jaja...schonklar - Slashdot User

Comment Is this how single-variable algebra is taught? (Score 1) 1268

by jaja...schonklar on Friday August 13, 2010 @11:28PM (#33248614) Attached to: US Students Struggle With Understanding of the 'Equal' Sign

Wow...I agree. I think the problem here is not that the students don't understand the meaning of the "=", but that it is stupid to use a empty pair of brackets (with no well defined mathematical meaning) as a substitution for a variable... Is this really how single-variable-algebra is taught in US high-schools?

US Students Struggle With Understanding of the 'Equal' Sign 1268

Posted by Soulskill on Friday August 13, 2010 @09:32AM from the confusing-parallel-lines dept.

bickerd--- writes with news of research out of Texas A&M which found that roughly 70% of middle grades students in the US don't fully understand what the 'equal' sign means. Quoting: "'The equal sign is pervasive and fundamentally linked to mathematics from kindergarten through upper-level calculus,' Robert M. Capraro says. 'The idea of symbols that convey relative meaning, such as the equal sign and "less than" and "greater than" signs, is complex and they serve as a precursor to ideas of variables, which also require the same level of abstract thinking.' The problem is students memorize procedures without fully understanding the mathematics, he notes. 'Students who have learned to memorize symbols and who have a limited understanding of the equal sign will tend to solve problems such as 4+3+2=( )+2 by adding the numbers on the left, and placing it in the parentheses, then add those terms and create another equal sign with the new answer,' he explains. 'So the work would look like 4+3+2=(9)+2=11.'"

Journal Journal: Convex Optimization - technology, not just math

Journal by jaja...schonklar on Friday August 13, 2010 @03:20AM

Since a new version of cvx (http://cvxr.com/cvx/) is out and I just met Stephen Boyd (http://www.stanford.edu/~boyd/index.html), I want to slashdot his message and clear some prejudices about Convex Optimization. For those who do not now: Convex Optimization is a mathematical subdiscipline within Mathematical Optimization (more read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convex_optimization or here: http://www.stanford.edu/~boyd/cvxbook/) dealing with how to make Optimization problems tractable v

Journal Journal: Intro - wide open spaces - welcome to the community of nerds.

Journal by jaja...schonklar on Friday August 13, 2010 @03:07AM

OK, I start my slashdotting with the most used piece of ancient literature (-fragment):
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui offi

Chip Guru Papermaster Loses Signal At Apple 374

Posted by kdawson on Saturday August 07, 2010 @10:39PM from the heads-gotta-roll dept.

ColdWetDog writes "Computerworld reports that Mark Papermaster has left his job as Apple's Senior Vice President of Devices Hardware Engineering. He was the senior executive in charge of engineering for the iPhone 4 and thus responsible in some unknown fashion for 'antennagate.' His name may ring bells from previous coverage of his jump from IBM to Apple. From a brief blurb on Daring Fireball: 'From what I've heard, it's clear he was canned. Papermaster was a conspicuous absence at the Antennagate press conference. Inside Apple, he's "the guy responsible for the antenna" — that's a quote from a source back on July 23. (Another quote from the same source: "Apparently the antenna guys used to have a big chip on their shoulder. No more.")'" Update: 08/08 03:01 GMT by KD : Swapped out a registration-required NY Times link for a Computerworld one; corrected the direction of Papermaster's career move.

Slashdot Top Deals