Lockheed Martin puts out a Fusion Related Press Release

TheBeagle_sl said:

Ahh, so the problem isn't in the tools we use, but how we use them and the problem really lies in our "philosophy" or more appropriately, culture. Couldn't agree more Tad.

Ever noticed how in 1971 scientists were looked up to and glorified by society a lot more and we as a country took pride in our strong public education system? There weren't too many home schoolers back then.

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Well specifically with Vietnam, LBJ basically hogtied the Generals in the DoD and limited what they could do. If we had gone all-in in Vietnam we would have won. Anyone who says different is smoking something.

Our public education system is now a feeder system for fat little liberal idiots. No one cares if you can know what the cube root of 828 is - just that you are trained to be a double-plus good liberal voter who doesn't ask why Al Gore screams about Climate Change and Carbon Taxes while he flies around on a rented Gulfstream from NetJets. The sheep must not look up.

Don't look at home schoolers - look at the people you vote for who's only interest in education is ensuring that teachers are mandatorily subject to Union Dues which will eventually flow into Pro-Democrat ads.

TheBeagle_sl said:

Idiocracy

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/aside

I honestly don't know which is the better movie Office Space or Idiocracy. One is true of our time, one seems prescient of our future. All hail Mike Judge

tad10_sl said:

I'm pretty sure you don't work with students. The mathematical illiteracy of the average high school and college student would astound you.

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khalid_sl said:

I'm a mathematics professor dipshit.

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Doing math by hand is better imo, I don't like the idea that any class teaching things like algebra or calc 1 lets kids use the good calculators, it basically just lets you sit there and type in what you see and hit enter, that's not learning in any sense. Now there is also the other side of it where in advanced classes not allowing the use of all available tools is just going to bog people down on basics, but learning those basics is so important, I understand so much more about what the software I use is doing because I had to take those classes where they made us do the matrix algebra by hand.

I am not a professor or anything amazing but I do have an msc from a good school in a stem major so I know what helped me learn atleast. And I know that coming through high school in the US 15 years ago with all the graphing calculators available to let us crutch through even the easy classes where we should have been working problems by hand was not a good thing. Its better to have a test with 3 problems in an hour than one with 30 but the one with 30 doesn't teach you shit beyond how to type the problem into your TI-89 and hit enter.

tad10_sl said:

Basically I think you should all go to ebay and pick up a Versalog or a Pickett. Download some instruction manuals. Learn how to use it and then come back to this discussion. I don't think enough of you (I'm looking at your Beagle) get exactly how powerful slide rules are.

Virtual Pickett N3-T Slide Rule

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I get it. I can buy your reasoning, to a point. But believe it or not, kids have ALOT on their plate these days, especially the gifted ones. Tack on learning a slide rule on top of everything else that they have to learn in a modern technological world, and it just sounds unnecessary and burdensome.

High school graduates fresh to college are bad at mathematics for so many reasons, however what I see so much is students just being intimidated by mathematics. Iannis for example has said that notation always scared him. Students need to be made comfortable with mathematics, to be taught that it isn't intimidating. Handing them a slide rule will if anything have the opposite effect.

TheBeagle_sl said:

I get it. I can buy your reasoning, to a point. But believe it or not, kids have ALOT on their plate these days, especially the gifted ones. Tack on learning a slide rule on top of everything else that they have to learn in a modern technological world, and it just sounds unnecessary and burdensome.

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Go buy yourself a slide rule from ebay (I highly recommend you start with a Versalog I and associated Versalog manual The V2 is the better slide rule but usually way more expensive. Pickett is a good, much cheaper option if you just want to screw around) or play around with the link (not that fun - virtual slide rules are like virtual sex...) Basic manuals here ->Greg's Slide Rules - Manuals

Point being - it's actually not that burdensome if you start with 9th graders - learning basic slide rule functionality is no more difficult than learning to type. Yes, I know it won't happen - but I'd like to at least be arguing with someone who knows how to use slide rules at least as well as I do. -_-

khalid_sl said:

Handing them a slide rule will if anything have the opposite effect.

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Unless of course, you take the time to explain what you're handing them. As with TheBeagle, I really think you should at least spend some time trying them out.

