Well, Hil, remember bacon salt is kosher too!
None of it means a damn thing.
Mal ,'Objects In Space'
Spike's Bitches 38: Well, This Is Just...Neat.
[NAFDA] Spike-centric discussion. Lusty, lewd (only occasionally crude), risqué (and frisqué), bawdy (Oh, lawdy!), flirty ('cuz we're purty), raunchy talk inside. Caveat lector.
meara - Nov 15, 2007 8:23:03 pm PST #4325 of 10002
Hil R. - Nov 15, 2007 8:28:37 pm PST #4326 of 10002
Sometimes I think I might just move up to Vermont, open a bookstore or a vegan restaurant. Adam Schlesinger, z''l
But it's ham flavored soda! I really don't much care about kashrut at that point -- soda flavored like any meat is just wrong.
Ailleann - Nov 15, 2007 8:47:27 pm PST #4327 of 10002
vanguard of the socialist Hollywood liberal homosexualist agenda
(Particularly if it were Welling/Reeves)
I... I just...
::brain shorts out::
Hil R. - Nov 15, 2007 9:03:56 pm PST #4328 of 10002
Sometimes I think I might just move up to Vermont, open a bookstore or a vegan restaurant. Adam Schlesinger, z''l
Argh. Anyone mind if I kvetch about elementary math curriculum for a bit? (I'm going to be tutoring a girl whose school uses Everyday Math, so I figured I ought to learn some more about it.) From a third grade workbook:
Use the "about 3 times" circle rule to complete the table below:For any circle, the circumference is about 3 times the diameter.
Then they give a table where they give the circumference of a circle, and the kids are supposed to find the diameter.
The "about 3 times" rule? The hell? The circumference is not "about 3 times" the diameter. It's not 3 or so, give or take. It's pi times the diameter. Pi is a really neat number. It's got one hell of a lot of interesting properties. Not the least of which is, it's the ratio between the circumference and the diameter of a circle!
I can see places where a problem like this could be reasonable. Like, introduce pi in some way, let them know that pi is a little more than three, then have them estimate the diameter, given the circumference. Or, my personal favorite (did this with the kids I taught last summer) -- let the kids loose in the school yard with tape measures and paper. Have them find round things (our yard had a whole bunch of lampposts, and the pavement was in circular patterns), measure the circumference and diameter, calculate the ratio, and realize that it's always just about the same. Then talk about pi, and the Greeks, and how it's such a neat number.
But the "about three times" circle rule? That totally obscures the important point, which is that the ratio is exactly the same in any circle.
And then in the same lesson, for some reason, they learn about lines and line segments and rays. They don't actually do anything with them -- really, those aren't terribly useful definitions until you get to geometry, there's not much that you can do with them at that level -- they just learn what they are, and can identify and label and draw them. Why? What on earth is the purpose of learning about something you won't actually use for another seven years?
Hil R. - Nov 15, 2007 9:28:58 pm PST #4329 of 10002
Sometimes I think I might just move up to Vermont, open a bookstore or a vegan restaurant. Adam Schlesinger, z''l
Oops. Didn't mean to kill the thread with math rant.
Typo Boy - Nov 15, 2007 9:31:56 pm PST #4330 of 10002
Calli: My people have a saying. A man who trusts can never be betrayed, only mistaken.Avon: Life expectancy among your people must be extremely short.
No. The rant was totally justified. Treating PI as exactly 3 is often offered as a classic example of ignorance and stupidity. There are jokes about legislature making that the legal definition, or engineering firms adapting that as an internal standard. So when someone actually does it in a math textbook, that justifies a rant or three.
omnis_audis - Nov 15, 2007 9:36:45 pm PST #4331 of 10002
omnis, pursue. That's an order from a shy woman who can use M-16. - Shir
justifies a rant or 3.14159265358979323846… of them
Hil R. - Nov 15, 2007 9:39:18 pm PST #4332 of 10002
Sometimes I think I might just move up to Vermont, open a bookstore or a vegan restaurant. Adam Schlesinger, z''l
This is the same series of textbooks that, in the fifth grade books, asks kids to fill in the blanks on a series of sentences like, "If math was a color, it would be _____, because, _____." (Allegedly. I've seen this quoted on a site that seems pretty accurate, but I haven't seen it in the actual book. But I went through several years of middle and high school math with the books from this same series, and I can absolutely believe it.) (Also, that comma after the "because" bugs me. And the authors are either working with some educational concept that I don't understand or they don't know the difference between "how many" and "how much.")
edit: felt it was time for a tag change. Back to Erdos. I love this quote.
SuziQ - Nov 15, 2007 9:41:48 pm PST #4333 of 10002
Back tattoos of the mother is that you are absolutely right - Ame
Home from SFO. K-Bug is on her way to Boston. TOO MUCH DRAMA at the airport, but she finally got a seat on the plane and I am not in jail. Tis good.
Now I'll just be a wreak until I hear from her or vw that they have found eachother in the am.
Hil R. - Nov 15, 2007 9:55:24 pm PST #4334 of 10002
Sometimes I think I might just move up to Vermont, open a bookstore or a vegan restaurant. Adam Schlesinger, z''l
Yikes on TOO MUCH DRAMA, Suzi.
I find myself liking the Saxon Math books purely because of the word problems:
Four hundred seventy-two soldiers strutted proudly in front. Two hundred seven soldiers walked sadly behind them. How many soldiers were there in all?
Jason sailed the ship Argo in search of the Golden Fleece. His shipmates were called Argonauts. They sailed 33 miles in 3 days. What was the average number of miles they sailed each day? At the same rate, how far could they sail in 7 days?