year - Maths is a subject where the marks can be allocated to each step as there's no subjectivity and having a defined marking scheme rather than an adjustable marking scheme to prevent "too many A's" every year would be by far a much fairer system and would make maths a far more approachable subject for the student who wants to get a pass in honours rather than taking the lazy way out and doing pass

that's why only 16% of students do honours maths from a students point of view...




as for why the standard of students is going down - well that's even easier again from a students point of view
the entire course is suited to people who learn methods off religiously and doesn't promote any thinking outside the box at all basically...
I was though how to do maths by learning methods off and matching method to sum and if I didn't know what method to use to try them all until one worked out pretty much - then when we had to study the probability sections of the course the "ace" students couldn't handle it at all and most of them hated it because learning from the book didn't work straight off on this topic - it required though and understanding - and though and understanding is too much hard work for students who want an A in honours maths - it's far easier to ignore those topics and learn the other questions and there methods off...

if the course was more focused on making students think and understand what was actually going on and why you do such and such the quality of students coming out with the B's would be far higher than those with B's today because you'd have to understand rather than learn things off - anything that is just being learned straight off should be scraped - it defeats the purpose of studying maths imo...

at least then anyone who comes out with a pretty high grade in maths will have an understanding and general interest in maths - not someone who's good at doing study plans...

that's my look at it from a students view anyways so

Eliot Rosewater

Yes, there certainly is a stigma attached to maths. I'm studying it at third level and get this stumped/surprised look every time I tell someone same. At second level that kind of stigma exists too: people just assume they can't do honours maths, without even giving it serious thought. Shelga's contrast with honours English was very to the point.


The issue of teaching methods is probably important. One can teach honours maths with a business degree, it seems, which is silly I think, considering how important a subject maths is.

Last year one of my friends failed his ordinary level pre-LC maths with a 21% result (F1??). We did 8 intensive one hour grinds, and he got a C2 in his finals. The thing I realised is that somewhere along the way, one of his teachers must have known he was doing terribly and must have done nothing about it. But that is anecdotal, though I now donegalfella has similar success stories.

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Valmont

It took Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities to shake off my maths stigma. I had some excellent grinds during the LC and got a B1 in pass level but I was always very wary of maths. I'm competent enough with stats from my degree but anything else is still tricky enough. It's like you all said, as soon as you move from the attitude of "I'm not innately good at maths" to "I have a brain and I'm going to figure this out" it's a quick learning curve.

Interesting side note- During my last lesson, I asked my maths grind teacher, a very elderly man, how he found studying maths at third level. He replied: "Oh no, my degree and Phd were in Greek and the Classics, maths is more of a hobby" !

bnt

Leaving Certificate results are out today, and the Irish Times is reporting that failure rates in science and maths confirm system fears.:

Only 16 per cent of students sat the higher-level maths paper while 4,300 failed the subject across all levels.

Well, at least that answers the "dumbing down" accusations .. hopefully. :rolleyes:

One thing that confuses me, though, is this bit:

The employers’ group Ibec said fewer than 50 per cent of maths teachers at second level have their main qualification in the subject.

Do you really need a degree in Maths, specifically, to teach Maths? I did Engineering, which (IMHO) gave me more than enough Maths to do that job at 2nd level, if I wanted it. (Which is not out of the question, actually.) Science graduates would be in a similar position.

SuperInfinity

bnt wrote: »

Leaving Certificate results are out today, and the Irish Times is reporting that failure rates in science and maths confirm system fears.:

Well, at least that answers the "dumbing down" accusations .. hopefully. :rolleyes:

One thing that confuses me, though, is this bit:

Do you really need a degree in Maths, specifically, to teach Maths? I did Engineering, which (IMHO) gave me more than enough Maths to do that job at 2nd level, if I wanted it. (Which is not out of the question, actually.) Science graduates would be in a similar position.

Not necessarily if they ditched the maths and physics part of it, I'm not sure you even need higher math to do Science. I did Engineering as well and I could easily teach it of course. Do they still have Text and Tests 4? Some of the questions in that I think would still puzzle me, that was a tough book.

I'm tired of the same old story every year anyway. Frankly it suits me just as well if everyone fails maths... less competition in employment.