The ISRM actually has a slide rule loaner program - the few classes that have used the loaner program seemed to have done alright:
Fromhttp://www.sliderulemuseum.com/

tad10_sl said:

Well specifically with Vietnam, LBJ basically hogtied the Generals in the DoD and limited what they could do. If we had gone all-in in Vietnam we would have won. Anyone who says different is smoking something.

Our public education system is now a feeder system for fat little liberal idiots. No one cares if you can know what the cube root of 828 is - just that you are trained to be a double-plus good liberal voter who doesn't ask why Al Gore screams about Climate Change and Carbon Taxes while he flies around on a rented Gulfstream from NetJets. The sheep must not look up.

Don't look at home schoolers - look at the people you vote for who's only interest in education is ensuring that teachers are mandatorily subject to Union Dues which will eventually flow into Pro-Democrat ads.

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Jesus, just when I think you might be close to making a decent point you go full retard and blame all the problems of humanity on Democrats and liberalism. I bet you would have made a really loyal Tory back during the Revolution. Franklin and Jefferson were probably the two most liberal humans on the planet at the time.

Anyway, do you actually have kids in school or have sent kids through school? I do and I keep looking for this huge liberal breeding ground you conspiracy dipshits keep talking about and I can't find it. I'm just as worried about my daughter being exposed to retarded anti-GMO, anti-vaccine, pro-Islam lefties as I am about gun-toting, authoritarian Tea Tards and I have seen little to none of either.

You have this worldview that you've conjured up in your mind of all these secretive cabals mind-controlling the world through their Democrat minions, while blithely ignoring the retardation coming from the right. It makes you seem like a truly out-of-touch crazy person.

Home schoolers are a problem. Those kids are functionally retarded. I've started helping TA a couple Env. Science labs recently and I've seen firsthand how woefully uninformed on even the most basic scientific principles many of them are.

If anything Tad, I think we should go in the opposite direction. Teach students to solve problems with Mathematica, rather than doing things on a calculator. We live in the computing age, being a Luddite is never the answer. Though I will admit your opinion is shared by some of the older professors in my department.

Slide rules are cool though, I get it. I have one sitting on my desk. However, horses are pretty cool also. Doesn't mean I want to ride one to work.

khalid_sl said:

High school graduates fresh to college are bad at mathematics for so many reasons, however what I see so much is students just being intimidated by mathematics. Iannis for example has said that notation always scared him. Students need to be made comfortable with mathematics, to be taught that it isn't intimidating. Handing them a slide rule will if anything have the opposite effect.

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I think the problem is a failure from the bottom up. If no one ever bothered to really teach you how to solve basic algebra problems or do basic geometry or anything like that and you get stuck in a class suddenly where you are expected to do it by hand and can't crutch on the software anymore it's no surprise the kids shit their pants, I don't even blame them. Whats the solution when kids are failed by their publics schools for ~8 years in math and then sent to college and don't know what they should know going in?

I think the problem is math actually is intimidating, its hard, it makes you think, you can't fake and bullshit your way through it. I am not sure that is really a problem that can be fixed rather than a reality that must be accepted.

TheBeagle_sl said:

Jesus, just when I think you might be close to making a decent point you go full retard .

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Lol. You brought up Vietnam buddy - I'm just pointing out reality. LBJ micromanaged the war in Vietnam which is a big reason we lost. Always a problem when a President thinks he's a "Better General than his Generals".

If you want to think that teachers and the NEA are conservative, I don't know what to say except stop drinking bad Moonshine, you're going blind.

National Education Assn: Summary | OpenSecretsYou are welcome to show me where any NEA funds are going to Republicans in this list.
NEA Advocacy Fund

khalid_sl said:

If anything Tad, I think we should go in the opposite direction. Teach students to solve problems with Mathematica, rather than doing things on a calculator. We live in the computing age, being a Luddite is never the answer. Though I will admit your opinion is shared by some of the older professors in my department.

Slide rules are cool though, I get it. I have one sitting on my desk. However, horses are pretty cool also. Doesn't mean I want to ride one to work.

