"All the Math Taught at University Can Be Outsourced. What Now?"

Galaxy · 10-24-2012, 04:14 PM

Dr. Keith Devlin: All the Math Taught at University Can Be Outsourced. What Now?

A blog post from this past March that I came across today by Keith Devlin, PhD, who is a math professor at Stanford. I found it interesting.

Solecismic · 10-24-2012, 04:30 PM

Concern is a bit overblown. When we first had calculators, the concern was kids would lose the ability to do basic math. But my nine-year-old is still being drilled on the times table, and he understands that without knowing how to apply it, problems can't be solved. One thing I was pleased to see when I had my parent-teacher conference last week was that there's an emphasis on having them learn that there's more than one way to solve many problems. So he gets that math is a toolkit rather than a memorization thing.

This outsourcing of higher-level math problems is like having a really powerful calculator. You still have to understand the underlying concepts in order to give the contractor a math problem that has a meaningful answer.

Our universities remain strong because we have students from all over the world who want to be here. Our high schools lag because our culture doesn't emphasize the need to have a solid basic education.

Matthean · 10-24-2012, 07:10 PM

So why am I taking precalc again?

10-24-2012, 07:10 PM	#3
Matthean Grizzled Veteran Join Date: Aug 2008	So why am I taking precalc again? __________________ Board games: Bringing people back to the original social network, the table.

10-24-2012, 04:30 PM	#2
Solecismic Solecismic Software Join Date: Oct 2000 Location: Canton, OH	Concern is a bit overblown. When we first had calculators, the concern was kids would lose the ability to do basic math. But my nine-year-old is still being drilled on the times table, and he understands that without knowing how to apply it, problems can't be solved. One thing I was pleased to see when I had my parent-teacher conference last week was that there's an emphasis on having them learn that there's more than one way to solve many problems. So he gets that math is a toolkit rather than a memorization thing. This outsourcing of higher-level math problems is like having a really powerful calculator. You still have to understand the underlying concepts in order to give the contractor a math problem that has a meaningful answer. Our universities remain strong because we have students from all over the world who want to be here. Our high schools lag because our culture doesn't emphasize the need to have a solid basic education.

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