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galwayash

donegalfella wrote: »

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Unfortunately, in a classroom of 30 students of varying abilities, it isn't possible to give the one-to-one attention that each student requires. And as our government continue to cut resources, classes are getting bigger.

Project Maths is being introduced nationwide this year and results in maths are going to improve drastically. However, its quite worrying that this is due to "dumbing down" of the curriculum and it will leave students with mathematical abilities at a huge disadvantage.

Eliot Rosewater

donegalfella wrote: »

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Fair dues to you donegalfella! It's a very good story and should provide inspiration for others in similar situations. It's also a great example of the power of good educators: obviously she wouldn't have done it without you. We will expect great things from your home-schooled daughter.

SuperInfinity

EDIT: Whoops, I somehow thought this was the forum "after hours", nevermind.

sipstrassi

Totally agree about a problem at primary level - how many times have you heard interviews with students getting their leaving results saying they are very bad at maths but everything else was great. And then they reveal they intend to go on and teach. Which means passing on their own dislike and fear. Children sense these things!

Accept some people won't use much maths after school but maths trains the brain to think, to figure things out. Which everyone needs.

This is why I disagree with bonus points for maths and all that malarky.
There is a strong attitude of being wary or scared of maths, and of people declaring "I'm not a maths person" nearly with pride. You don't find such announcements for any other subject at all. And this is being passed down.
I don't know how it should be done, but somewhere the attitude needs to be dropped, and a love of the subject passed on to primary school children.

I'm not as concerned about the qualifications. Obviously they need a maths qualification but being able to do something and being able to teach it are different matters...
I read some piece on it somewhere - I must find it again - where the author was comparing the current maths education to teaching art simply by paint-by-numbers without inspiring any real curiosity or puzzlement or creativity.
It's so much more interesting a subject when you present a problem and say, let's see how to solve this! Not throwing a bunch of numbers and symbols at them without any concept of what it means.

sipstrassi

Agree blue wolf!

Was discussing with my nephew his supposed inability to do any kind of maths.
Pointed out he can draw anything he can see - asked him how he does this and he realised he uses maths!

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ardmacha

Even in its dumbed down condition maths does take more time than some of the other subjects on the Leaving Cert, subjects that lack any serious academic content. People feel that can get points more easily by doing other things. Bonus points are simply an attempt to give points pro rata to the work required.

But as several posters have said, there is a social conditioning that even able students shouldn't really be able to understand maths, unless they are out and out nerds. So even bright students lack confidence in their ability to do maths, and not all have Donegelfella type help.

This attitude problem needs to be addressed, through the teachers and perhaps better maths materials for smaller kids. Sadly many of the problems with third level in Ireland have their origin much earlier, bias against maths, rote learning, lowered expectations in particular social classes etc.

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Tears in Rain

donegalfella wrote: »

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Reminds me of an old C.P. Snow quote:

"A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?
I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question — such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? — not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had."

Anonymo

I agree with a lot of comments here. I'd be a bit worried about the standard of the new project maths course. The part 2 paper this year looked a very poor standard - more a JC hons rather than LC hons paper. Since it's still in the pilot stage this hopefully isn't a sign of things to come. It's probably a good thing to get more applications into the course. However, making things too 'wordy' distracts from the main goal of building up problem solving skills in people. I'd imagine most people would have been happy with tweaking the previous course to include more applications rather than such a drastic (and more importantly experimental) overhaul.

It seems most people here have the opinion that the main problems with maths are two-fold: 1) the fear of maths instilled from an early age in students and 2) the standard of the teaching. These problems are fairly dependent on each other. So since it's difficult to deal with the first it's the second that should be tackled. There are a couple of ways to deal with the standard in teaching. There are loads of engineers out of work right now that would make fantastic teachers - and who could emphasise real world applications of maths. It's easier said than done but the practice of allowing unqualified teachers, in particular subjects, to teach those subjects must be addressed. The initiative of giving modules in univesities to maths students to secondary level schools would also help. Another way to address the interest of people in maths would be to have university level lecturers give occasional talks to secondary schools showing aspects of their work that can be understood using secondary level maths. I know many lads that went to school with me that had no interest in maths until much later when they decided to do an evening astrophysics course where they saw how a half-decent grasp of maths allowed them to understand things like star formation.

