Re: Compression and crypto

Unruh <unruh-spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:e5cn50$io$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

"David A. Scott" <daVvid_a_scott@xxxxxxxxx> writes:

Unruh <unruh-spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
news:e5a1kd$4ei$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

daw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (David Wagner) writes:

David A. Scott wrote:
For touch point math see
http://www.psd267.wednet.edu/~kfranz/Math/MathBooklets/mathbooklets.
ht m
this is a sore point for me. It makes me want to vomit.

Oh, dear. I can see what you mean. Our math & science curriculum
really has a long way to go. How depressing.

Oh, come on. If the kids can learn to memorize those touchpoints
they are a lot better than most of us. Especially when you start
reusing them ("We touch both the point and the circle surrounding
the point")! Kids have be adding on their fingers for millenia, and
abacuses are a formalised method for doing so.
Whether it helps them learn addition or not I am not sure. It is
probably conceptually better than just memorizing the addition
tables, although the latter is more useful. But I must say that the
"touchpoint"method is just weird.


The problem is this they learn the Touch Point method but they
never
learn the addition tables. Sure its a good method if your teaching
retarded kids but normal kids its a mistake. Not only does it slow
them down they make more mistakes but it hinders what most eventully
learned.

Yes, eventually you simply have to memorize the addition tables and
the rules. And you are right that kids are very good at memorizing.
Although a lot hate it. Some kids need the concepts-- what does
addition mean in terms of accumulating sets and some need the
algorithm first.


Really but just when is EVENTUALLY it never comes.

The problem is most don't eventually learn the needed math tables.
They think counting is good enough. The bright kids don't care and what
math experts could be there are gone. Sure I think a light gets turned on
in a few. But at that age 20-25 its kind of late to become an
engineer if you just mastered adding fractions. The system screwed
them out of learning when they had the best chance to learn. The
have no idea of the concept of mathematic logic or proofs.

Example in one class I teach it starts out adding and subtracting
simple numbers. There are only positive anwsers we don't want to confuse
then with negative numbers tell near the end of semister yes this is
a college class. If you expose them to negative numbers to early
they run to an advisor that makes your life hell.


The rest of your post re Morse is similat to the whole "phonics"/whole
word battle re reading. The problem is that some kids learn better in
one way, some in another.


That is a cop out. We shoud teach in a way so that we still have
engineers and physicts in the future. The fact is we all can't be
engineers or scientist. Those that don't hack it should be sent to
other schools with other methods so they can take other jobs in
society, Instead of pretending they all can be anything they want,
The fact is they would be better served if pointed in a direction
where they could be happy and useful. Unless we don't care about
the country going into the dust bin of history.


I feel I am in a unique position to see students raised on both
sides of the US MEXICO border. True the mexican side has fewer English
speakers but the US has many that don't know english that where born
and schooled here. I suspect the few remaing TV stations will be
spanish only in a decade or so. But that's another story. The sad fact
is that my nephews and nieces in grade school in Mexico can pass with
A's any test I give. The ones in high school have better texts for
math than the upper level math classes in junior college. And they
learn it where as Americans are not even told just how backward our
math classes are.

A couple of problems in this anecdote-- since your nieces and nephews
are learning English in Mexico, the schools they are going to are
already atypical. It can be hard to separate that out. But certainly
comments I have had from people coming over from Europe say to the US
find that the level in the US schools is much lower.


Actually my wife from mexico. Most of these nephews and nices don't
speak English and they go to public schools nothing special. The tests
are things like 15 - 7 = ?. They don't need to know english to do most
problems. What few word problems there are she would say it to them in
spanish.The only ones who know English are some of the high school
kids again public high schools in Mx. nothing special. I didn't give the
high school kids the tests since it would be to much of an insult to
them. Especially when the yougner ones did it with ease. And after looking
at there high school books though I don't know Spanish they reminded
me of my old books. They acutally contianed math.

