8 thoughts on “Stupid math tricks — of the marketing kind”
I wonder if the publishers of log tables played the same schtick on our ancestors. Let’s go back to set theory (well…the notation anyway, there’s nothing like a finely crafted curly brace to show off a student’s penmanship in these blasphemous days of word processors). And that base 6 crap; now that was math! “Bourbaki by eight, or it’s too late”
One of my favorite things about teaching statistics / quantitative methods is that 98% of my students show up to class with >$100 TI calculators from HS, and maybe 1% each year know how to use them to do anything other than the usual 4-function stuff.
I realize that I could spend the time to teach them how to use them to do most of the statistical work we do, but then again I have to decide where to put my ‘tools’ emphasis, and I choose to put it into SPSS or Mathematica (depending on the situations…).
I’m guessing that once they leave college for grad school, their advisors complain that “all they know how to do with SPSS is just plug in numbers and do a t-test… sheesh” but I like to fantasize differently.
Upon reflection, I would be surprised if the publishers of math tables didn’t use textbooks to push their own version of the tables. I’ve got some old log tables for navigation that I occassionally use to calculate trivia like longitude from lunar distances. The publishers of the various tables all put their tables in a different order and then, in the methods book, which was not always contained in the same binding, they refer to the tables by number (e.g. take the value from table XXI corresponding to the polar distance, etc.). So if you have the method from one publisher and the tables from another, you’re kind of screwed (old navigational methods were strictly algorithmic, there was no mathematical description provided, so unless you already knew what was going on, it would be pretty tough to figure out which table to use). It’s a lowbrow method compared to TI, for sure, but they’ve had a couple centuries for the cooperation/competition ratchet to up the ante.
Now I wonder if there were elements of the population who were outraged by such tactics.
Just to be contrary, I’m going to teach my kids how to use computer algebra programs as soon as I can, so that hopefully by the time they hit high school they won’t need to do any more freaking factoring because the computer can indeed do it for you.
That will leave more time for reading Mathematical Games and Martin Gardner.
I’m with you, Ed. I think I was the last cohort who “learned” how to take a square root by hand in elementary school. Actually not “learned”, because as I recall it was my orchestra teacher filling in one downtime rehearsal afternoon by showing us how “in the old days” you’d take a square root longhand.…
There seems to be something qualitatively different, though, between teaching your kids how to use a calculator, and teaching them to rely on a particular calculator. As we offload more tasks to automated systems, until they’re ubiquitous and reliable it seems a great risk to commit the effort to learn something ephemeral and contingent.
This plays into my recent rants on Excel pedagogy. We’re learning Excel 2003 with VBA, not spreadsheet design, macro programming and OOP methods for analysis. Substantially different things, in the long term. I’m betting that the student who learns only Excel 2003 is more likely to be the one who will refuse to upgrade to the latest OS and version when it comes out, and is therefore doomed to increasing isolation and frustration. The one who learns the social cues and ubiquitous norms of spreadsheet use and legible programming will be be left able to adapt at will.
I wonder if the publishers of log tables played the same schtick on our ancestors. Let’s go back to set theory (well…the notation anyway, there’s nothing like a finely crafted curly brace to show off a student’s penmanship in these blasphemous days of word processors). And that base 6 crap; now that was math! “Bourbaki by eight, or it’s too late”
One of my favorite things about teaching statistics / quantitative methods is that 98% of my students show up to class with >$100 TI calculators from HS, and maybe 1% each year know how to use them to do anything other than the usual 4-function stuff.
I realize that I could spend the time to teach them how to use them to do most of the statistical work we do, but then again I have to decide where to put my ‘tools’ emphasis, and I choose to put it into SPSS or Mathematica (depending on the situations…).
I’m guessing that once they leave college for grad school, their advisors complain that “all they know how to do with SPSS is just plug in numbers and do a t-test… sheesh” but I like to fantasize differently.
You know, I do wonder if the makers of printed tables played this game as well. That’s an astute observation.
Surely the CRC did, for many years, and not just with the predominantly un-useful Handbook of Physics and Chemistry.
Upon reflection, I would be surprised if the publishers of math tables didn’t use textbooks to push their own version of the tables. I’ve got some old log tables for navigation that I occassionally use to calculate trivia like longitude from lunar distances. The publishers of the various tables all put their tables in a different order and then, in the methods book, which was not always contained in the same binding, they refer to the tables by number (e.g. take the value from table XXI corresponding to the polar distance, etc.). So if you have the method from one publisher and the tables from another, you’re kind of screwed (old navigational methods were strictly algorithmic, there was no mathematical description provided, so unless you already knew what was going on, it would be pretty tough to figure out which table to use). It’s a lowbrow method compared to TI, for sure, but they’ve had a couple centuries for the cooperation/competition ratchet to up the ante.
Now I wonder if there were elements of the population who were outraged by such tactics.
If there were… I wonder where they would have published
Hmm…I suppose today’s bloggers are the pamphleteers of old. I wonder what sort of background Daniel Dafoe would have chosen?
Just to be contrary, I’m going to teach my kids how to use computer algebra programs as soon as I can, so that hopefully by the time they hit high school they won’t need to do any more freaking factoring because the computer can indeed do it for you.
That will leave more time for reading Mathematical Games and Martin Gardner.
I’m with you, Ed. I think I was the last cohort who “learned” how to take a square root by hand in elementary school. Actually not “learned”, because as I recall it was my orchestra teacher filling in one downtime rehearsal afternoon by showing us how “in the old days” you’d take a square root longhand.…
There seems to be something qualitatively different, though, between teaching your kids how to use a calculator, and teaching them to rely on a particular calculator. As we offload more tasks to automated systems, until they’re ubiquitous and reliable it seems a great risk to commit the effort to learn something ephemeral and contingent.
This plays into my recent rants on Excel pedagogy. We’re learning Excel 2003 with VBA, not spreadsheet design, macro programming and OOP methods for analysis. Substantially different things, in the long term. I’m betting that the student who learns only Excel 2003 is more likely to be the one who will refuse to upgrade to the latest OS and version when it comes out, and is therefore doomed to increasing isolation and frustration. The one who learns the social cues and ubiquitous norms of spreadsheet use and legible programming will be be left able to adapt at will.