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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stegall, Sarah [mailto:sarah -dot- stegall -at- terayon -dot- com]
> Sent: Monday, August 20, 2001 2:44 PM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: Re\: Asimov - Assumptions, the audience and
> arithmetic - Rant?
> I have tried many times to take college level calculus, not
> because I need
> it but because I love math and would love to learn calculus as an
> intellectual discipline. I have failed repeatedly because of
> the mechanics of the class as taught at undergraduate levels:
> - the standard is 40+ hours a week of homework, the equivalent of a
> full time job.
Overstatement. It's 1 hour a day in class and probably 2 hours (at most)
of homework. If it meets 5 days a week, that's 15 hours a week, not 40
hours a week. When I took it, it was 2 hours of lecture and 2 hours of
recitation a week; only the recitation had any homework. Hence, my true
commitment with homework was more like 8-10 hours a week.
> - None of the instructors was a professor, they were invariably
foreign
> graduate students whose command of English was poor at best,
> who had no training in curriculum
> development or the art of teaching.
So what? Their grounding in the mathematic foundations is more solid as
a testament to the poor level of our public schools pushing of math and
science.
> - The texts were taught by rote and the
> explanations were perfunctory.
Unbeliever. :) [ see below ]
Actually, I found all instructors -- even the foreigners -- more than
eager to help all honest seekers of truth.
> I have been told to my face that calculus is taught
> deliberately in this way "to screen out people who aren't
> serious about becoming engineers",
> I consider this tantamount to a public
> fraud. I have no interest in becoming an engineer, and I do
> expect to be taught calculus with no hidden agenda.
> But until our system of teaching
> calculus is reformed, we can expect to hand over the next
> generation of technological advances to non-US educated persons.
Not to take any wind from your rant, but IME:
(1) I didn't understand algebra until algebra II and analytic geometry.
(2) I didn't understand geometry until trigonometry.
(3) I didn't understand trigonometry until calculus.
(4) I didn't understand calculus until applied in Physics and electrical
engineering.
(5) There were many things in engineering that I didn't understand until
later courses.
My point is that math (and calculus) is a religion that you have to take
on faith until you can find somewhere to apply it.
I look at Digital Signal Processing (DSP) with its Fast Fourier
Transforms in the same light that you do calculus. However, I know that
I will never fully be able to understand DSP until I apply it somewhere.
At any rate, having gone through some of the highest math classes
offered at my university in the pursuit of an electrical engineering
degree (which I don't use much as a technical writer), I must feebly
support the positioning of college calculus as a weed-out course for
engineering. To know calculus by itself won't do you much, but when you
see it applied in other areas, you become in true awe of Sir Newton for
having come up with it in the first place.
Glenn Maxey
Voyant Technologies, Inc.
Tel. +1 303.223.5164
Fax. +1 303.223.5275
glenn -dot- maxey -at- voyanttech -dot- com
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A landmark hotel, one of America's most beautiful cities, and
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IPCC 01, Oct. 24-27 in Santa Fe. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
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