Re: Study Suggests Math Teachers Scrap Balls and Slices

Beliavsky <beliavsky@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/science/25math.html
>Study Suggests Math Teachers Scrap Balls and Slices
>By Kenneth Chang
>New York Times, April 25, 2008
>
>'One train leaves Station A at 6 p.m. traveling at 40 miles per hour
>toward Station B. A second train leaves Station B at 7 p.m. traveling
>on parallel tracks at 50 m.p.h. toward Station A. The stations are 400
>miles apart. When do the trains pass each other?
>
>Entranced, perhaps, by those infamous hypothetical trains, many
>educators in recent years have incor****ated more and more examples
>from the real world to teach abstract concepts. The idea is that
>making math more relevant makes it easier to learn.

Actually, that isn't the idea that I've seen.  The idea is that making
math more relevant makes kids more willing to learn, and provides at
least some hope that they'll have some use for the math once they walk
away from the classroom.

The average person never sees an abstract equation in real life after
graduation (other than possibly e=mc^2 where the equation is iconic
rather than being an equation to be understood).

lojbab