Math books.

[EZ_Prenn]

The language is completely overcomplicated. The examples often leave out steps. The answer keys leave out even more steps.

Half of the stuff i remember from each lecture is worth entire chapters of the book. Which is, I suppose, why people go to college. Getting $130 per person per @#%$ book you put out, is why companies sell to america.

Cue highschoolers, 'lol thats why i never do homework or pass tests'

Cue people taking Statistics (I'm not), 'I so agree' Sensei Pren{Dragon Army}[Tribunal Server]
So I take shelter in tomorrow
Tomorrow will bring a brand new day
Think I can make it right tomorrow,
Think I need more sleep today...

[EZ_Igon McAwg]

What's really sad is I've had several math profs that were so bad that the book was the only way I learned anything.

Janen

[EZ_Jasminne]

i had one where 80% of the answers in the back of the book were wrong. it drove everyone crazy for a couple of weeks 'cause we'd never get the "right" answer until we finally realized what was going on.

[EZ_Fallen One]

i had a stats book last year that was edition...8...or somthing, and it had a bunch of new questions that edition 7 (or whatever was the prior edition) dind't. Unfortunately, about half of the new answers to the new questions never got changed, so the answers in the back of the book were half for edition 7. That was lots of fun.


As far as my calc went for me, i got most of my information out of class, i guess i'm more of a visual learner after seeing the steps repeated 1000 times. The 120$ book had a bunch of mojo that always either put me to sleep or scared me away from the text.

gogo college. "Pain inside is rising. I am the Fallen One. A figure in an old game. No jokers on my side. I've plunged into missery, i've turned out the light and murderd the dawn"

[Krimzan]

Engineering books are about the same. Paid like $140 for my Circuits book only to fail the class and say, "@#%$ this." God I hated that professor. "De boltage, de boltage is as a cONstant." That and saying 'study this for the test' and then testing us on something completly different is just low.

[Llabak Tharr]

I so agree

[EZ_Swipey]

My friend the math major explained it to me all one day.

He said the lower level classes in his department weren't about teaching anyone anything. They were about seeing who could, with the minimal help available, still figure the material out well enough to get a decent grade without becoming a bitter/angry mathophobe in the process.

Those people are the ones the department would encourage or allow to actually become math majors. The rest of the people are "too stupid" (in their eyes) to even consider, and represent a waste of resources to even bother trying to teach.

[EZ_Gyorg]

What circuit book is that? I need a big, comprehensive circuits book just for home use. I had this one but it was the kind they only put the chapters they want in. Half the time I'd go to look for something the chapter wouldn't exist.

[EZ_Talius]

I'm taking Stats for psychology at the moment. It's quite a horrible experience. We don't have to know an equations (at least, not so far and it's been more than half the year) so basically all we're learning is the ideas behind stats (Programs do the rest of the work for us).

The textbook, considering it's almost 90% equations, examples of using the equations, and the practise questions to the equations, is completely useless.

[Dragynphyre]

Quote:My friend the math major explained it to me all one day.

He said the lower level classes in his department weren't about teaching anyone anything. They were about seeing who could, with the minimal help available, still figure the material out well enough to get a decent grade without becoming a bitter/angry mathophobe in the process.

Those people are the ones the department would encourage or allow to actually become math majors. The rest of the people are "too stupid" (in their eyes) to even consider, and represent a waste of resources to even bother trying to teach.

I actually get angry when I realize that this is exactly what colleges do. The old 'look to you left, look to your right' speech, and all...

You can wind up thousands of dollars in debt for taking just one semester of 12 credits, and they're not even attempting to actually teach people who may need to pass that class for their degree?!?!

When you're paying upwards of $150 a credit hour, they should be teaching the class in such a manner that those who are willing/able to learn the material can understand at least 80% of the material.

No one should have to hire a tutor for even more money to teach someone what they should have been able to learn in the professor's class if the professor was not inept. (Back In Black)
Delissandra Splitshadow - Veteran Deceiver of the Circle of Unseen Hands
Grandmaster Poisoner (250), Master Potter (191), Grandmaster Lush (200)

Cause I'm back on the track
And I'm beatin' the flack
Nobody's gonna get me on another rap

[Llabak Tharr]

Quote:No one should have to hire a tutor for even more money to teach someone what they should have been able to learn in the professor's class if the professor was not inept.

