On Apr 25, 7:36=A0am, Pubkeybreaker <pubkeybrea...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Apr 25, 2:58=A0am, Beliavsky <beliav...@[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.
>
> > That idea may be wrong, if researchers at Ohio State University are
> > correct. An experiment by the researchers suggests that it might be
> > better to let the apples, oranges and locomotives stay in the real
> > world and, in the classroom, to focus on abstract equations, in this
> > case 40 (t + 1) =3D 400 - 50t, where t is the travel time in hours of
> > the second train. (The answer is below.)'
>
> This claim is ridiculous. =A0Learning how to translate a verbal
> statement of the problem into equations is far more im****tant
> than the mindless manipulations used to solve (in this case)
> linear equations. =A0The latter only involves application of an
algorithm.=
The claim is indeed ridiculous! The im****tance of translating word
problems--identifying unknowns, defining variables, deriving
equations--is demonstrated by the following true incident that was
published in the April 1994 issue of The Mathematics Teacher and was
reprinted in the February 1996 issue of The American Mathematical
Monthly (p. 146).
"[...] a very young bright CPA [partner] called me into his office and
asked how a person could possibly calculate a bonus if the company's
formula required that the bonus be 15 percent of the net profit after
the bonus has been deducted!
I showed him the linear equation B =3D 0.15P/1.15. He was
flabbergasted."
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