This guys laments the state of math education in the US. He blames the influx of foreign workers on our poor math education. He talks about the university of Washington having to dumb down the basic math test.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymvSFunUjx0

Here's Madeline who shows what goes on in schools.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyHER6o-4x0

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You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

I haven't had a chance to watch the video, but the problem is significant. We have 4 remedial Math courses at our school, 030, 060, 090, 106. What is remarkable is that the 030 courses start with such basic skills as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and fractions. We have full time faculty members whose sole job is to teach these courses and we have dozens of full sections every semester. Students who begin at 030 HAVE TWO YEARS OF WORK ahead of them before they can even enter a college level math course.
It's a terrible waste of resources when these people have already taken courses in the subject matter in the past, not to mention the fact that few people who start on this pathway, ever reach the level of being able to enter a college level math course.

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1977 300d 70k--sold 08
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1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
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1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
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I've seen it, and it's nothing new. There was a whole department where I went to school dealing with such things. Math, English, and ESL. It's quite a conundrum. How do you get kids to read a style manual if they can't read well? The ESL kids sometimes end up doing better than native English speakers. Not sometimes, often. And people wanna make English the official language.

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You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows - Robert A. Zimmerman

The fact that they are able to graduate H.S. without knowing H.S. level math is a disgrace.

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1980 300TD-China Blue/Blue MBTex-2nd Owner, 107K (Alt Blau) OBK #15
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I ain't no grammer superstar by ma math is perty good.

Coming out of high school with 2 yrs of algebra and geometry ( no trig or calc), I struggled mightly with the one year of college math I had to take.

That said, my lack of serious math skills hasn't hurt me in my career. Not everyone needs to go to college, not everyone needs too much more beyond basic math skills. OTOH, a country full of math ciphers is headed downhill. Fast.

But primary and secondary public education on the whole fails miserably in this regard. How we have failed to educate our young is criminal. And it will not get better.

I may be completely off base on this, but I think that math skills are partly hard wired. Some people have a much easier time understanding math than others. It doesn't mean that everyone can't understand it, it just means the effort to understand it is very different. It's like the hull speed of a boat. It doesn't take much effort to get a boat to hull speed, but to get the boat to climb the bow wave, exceed hull speed and plane requires a huge increase in horsepower. For some people to do math, it's like trying to plane a boat.

So, I think we are not shrewd enough in math education. We definitely want everyone who easily understands math to do so, but it's possible that we could have college educated productive people, with basic level math skills. So I think we should make it possible that colleges deal with math like they deal with art. A student can take an Art History course, 'understand' art, but not necessarily have to produce a good painting. It should be the same way with math. Students should be able to take a Math History course so they can understand its importance but without having to solve dozens of complex Calculus problems. This would mean that instead of producing hundreds of college graduates with intense resentment to math courses which they will then pass on to their children, they will understand the importance of math, but realize that not everyone has to do it at highly competent levels.

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1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

Aint that the truth! I've sucked at math my entire life. Bummer as my one dream was to become an Astrononmer. I have a freind who is currently a Proffessor of Physic's and Astronomy at UCLA. We were in high school together and math, to say the least, comes extremely easily for him. I on the other hand have never passed a math exam in my life. Many in my family have a similar math problem. As far as math is concerned we are not the kind of people you'd want calculating your re-entry trajectory.


- Peter.

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In my high school we had an exit exam that we were required to pass before graduation. It was a stupidly simple test and the math portion of it had problems like solve for x: 3x+4=1

There was a huge backlash in people failing and whining and parents *****ing that the school did away with the exit exam.

I'm no math wiz, but I say if you don't know how to do pre-algebra you probably aren't ready to graduate high school. I learned that crap when I was 12 for crying out loud.

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I don't think you are off base on the hard wired thing at all, and have seen many studies to back it up. I had to take fairly advanced calculus in college and struggled with it to the point of having to have a tutor (gd functions). Meanwhile having scored 1350 on the SAT and acing all sorts of high level biology, chemistry and even physics classes (algebra didn't bother me too much). I struggled with math as a child and still do--but can ultimately figure it out (as a previous poster indicated---harder for some but not impossible to plow through).


I do think you need a little refresher on your nautical analagies though: Hull speed is a rule of thumb term used in regard to displacement hulls to describe the hull's speed potential. Displacement hulls are called such because they displace water and specifically do not plane

I teach math post graduate level and can tell you, no one is weak inn math, its the approach to teaching it thats the bane, the US system is pretty bad, its actually lax, I can say that as have taught high school level as well when I was an undergrad student and standards are just pathetic. When I joined college here, I went straight to advanced math classes, same was the case with most students from my country as well as China, Taiwan etc. In recent math Olympiads, US did pretty shoddily, they really need to do a total revamp and math is hip culture has to be bought back from kindergarten level.

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Hull speed is 1.34 times the square root of the waterline length. All boats have a hull speed whether they are displacement hulls or not. I believe that even boats designed for displacement speeds can be made to plane with enough horsepower. For instance, a 5hp outboard on my OT Tripper canoe can make it climb over the bow wave.

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1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

I was attempting to make a funny and know how to figure hull speed. It is a term that is not used by naval architects--I guess I have just hung aroud too many boatyards, because it sounds funny to me to hear someone speak about hull speed and planing when trying to make an analogy. Maybe Hatt hears people confuse the two all the time where he works, dunno.

It's used a lot in discussing the speed of canoes and kayaks.

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1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

I'll have to forgive your spelling, considering your location. Perhaps I should also forgive the idea that "nobody is weak in mathematics."

I completely disagree. While you may run into a lot of people who are good at it, it takes a lot more work for most people to grasp even simple mathematical ideas than it does for someone like yourself.

If you are saying that anyone can understand high-school algebra or plane geometry, I'll concede. But I do not think that everyone finds it easy. And I do not think that just anyone can pick up a copy of Lang and get past the first page.