Anyway sorry about the length of this rant. The points are meant to induce debate rather than be definitive statements. I'd be interested to hear any initiatives others have to do with the teaching of maths and/or criticisms of the points I made above.

galwayash

Anonymo wrote: »

There are loads of engineers out of work right now that would make fantastic teachers

I don't understand the recent obsession everyone has with making engineers maths teachers. There are also plenty of people in the financial sector who could teach maths. Or what about just recruiting maths graduates? There are plenty of them in the country.

I do agree with you about project maths. The standard is very low. And I think removing vectors is a big mistake. However, introducing probability in junior cycle might develop an interest in some students.

I try use resources that will help my students appreciate maths however the curriculum is so packed, there's not much time for this. I often give them puzzles to solve in their own time because this helps develop their problem solving skills. Monty Hall, Bridges of Konigsberg, Towers of Hanoi: all very famous puzzles and they're doing maths without realising it!!

deandean

As an employer I noticed the "dumbing down" of grades both at 2nd level and at 3rd level for 10+ years before the issue hit the headlines.

I am a strong promoter of mathematics at second level.

I'd advocate a 25% increase in 2nd level teaching hours at maths, replacing some of those wimp subjests like Social Sciences, etc.

Grinds, maths "boot camps", Easter revision classes etc do seem to boost results and should be promoted.

The core problem I see is that a lot of 2nd level students are taking the easier subjects: -wimps more interested in short term socialising instead of investing their time and energy in their future. Not everyone of course!! but a sizeable minority.

SuperInfinity

Q. How do you completely mess up the educational system for maths and turn people off it for life?

A. Make it so hard and the stakes of failing so high that only 16% of students who do their leaving cert even dare to take the higher level paper, thus leaving 84% of the country (plue the people who didn't go onto leaving cert) without a basic education in calculus. Even many developing countries probably have better statistics than this.

I got an A1 in maths but that was after slaving over it for hours and hours and hours. I was determined to get an A1 from the start and yet the more I did, the more I seemed to have to do until it got to a crazy level. The first year of maths in college barely goes past the leaving cert syllabus, it's too hard.

They should have a medium-level paper that would cut out about half or a third of the higher-level subjects and have the questions a little bit easier, and people shouldn't fail the whole leaving cert if they fail the exam.

Anonymo

galwayash wrote: »

I don't understand the recent obsession everyone has with making engineers maths teachers. There are also plenty of people in the financial sector who could teach maths. Or what about just recruiting maths graduates? There are plenty of them in the country.

Absolutely. The argument about engineers was simply to pick one example. Many in the financial sector would also be well suited. Maths graduates would be the ideal but I think if they come through this route they should have an honours maths degree (or equivalent) which is not always the case for those that carry onto teaching.

SuperInfinity wrote: »

Q. How do you completely mess up the educational system for maths and turn people off it for life?

A. Make it so hard and the stakes of failing so high that only 16% of students who do their leaving cert even dare to take the higher level paper, thus leaving 84% of the country (plue the people who didn't go onto leaving cert) without a basic education in calculus. Even many developing countries probably have better statistics than this.

I must disagree with the course being too difficult. The old course (present course for some) had parts a, b, c. It was the part c that differentiated between the best. Many of these may have been too difficult for the 84% of students. But these parts only accounted for around 20% of the exam. Almost everyone should have been able to do parts a and most do part b. This should ensure a pass. I've given grinds to plenty of leaving cert students - others here like donegalfella have shown the big advantage of one on one help for some people so I'd be interested in his thoughts on this exchange. Some of these were pretty good, others were quite poor but given the simple advice to attempt all the part a and bs they found that passing the subject was not the insurmountable challenge they had thought. I don't think this point is emphasised enough. I find it somewhat depressing that the part c questions have more or less been eliminated in the new maths course.

Chaotic_Forces

When I was in school a few years and doing higher maths, I dropped it. I had to; it was how it was taught that was the problem. In my school one of two things happened: we'd use the examples in the book to work out the problems and the teacher assumed we knew how to do it then (in reality we just learned to follow instructions and would fail without the examples, like in the Leaving Cert) or the teacher would think just because one or two people constantly got everything right that they taught it and would move on.