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Mathematica is even worse. Thanks to Mathematica we know have engineering students trying to cheat their way on their complex variables test because they have no fucking clue how to solve anything, since they used Mathematica to do all their homework. No bullshit. I was talking to a retired professor over the summer who tutors for a little extra $. An engineering student emailed him and asked the prof if he'd basically sit on his cellphone during the student's test so the student could text the prof for help. And this wasn't the first time.

Fuck Stephen Wolfram and an especial fuck to James Stewart for actively encouraging graphing calculators and Mathematica.

tad10_sl said:

Lol. You brought up Vietnam buddy - I'm just pointing out reality. LBJ micromanaged the war in Vietnam which is a big reason we lost. Always a problem when a President thinks he's a "Better General than his Generals".

If you want to think that teachers and the NEA are conservative, I don't know what to say except stop drinking bad Moonshine, you're going blind.

National Education Assn: Summary | OpenSecretsYou are welcome to show me where any NEA funds are going to Republicans in this list.
NEA Advocacy Fund

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Your reading comprehension is really bad. I never made any of those points, and I have no idea why you brought them up in response to my post. I simply made the point that I don't see any evidence of liberal brainwashing going on in public schools. That's it.

tad10_sl said:

Mathematica is even worse. Thanks to Mathematica we know have engineering students trying to cheat their way on their complex variables test because they have no fucking clue how to solve anything, since they used Mathematica to do all their homework. No bullshit. I was talking to a retired professor over the summer who tutors for a little extra $. An engineering student emailed him and asked the prof if he'd basically sit on his cellphone during the student's test so the student could text the prof for help. And this wasn't the first time.

Fuck Stephen Wolfram and an especial fuck to James Stewart for actively encouraging graphing calculators and Mathematica.

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Yeah, fuck making hard problems easier. We should do everything with the slide rule and by hand. If it can't be done the good ole way, we shouldn't do it at all!

Seriously bro, the only thing less likely than the slide rule coming back is MH370 being in Iran. Get over it.

khalid_sl said:

Yeah, fuck making hard problems easier.

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Exactly. You're not going to learn math if Mathematica or your graphing calculator is doing all the work.

TheBeagle_sl said:

Your reading comprehension is really bad. I never made any of those points, and I have no idea why you brought them up in response to my post. I simply made the point that I don't see any evidence of liberal brainwashing going on in public schools. That's it.

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And I posted evidence that the teachers and the NEA massively support the Democratic party.

I take it you totally ignored all the news about the AP US History Changes and the fact that Common Core Science insists that carbon dioxide caused global warming is factual?

Anything you can solve by simply plugging numbers into a calculator isn't a hard problem anymore. Technology should be embraced and used to expand our definition of hard problems, not hold new students to slide rules and by-hand calculations.

khalid_sl said:

Anything you can solve by simply plugging numbers into a calculator isn't a hard problem anymore. Technology should be embraced and used to expand our definition of hard problems, not hold new students to slide rules and by-hand calculations.

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This is beyond bullshit and shows a lack of understanding of how most people learn math.

I will assume that you are some kind of math genius - maybe not Gauss-level, but a genius. Math geniuses exist and they have a completely different relationship with math than the rest of us.

For the rest of us, you have to learn the basics (addition, subtraction, multiplication, percentages, basic math) before you can do the journeyman (roots, squares, cubes, fractions, geometry, algebra I & II) stuff, and you have to learn the journeyman stuff before you can learn the adept stuff (Trig, Pre-Calc/Analytic Geometry, Calc I & II) and you have to learn the adept stuff before you can learn the master stuff (Abstract Algebra, Topology, Calculus of Vector Functions, Taylor Series, Laplace Transforms, Etc. ETc. Etc. Etc)

So if you are not comfortable with fractions you have no fucking chance with Trig (which, let us all admit is basically just fractions writ large on a circle) and if you are not comfortable with Trig you have no fucking chance with Calc.

So no, you need to make the kids skull sweat if you want the kids to be able to do Calculus and beyond.

All you are suggesting doing is replacing the math development of the kid's brain with the already mathematically developed brains of whomever programmed the Calculator or Computer Algebra System.