Similarly, students should finally realize they're not going to learn anything in an hour 3 days a week. Class is the opportunity to discuss implications of what you've already learned and set the rough groundwork for what you're going to learn at home tonight.

Any college class that can 'teach' you everything you need to know just in the class time isn't worth taking.

[EZ_Forceofmotion1]

I have a big pet peeve with college math courses. I'm about as mathematically challenged as they get, but I still have to get through differential and integral calculus for my major. I look at the textbooks and weep in self-pity. (I'll be re-taking differential next semester in fact since I had to drop to audit this term. I've already purchased my copy of An Idiot's Guide to Calculus in the hopes it might improve my chances of passing.)

As for assistance from the lecture...all I can say is . If you're lucky enough to get a professor who speaks halfway intelligible english you've got 75% of the battle won there. (Of course you actually have to be lucky enough to have them assigned to your section, since most of the math courses at my university are listed as taught by STAFF.) Then you have to hope lightning strikes twice and they actually take the time to teach the material.

[Dragynphyre]

Quote:Any college class that can 'teach' you everything you need to know just in the class time isn't worth taking.

I understand that there is some work that the student themselves have to do - but at least the groundwork of the concept should be laid out in the class.

Most of the time in the classes I was attending, it was a struggle to even understand the language the professor was speaking in, let alone the concepts we were supposed to be introduced to...

Not to mention if they didn't move fast enough during the first hour of the lecture, they'd jam the other half of what they were going to go over into the last 15 minutes...

Hardly a good way to be introduced to a new concept, IMO.

Probably why I never got above a C in Calculus, and that was only because of partial work and the bell curve... I still can't do a derivative.

[EZ_Prenn]

Hah, how funny. Today we had a sub, she was asian (and frankly, enough people complain about the language barrier in science and math classes that it's a concern), but did a great job improvising with no notice.

And someone fell asleep, so we all got to laugh at him when she requested that somebody wake him up.

[Nenjin]

Quote:The examples often leave out steps. The answer keys leave out even more steps.


My biggest gripe with math books today. I NEED those steps shown to me in the equation!


Other than that, I do 90% of my learning in college out of my books. Lower level course lectures are for sux0rz. "They will come back, come back again, as long as the Red Earth rolls. He never wasted a tree or a leaf, why should he squander souls?"

"The road to Hell is paved with good intentions

[EZ_Myrkskog]

Our Math Books are pretty international in Canada. There is someone from every single race in the book, and the word problems have bizarre foreign names no one has ever heard of. 'Hajaian dropped a basketball, after the 6th bounce, what is the total travel distance of the ball."

Madness I tell you!

[EZ_Prenn]

That sounds like it is ripped out of some comedy reutine, but it might just be because it's so true with modern text books.

Especially science books. The gay crippled korean girl with aids and the black doctor with heart murmors stand side by side for some obscure reason.

[EZ_Kiltn]

Quote:Especially science books. The gay crippled korean girl with aids and the black doctor with heart murmors stand side by side for some obscure reason.

Exactly

Inn I Evighetens Morke

[EZ_Gyorg]

The reasons they leave the steps out of the answer keys is so that professors can assign those problems. I've had multiple classes where we were given the answers. They graded us on our work inbetween.

[Nenjin]

That's fine, as long as they cover the inbetweens for us non-mathmatical rubes during class, which, they often do not.

[EZ_Gyorg]

From my experience thats in examples in the chapters.

[EZ_Swipey]

Sometimes it is, sometimes it isnt.

As I recall, the examples in the text are usually straight forward vanilla examples, and are directly applicable to maybe the first 4 problems in the 30 problem set at the end of the chapter. After those first 4, the problems start becoming other than vanilla number plugging exercises.

[EZ_Gyorg]

The idea of college is to create peiple able of solving problems. If you could just follow a cookie cutter prcoeedure for every problem you would be learning how to repeat steps, not how to solve problems. A professor I was at tango class with last weekend complained that her students never understand how to synthesize and come up with ways to solve problems slightly different from how they are explained in the book. The ability to just regurgitate facts and proceedures from the book just isn't enough.

[Krimzan]

Quote:
You can wind up thousands of dollars in debt for taking just one semester of 12 credits, and they're not even attempting to actually teach people who may need to pass that class for their degree?!?!

Yes. Depending on the major, in fact, there are classes which are...I hesitate to say designed, but designed to weed people out. I am convinced that there exists in the CS department at RIT a professor who is dedicated to wasting my time. I have come to the conclusion that I am not paying for an education, I am not paying to be taught, I am paying to get the piece of paper, that's it.

