Re: Business Week article on the Rise of Math

"BMJ" <parametric_equation@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:l%Qyf.137169$tl.16272@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Thomas Bartkus wrote:
>
> <snip>
> >
> > I have some sympathy for what you are describing. Yet isn't their room,
> > perhaps even a need, for engineers who can use pi in a canned formula to
> > calculate a circumference without understanding the whole squaring the
> > circle thing? You need a few people who can create tools (equations!) so
> > that many (engineers) can use tools to effect.
> >
> > Not that such knowledge ever hurts, of course.
>
> The class that yowled about my deriving the numerical factors was, in
> fact, one of the worst I ever had. They were in a different department,
> and the department head usually gave into their demands. So, if they
> decided they didn't want to know where those factors came from, who was
> I to teach them?
>
> Mind you, it was often suggested that I did that just to show how smart
> I am because I was, apparently, an elitist. After all, I went to
> university and universities were seen as snobby.
>
> Eventually I had enough of that sort of screwball thinking and quit.

I get a sense that you were trying to teach practical math to associate
degree candidate engineering students. Two years of study and off to work.
Beat me up if I'm wrong, but I was suggesting that perhaps that was not the
happiest course to teach for someone caught up in a love for math.

As a student, I had a terrible time learning by rote. Never could memorize
the times tables or geometric theorems. I never did catch back up to the
math until as a (not quite so!) young adult taking college classes at night.
And it didn't catch on for me until I starting getting fed some of the
derivations you so wanted to teach. That snowballed into not being able to
get enough of it (math!).

Interestingly, the guy that taught the evening adult class through 5
semesters of calculus and differential equations taught high school math as
his full time day job. He persistently refused offers to become full time
faculty because as a high school teacher, he made more $ than the head of
the university math department. He taught part time evenings for the
intellectual challenge lacking in his high school job. This was Nassau
County, Long Island back in the 70s. I suspect public school teachers were
being paid extraordinarily well in that place at that time.

Different time, different place.
Thomas Bartkus




.

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