As for needing higher level maths, we don't need everything that's taught. If you want to be a chemist, I doubt you need to learn about a matrix. I think that because you learn so much maths in higher level (an extra 2/3 books) is idiotic.
Once you've proved that you can get a grasp of maths you shouldn't be forced to strain yourself to take the higher level just for points or because a college course requires it. A better idea would be for colleges to say "take this course for 2/3 weeks during the summer, if you pass it then we think you can handle the maths in the course", instead of "oh you didn't manage to learn 3 books of maths and get a B or higher while trying to learn 5 other courses? Oh sorry, you're too stupid to come to this college".

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SuperInfinity

I think though that some people really are just no good at maths and there's no point in trying to force it on them.

How would you like if you were terrible at a sport and people who were more talented at it kept trying to push you to do it, saying you must be less smart if you can't do it and about all the mythical ways it will help you later in life?

I think students may well get away with not doing part (c), however you'd have to wonder how much understanding they have with the subject if they never do any part (c), just (a) and (b). Could they just have learned it off by rote? This is why a middle-ground paper might suit some people, with less topics and the questions slightly less hard than part (c). They could forget about things like binomial distribution. I mean otherwise you're asking for an impossible situation by saying we can't cut off any of that, we can't make it easier, and then let's tutt at the people who refuse to take the higher paper. I personally wouldn't like if everyone did as well at maths as me anyway, I'd hate that!

What the middle ground exam would do is give them basic calculus etc. to give them a challenge and leave the window open should they wish to pursue maths again later in their life.

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bnt

I had over 20 years of work between leaving school and going to university as a mature student, in various jobs. Based on that, I draw a clear line between the Maths that people need and the Maths that they don't, and that's Calculus. I did the basics at school (HLC level, though in South Africa rather than Ireland), and didn't hear a word about Calculus for the next 20 years. So I honestly can't blame people when they question why they're doing some of that Maths, when they aren't going in to Academia or a specialist discipline that requires it: it's just not necessary. I know that's not what a Maths lover wants to hear, but there it is.

When I started an Engineering degree at UCD, the Engineering Maths courses made no assumptions of prior Calculus knowledge, which was a good thing in my case. There was one first year Physics course that did, however, much to the consternation of half the students. I think it was one of those cases in which they had the lecturers but no idea what to do with them, so put them in front of 500 first year students and see what happens ... :rolleyes:

doc_17

Anonymo wrote: »

There are loads of engineers out of work right now that would make fantastic teachers - and who could emphasise real world applications of maths

There are also plenty of good teachers out of work who could do the same. To be a good teacher I don't believe you have to have the Dip or to a great pure mathematician or an engineer. You just have to make it interesting, engaging, fun, understandable and teach the basics well.

But as DonegalFella says anyone who gets a D3 in OL Maths should not be allowed to be a primary school teacher IMO. Those 8 years make or break them and when they come into 2nd level, if they cannot multiply/divide then how do you expect them to come to grips with algebra multiplication/division?

Even from my own results last week some of the folks who got D1 or C3 would, I believe, have difficulty teaching children.

Chaotic_Forces

doc_17 wrote: »

There are also plenty of good teachers out of work who could do the same. To be a good teacher I don't believe you have to have the Dip or to a great pure mathematician or an engineer. You just have to make it interesting, engaging, fun, understandable and teach the basics well.

But as DonegalFella says anyone who gets a D3 in OL Maths should not be allowed to be a primary school teacher IMO. Those 8 years make or break them and when they come into 2nd level, if they cannot multiply/divide then how do you expect them to come to grips with algebra multiplication/division?

Even from my own results last week some of the folks who got D1 or C3 would, I believe, have difficulty teaching children.

I think the most advanced thing you learn in primary (at least about 10 years ago) was X + 6 = 14, find the value of X.

You could easily teach primary school with a B3 or even a C3 at ordinary level for the juniour cert.

Enkidu

The unusual thing about the Leaving Cert is that although it may be dumbed down, it's the only second level course I know of that has group theory and the concept of isomorphisms on it. I think it would be good idea for more schools to concentrate on that as an option rather than further calculus.

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Chaotic_Forces

donegalfella wrote: »

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You'd be surprised at how many of us could fail the leaving cert maths but easily explain how to sovle various problems for the juniour cert classes. Most times I would easily be able to explain it for them.
As for teaching kids, they're kids being taught; not adults being asked to question everything. I've never tried teaching anything to kids in juniour/senior infants. But when I was in primary school it wasn't that hard to explain the concept of a lot of things. Once they learn to just go with it for the basics, then you can get into the detail of things.

