Particularly liked this bit too: A telling comment on the issue of fairness in teaching elementary physics: Two students asked if I was going to continue asking them about things they had never studied in the class.
My gran used to be a maths teacher and one question she asked her class (I think they were about 14 or 15) was 'if one side of a triangle is 10 inches long and another is 12 inches long, what is the maximum length in whole inches of the third side?'. Loads of them got it wrong and compained bitterly about how unfair it was to ask them things they hadn't been taught. She also asked my dad (eldest of three) and his two brothers - the youngest got it right in a flash, the middle brother struggled and got it wrong (I think) and my dad struggled and got it right eventually. His comment at the time was that he didn't understand how anyone who hadn't been taught trigonometry would be able to answer. But of course it's just a matter of logic and simple arithmetic - the third side can't be 10 + 12 inches long otherwise it would be a line not a triangle, so it has to be 10 + 12 - 1 inches long.
I have no idea if I would get that if asked without knowing it - I've always known it as a story so never had to figure it out "without being taught it"...
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Date: April 30th, 2009 09:11 am (UTC)From:A telling comment on the issue of fairness in teaching elementary physics: Two students asked if I was going to continue asking them about things they had never studied in the class.
My gran used to be a maths teacher and one question she asked her class (I think they were about 14 or 15) was 'if one side of a triangle is 10 inches long and another is 12 inches long, what is the maximum length in whole inches of the third side?'. Loads of them got it wrong and compained bitterly about how unfair it was to ask them things they hadn't been taught. She also asked my dad (eldest of three) and his two brothers - the youngest got it right in a flash, the middle brother struggled and got it wrong (I think) and my dad struggled and got it right eventually. His comment at the time was that he didn't understand how anyone who hadn't been taught trigonometry would be able to answer. But of course it's just a matter of logic and simple arithmetic - the third side can't be 10 + 12 inches long otherwise it would be a line not a triangle, so it has to be 10 + 12 - 1 inches long.
I have no idea if I would get that if asked without knowing it - I've always known it as a story so never had to figure it out "without being taught it"...