Word: algebra
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Casehardened with Tradition. Teacher Genevieve Simpson (B.A.1922) was surprised to find that the algebra taught in the ordinary classroom is "not a part of modern algebra at all." Teacher Edgar Arnold (B.E. 1930) found that "this is all new to me. I have to unlearn old symbols and learn new ones. We are casehardened with tradition." "In modern math," adds Teacher Helene Lannon, who got her master's degree as late as 1948, "we have had to learn a new vocabulary. In the traditional mathematics we would say 'cancel out numbers.' Now you say 'divide...
...have already begun to expose their own pupils to the new things they have learned. But the major lesson of the Portland project is that if more cities do not do something similar soon, U.S. teachers will find themselves dismally unprepared for a curriculum in which the barriers between algebra, geometry and analysis are crumbling, solid geometry and trigonometry may disappear as separate subjects, and algebra will deal with such topics as groups, rings and fields. As one Portland student put it: "Even the concept of the line has changed. In geometry you may have learned that a line...
Easy Does It. While the schools score above average in the number of basic courses they offer, these courses are getting fewer and fewer takers. General enrollment has risen 26% since 1945, but with the exception of first-year algebra (up 11%) and solid geometry (up 28%), the number of pupils in all other mathematics and science courses has slumped. Physics is down 10%, chemistry 17%. Other academic subjects have also suffered: enrollment in social studies, which include one required year of U.S. history, has dropped 9%; first, second and third-year Latin are down an average 20%; fourth-year...
...While nonscience textbooks must be repeatedly revised to keep up with the changing party line, some science and mathematics textbooks have become so "stabilized" as to be "ossified." The most widely used algebra text, for instance, was published in 1888, has undergone only minor revisions since. Even Soviet experts have publicly protested that "the book fails fully to reflect modern science," yet it is still...
...discovery of zero." Now I heard every thing," grumbles Gargle. "Zero- zero means nothin' Baird, and you say the discovery of nothin' is a world-shaking event." In dealing with modern computers, Baird must include a quick explanation of the binary system.* He works his way into algebra with the equation T =C/4 + 37-the outside Fahrenheit temperature equals the number of times a cricket chirps in a quarter of a minute plus 37. After algebra come geometry, trigonometry, and the theory of probability that was discovered when Gambler Chevalier de Meré asked Pascal to figure...