You're really going overboard with it. Kids aren't idiots. I was able to do well in primary school. I would easily get 80% or more on every test for maths. Same with the juniour cert. But after that I took higher level maths for about 5/6 months in 3rd year and said "bollocks to this, I'm not learning this on top of everything else". That's the problem, even if you're good at maths, learning that much on top of everything else is the downfall of why people are failing, at least that's what I think and what happened to a lot of us in my school

I would like to add that primary level maths (at least for how I remember it) was one of the easiest things I've learned. The reason being is the pacing of it is wonderfully done. Mind you, this was back in about 1994-2001. In secondary school it's basically "here you go, do this, either learn it or shut up and make way for the good students". I went to an all Irish school and the books we had were the "Gafa le Mata" ones. They were wonderfully paced, small but not too small. Look at the ones in secondary schools. The name escapes me now but they were about the size of the last damn harry potter book and packed with about 2 times as much content. Learning one of those a year for about 40 minutes a day, 200 minutes a week and there's what... 30ish weeks at the most in a school year? It's backwards.
The first book was red, took us from 1-2 year to do it all. Which was nice. I think the second book was a nice dark blue which was for either 3rd year or just for higher level maths only. The point is it was just too damn much to learn. For higher level in leaving cert you had to learn 3 books and you're screwed if you skip 4th year...
The problem isn't maths itself. It's maths in conjunction with other subjects, it's just too much.

BTW, a lot of people in my school didn't understand math problems at all. There were often a lot of us just using the example and we said "we knew it". There were a lot of students that got a nice shock at the mocks and then tried hard to study. But it was too late. You can't learn how to do things in maths unless it's explained well.

That's the thing with leaving cert maths, there isn't enough time. I'd say that pretty much everyone had to do grinds in higher level maths at our school or else got a lot of help from an elder brother or something that was amazing at maths. I think about... 2/3 people were actually okay on their own.

Anonymo

donegalfella wrote: »

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I'd agree with you to a large extent. However in many subjects people start secondary school anew. If someone has struggled up to the end of primary school with maths it should be possible to put them straight quite quickly. It's impossible I think to ensure primary school teachers are all good maths teachers but it should be at secondary. So I think the focus should be at that level now and especially focussed on those in first and second year.
Another point I think you brought up was the growing divide between secondary and third level. This is certainly a worry. It's no good dropping the standards. I don't agree with an intermediate level exam at Leaving Cert since this reinforces the idea that maths is special. I'd instead advocate something like reducing the marks for the part (c). If nobody answers these they should be able to get a B1 if they get everything else correct. The part c should be there only to give the top people a challenge. Without this people would get an incorrect idea of their ability. I'm like a broken record about this so I'll try to change the tune. I don't agree with bonus points for maths either. There is a reason these were dropped in the 90s. I always find it strange the number of people that talk about how much work there is for LC maths. English or Irish surely takes at least as much if not more work. Perhaps a continuous assessment aspect to maths (of up to maybe 40%) might help with the idea that this would only add to the mark if it improves the average. Though I don't entirely agree with the modularisation of maths the new syllabus lends itself more easily to this. In such a way students would at least have a buffer heading into the exams.

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SuperInfinity

donegalfella wrote: »

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We had a sub teacher at Junior Cert level that seemed to have a nervous breakdown and nearly a heart attack every time any type of mathematical problem no matter how simple came to her. She would totally flip out.

She had so little grasp of mathematics that one student remarked as a joke: "hey, imagine that, the teacher teaching Owen something!", when in a surprising turn of events she corrected Owen on something rather than Owen correcting her which was the case for the vast majority of the time.

I still remember with bemusement how she used to talk about "getting marks for putting down formulae" and even "getting marks for using the logbook, because some people mightn't be able to find things in the logbook".... and we were the top class in the school out of five!!! The only person who was going for a pass at junior cert maths was her. We often wondered how she ever got qualified to teach mathematics, she probably scraped through with a d3 at ordinary level because the examiner felt sorry for her or something.

So if that's what they're allowing teach Junior cert higher level maths, I shudder to think what type of teachers they sometimes have at primary level.