[EZ_Swipey]

Some people would argue that the idea of college is to create people who know things, first and foremost.

The history equivalent of a math book would be one that sketches out the causes and course of European colonialism in the new world to 1620, and then expects the students infer the American Revolution, Civil War, and eventual rise to superpower status. Those students who make the correct inferences (backed by accurate statements of cause and course) are encouraged to become history majors. Those who dont get bad grades and sneers from the more historically inclined.

The ability to ad-lib solutions to problems just isnt enough. One has to actually know things too.


Edit : Krimzan makes an important discovery! Edited by: Swipey at: 10/28/03 6:54 am

[EZ_Gyorg]

Uh, in the levels of learning, regurgitating facts is like 3 levels lower than coming up with new, unique solutions. If you can come up with new answers, you can come up with the answers to just strait fact questions. Even history should be taught by the processes not the facts. Some things require knowing facts but in the real world, your always going to have access to the reference materials so you really need to be able to come up with answers that aren't in the book.

[EZ_Swipey]

History (at least at the (upper) college level) is taught as a process, not just as regurgitatable factoids. The thing is, the process needs the factoids to work, just as one needs to prime a pump before it will give water.

Due to the pathetic nature of our public schools, lower level history ourses are often what should be called remedial courses. They end up being 9 parts factoid to 1 part process. As the level of the course goes up, the factoid to process ratio changes until, eventually, the in class content becomes all process and no factoids (ie independent research)

People are complaining, I suppose, about the fact that college level math courses seem to have a much higher process to factoid ratio at the outset, which, due to the pathetic nature of our public schools mentioned earlier, about 90% of the students are unprepared for. Math departments, however, dont seem to give a flying *^&% about this, and are only interested in that 10% who, by nature or luck of the draw with their HS math teachers, are prepared.




PS : The numbers used (9-1 factoid to process, 90% unprepared, etc) are purely made up for emphasis, and in no way should one expect a citation to an unbiased, credible academic source for their origin.

[Nenjin]

Gyorg, you're right about what college is meant to do, put out people that can solve problems. And I guess it is my fault that I didn't keep a lot of my highschool mathmatics note, and the quadratic equation isn't permanently etched into my brain, or that I can't just remember the value of a function without working it out first. But colleges should understand this. Those first 4 vanilla problems are easily workable, but the rest of the chapter that requires critical thinking also requires that we as students have enough information to reference by. Asking people who aren't mathmatically inclined to make a leap in mathmatical logic is ab-@#%$-surd.

All I want is for those first 4 vanilla examples in the chapter to be systematically deconstructed, so I can see the process in it's entirety, go to the critical problems, and work backwards with all the information so til I'm comfortable enough with the concept I can think freely within it.
Teachers SHOULD be doing this as part of the cirriculum, but math teachers are(sorry to those that are) generally very intelligent, not very patient, and are not able to disseminate information to people who aren't good at math. I've had multiple teachers stare at me blankly because I don't get something, and they struggle for 5, 10, a semester to effectively get that idea across to me. It's a large part in me being dense to the material, but it is also about the teacher's being un-able to break it down, because they understand it so well, they breeze over things they think you, naturally, should get.

And before anyone wants to cluck about harder work, more attetion, stow it. If there is any subject in school I am riveted during class, and diligently do my homework, is math, and sometimes, it still doesn't make sense.

[EZ_Gyorg]

Have you ever gone in to see the professor during office hours?

[EZ_Forceofmotion1]

Right on, Nenjin.

That's exactly what mathematically adept people don't understand, and the reason I think that math departments have this problem. There are people who love the mathematical language and understand it with such innate fluidity that for them the "critical thinking" aspect is easy, because they know all the rules of the game and retain them, and they look down on people for whom it doesn't come so easily.

Just because someone has a hard time in math doesn't mean they have a problem in their ability to come up with solutions...I'm great at spatial puzzles and logic teasers...but I just don't retain or fully comprehend all the little foundational rules involved with math, and that's the kiss of death when facing a professor who doesn't take the time to break the steps down.

Trying to pass a college math class for people like me is like trying to win a chess game without being shown how to move your queen and knights.

[Nenjin]

Quote:Have you ever gone in to see the professor during office hours?

Can I count the ways for you?

Some teachers aren't bad, but even the nice ones have a hard time putting into the simplicities we need it to be in. And I'm not talking upper level stuff, I'm talking advanced algebra, logirithms, stuff like that.