Here is something I started to write to DW but I think I cut it
out since I rant to much. One of the teachers I work with I help
him understand higher math since he is allowed to teach classes
above what I teach and being "certifed" has little if anything to
do with understanding the higher levels of math. This person taught
math in the high schools for 17 years. Yes he noticed that it got
worse in the last few years. To make it short I asked him why so
many of our students are convinced that 1/2 + 1/3 = 2/5
He explained that while teaching high school math in the later
years he saw this same porblem. And most came from a particular
shool. He called the principal of the school to complian. There
where several teachers at the meeting including the one teaching
the method of just add the top number to get top number and
bottom number to get bottom. Of course you might be aware this
is wrong. The principal stated he was not well versed in higher
mathematics but asked the teacher if the students were happy
with the results. The teacher said yes. Then the principal
said then countiue if the students are happy thats enough.
If its not totally correct then it can be fixed later in
high school.


Check this out.
http://mathematicallycorrect.com/rainbow.htm

The reason I had above UKR is beacuse every year
I get a few students who got an A or B in caluclus in high
school. The are in beginning math because they still
don't know the basics of arithmetic. It use to seem
unbelive to me. But the above pointer may make it
more beliveable.



I knoe you have little faith in me but check out sites like
http://www.jefflindsay.com/EducData.shtml
There are many that show how "Dr Jean Piaget" has hurt math
education.

Here is my own experience. As a kid I wanted to be a ham radio
operator.
I easily memorized the table of morse code. But yet try as hard as I
could I could not count the dots and dashs fast enough to keep track
of the letters. I though back then as the inventors of telegraph
thought it is to difficult of a task for the average human. I noticed
in the Navy ( old Navy we dropped the code ) there are chiefs that can
smoke play poker and carry a conversation while listening to morse
code in five letter groupings and copy it correctly. I was tryly
amazed.
When my son got older to round him out I enrolled him in ham class
after school I went with him but told the teacher I was to old and
that I tried very hard when I was smarter and younger and could not
do it. He said then your trying to hard. Forget what the number of
dots and dashes and gave tapes listen to it as sounds. You will
learn it that way and by damed he was right. You can train you mind
to hear tha dam letters. Just like you can train the mind to return
the correct answer when you add or subtract to sit there and count
is a dead end. You must train the mind to automatically know that
15 - 7 is 8, Or you will never get past arithmetic.
This ham teacher told me that once you learn to do morse the
counting
why by dots and dashs it is harder to untrain you mind so that
you do it with you subconcious. Yet I was able to forget the counting
way and learn the code. It was hard but I did it. Its the same
with "touch point" we train them in a way that does not lend itself
for the mind to do what is needed to advance to higher mathematics.
The real porblem is that once the wrong ways are locked in the
educators write books patting themselves on the back and closing
the loop on the teaching methods. There is a reason our kids don't
know math we don't let people who know and love math or made their
living with there math abilities teach math its only the
"certifed" experts brain washed by people like Piaget and others
like him. If our so called experts knew anything about teaching
with all the money we spend and the past we had. Like sending
men to the moon why are we so far behind?




It reminds me of an essay from Richard Feynman, from when he agreed
to review textbooks for elementary schools. You might enjoy reading
it -- if it weren't so darn depressing, it would be almost funny.

http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm




David A. Scott
--
My Crypto code
http://bijective.dogma.net/crypto/scott19u.zip
http://www.jim.com/jamesd/Kong/scott19u.zip old version
My Compression code http://bijective.dogma.net/
**TO EMAIL ME drop the roman "five" **
Disclaimer:I am in no way responsible for any of the statements
made in the above text. For all I know I might be drugged.
As a famous person once said "any cryptograhic
system is only as strong as its weakest link"





David A. Scott
--
My Crypto code
http://bijective.dogma.net/crypto/scott19u.zip
http://www.jim.com/jamesd/Kong/scott19u.zip old version
My Compression code http://bijective.dogma.net/
**TO EMAIL ME drop the roman "five" **
Disclaimer:I am in no way responsible for any of the statements
made in the above text. For all I know I might be drugged.
As a famous person once said "any cryptograhic
system is only as strong as its weakest link"

.

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