Enkidu

donegalfella wrote: »

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It's not just young children:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=physics-students-reveal-bias-for-ma-10-08-03
It's part of a greater psychological trend. By the way, that article isn't too good, but the actual study can't be accessed publicly.

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Enkidu

donegalfella wrote: »

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Sorry, it was silly of me to link to that article, since it does not contain some of the conclusions of the original paper. The original article has comments on studies done which show that female perceptions of role models like college professors has an effect on their grades. It also holds on the secondary level (high-school).
Psychology of Women Quarterly, Volume 4, Issue 4, pages 558–572, June 1980
Demography, Vol. 36, No. 2 (May, 1999), pp. 185-194
Journal of Human Resources, Vol. 33, no. 1 (Winter 1998): 220-246

There is an extensive literature on this, it is called the stereotyping effect.

Permabear

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Enkidu

I'm in total agreement. I just want to point out how bad it actually is, even when somebody has a PhD the effect is there to a small degree. Imagine that somebody who has actually created new mathematics is susceptible to the effect and now imagine, as you say, somebody who has scraped a pass at OL maths.

Liveit

The reasons I did pass maths were(in order of importance)
-teacher: just did the examples out of the book and onto the board. He was actually not too bad at explaining 1-to-1 but didn't have enough time to.
-time: too time consuming and there was no real reward for all this extra time needed for it.
-other subjects: they are a lot easier and handier.

oh also we were taught the 'how to do it' but not 'why to do it' so when small variations occured with problems we were stumped.

Now im back and probably repeating, Im going to teach it to myself I think with the help of the internet and books. Im hoping for an A if I put the work in during the year

SuperInfinity

Liveit wrote: »

The reasons I did pass maths were(in order of importance)
-teacher: just did the examples out of the book and onto the board. He was actually not too bad at explaining 1-to-1 but didn't have enough time to.
-time: too time consuming and there was no real reward for all this extra time needed for it.
-other subjects: they are a lot easier and handier.

oh also we were taught the 'how to do it' but not 'why to do it' so when small variations occured with problems we were stumped.

Now im back and probably repeating, Im going to teach it to myself I think with the help of the internet and books. Im hoping for an A if I put the work in during the year

Great stuff! The only bit of advice that's popping out at me now is not to bother with the internet, as for me it's just too distracting to be on the computer and working. There's also no point in having too many sources of what you're learning, sticking with one and going with it might be faster.

I would also recommend Rapid Revision Maths: From Equations to Vectors from the start. It's more than a revision book, it actually shows and explains things better than the Text and Tests 4 and 5 books. Text and Tests have some very good questions, however they don't always explain things too well and skip steps sometimes.

Fremen

Liveit wrote: »

The reasons I did pass maths were(in order of importance)
-teacher: just did the examples out of the book and onto the board. He was actually not too bad at explaining 1-to-1 but didn't have enough time to.
-time: too time consuming and there was no real reward for all this extra time needed for it.
-other subjects: they are a lot easier and handier.

oh also we were taught the 'how to do it' but not 'why to do it' so when small variations occured with problems we were stumped.

Now im back and probably repeating, Im going to teach it to myself I think with the help of the internet and books. Im hoping for an A if I put the work in during the year

Best of luck. People swear by Khan academy these days.
I would suggest not memorising derivations or techniques. Instead, look for the "trick" which makes the answer drop out and memorise that instead.

Eliot Rosewater

donegalfella wrote: »

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Tears in Rain wrote: »

Reminds me of an old C.P. Snow quote:

I found this quote by English novelist Ian McEwan this morning.

"Shakespeare would have grasped wave functions, Donne would have understood complementarity and relative time. They would have been excited. What richness! They would have plundered this new science for their imagery. And they would have educated their audiences too. But you 'arts' people, you're not only ignorant of these magnificent things, you're rather proud of knowing nothing."

SuperInfinity

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

I found this quote by English novelist Ian McEwan this morning.

"Shakespeare would have grasped wave functions, Donne would have understood complementarity and relative time. They would have been excited. What richness! They would have plundered this new science for their imagery. And they would have educated their audiences too. But you 'arts' people, you're not only ignorant of these magnificent things, you're rather proud of knowing nothing."

I doubt Shakespeare or Donne would have. He has no basis for making claims like that.