Hell, I had to take Advanced Algebra in community college to get admitted to the university. Our teacher was a 55 year old man, who verbally castrated people for not being good at math. "Really, what is wrong with you." "Uh-huh, I guess you just don't like using your brain, that's why you dont' get it." Or he'd just stare at you in silence for 45 seconds after you ask your question, then just sigh, shake his head, and continued where he left off.

[EZ_Prenn]

The most important thing about math is to understand the concept, not the procedure. When you realize what something is, it is easier to understand it. In my college algebra course, I see things that I had seen before, only now I am seeing what the application is and a bigger picture of what they are. Because the concept is typically NOT taught in math, it makes it hard for people who can't put two and two (figuratively) together. Once you understand the concept, either through blind happenstance or having it explained, it gets easier. Again, a failure of the institution.

The idea that it is to weed out the people who innately understand is flawed, because that is not teaching anything at all, even in the earliest classes. Which pretty much is the case, considering how many people have problems with advanced math concepts.

Expecting people to be creative and come up with their own solutions is fine. But, you can't expect someone to phonetically pronounce words without first knowing the alphabet. Sensei Pren{Dragon Army}[Tribunal Server]
So I take shelter in tomorrow
Tomorrow will bring a brand new day
Think I can make it right tomorrow,
Think I need more sleep today...

[EZ_Evoll]

Quote:Hell, I had to take Advanced Algebra in community college to get admitted to the university. Our teacher was a 55 year old man, who verbally castrated people for not being good at math. "Really, what is wrong with you." "Uh-huh, I guess you just don't like using your brain, that's why you dont' get it." Or he'd just stare at you in silence for 45 seconds after you ask your question, then just sigh, shake his head, and continued where he left off.
Yes, there is one professor at my college like that. My current Math Proffessor is a 65+ year old grandmotherand probably the best math professor I have ever had. I had her for Calc 1/2 and I'm in her Calc 3 class now.

My old Anthropology Professor had a friend at another university. This friend was a high level mathmatics professor. The last few classes he was teaching before he retired consisted of this:

First day of class he would walk into the room and write an equation on the board. After doing that he would say "This is the only problem for this semester. If you finish it and you get an A, but more then likely none of you will be able to and will fail." Keric – ghay bard
Institute of PKER Reform
Decimators

[EZ_Forceofmotion1]

Hehehe, that's when you plug that puppy into Mathematica software.

[EZ_Urusai]

Yes you are just paying for the piece of paper.

I had taken Computer Science in collage as a major. They taught me nothing. Of all the classes I had the only ones that I really learned anything about computers in were the ones that didnt count towards my Major. (My Certified Novell Engineer Classes didnt count towards Computer Science Degree!?!?! ) That was just the big example, there were other smaller ones.

My third year we realized that the only different course between our Computer Science Degree and a Business Degree was ... get this ... "Basic Programming". Yes folks, a programming class (Which didnt even count as an elective towards the Computer Science Degree) was the only thing keeping the group of us from a Business degree as well. So what did some of us do, sign up for Basic Programming. It was obviously a joke class because half of us could write in basic before we fully understood the english language. The teacher was lost more often than we were. The simple "Ok today we are going to make "Hello" appear on our screens.
The teacher would lecture on for 30 minutes as to how we were supposed to accomplish this and our group would already be 'Tweaking' the thing. I personally made a "Hello" that rotated colors, bounced around the screen, while the computer played a clip of Bethoven that I happend to have the beep tone sequence for on disk. She scolded me for not writing that portion in class but gave me 100% for a grade anyway. The rest of the class was similar programming feats, the teach felt rather small because she was one of those that only knew it because she was teaching it.

I got off subject. Anyway, I went to admissions to get my degree. They told me that I couldent have it even though I qualified for all the course requirements because I didnt sign up for a business degree. They wanted me to pay 800 bucks or something. The sign-up fee for the degree then since I met all the requirements I would get the degree the NEXT semester. (I couldent even get it right then)

That was about the time my faith in the education system came to a crumbling pile of poo. I stopped going to collage and did some self study between work. With 3 months I had a job at a global company's IT Department. (I was lucky and found a manager that hired based upon skills and not papers. I blew away every other applicant, even the guy with 5 years of previous experience.)

[EZ_minoltasrt101b]

A college's mandate isn't to teach you, it's to certify you.