I think the whole country are on the barbell curve now. Me, I like to tell myself I am right in the middle.
From: Bill Prince Sent: Friday, February 12, 2021 2:48 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT possibly political In the rural area we live in, which is just far enough away from Silicon Valley to think of it as "there" and not "here", but we still have a lot (and I mean a lot) of S.V. types up in these here hills. Several years ago I coined the term "barbell curve". It's a sideswipe to the conventional bell curve. With the bell curve, you survey a sample of people, and their opinions on an arbitrary topic can be plotted on a graph. You get a few people at each extreme of the graph, but the vast majority are in the center. When you plot it out, you get the familiar bell-shaped curve. Around here, it seems we have large portions of our population that occupy the extremes, and very few in the center. If you survey them on a topic, you will get a sort of inverted bell curve, where the ends go up, and the middle goes down. Kind of like a barbell. I call it the barbell curve. bp <part15sbs{at}gmail{dot}com>On 2/12/2021 12:06 PM, Chuck McCown via AF wrote: There is a branch of the left that does not trust science. And of course alt-right has their alternate science truthiness. There was a good article about Evergreen College up in Washington. In an article in the Olympian the writer said: Evergreen now seems fully in the control of an anti-science, anti-rational, anti-liberty, racist minority embedded in the administration and faculty which holds the rest of the staff, faculty, and students hostage. If you oppose them, or even don't actively support them, they will strip you of your livelihood if you are faculty or staff, or your education if you are a student. If the far left and far right merge at the bottom of the circle with anti science, thus presumably mushy math practitioners, then at the top of the circle where left and right meet must be the haven for math and science. That is the spot I consider myself to be. In my universe it is 2 dimensional. Everyone is on my circle and can be described by a vector. Magnitude and Angle. I am hopefully about a .5 @ 90 degrees. Perhaps 80 degrees. But you gotta use a smith chart to find folks like antifa and proud boyz. They have reactances... From: Steve Jones Sent: Friday, February 12, 2021 12:11 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT possibly political This is part of the equity vs equality stupidity. I always loved math, even the math that exceeded my scope because its the only honesty. Math is rigid and doesnt care about you, or your identity. A wrong answer in woke equity is right as long as your intentions were good. Equity makes things blow up. Math/=Equity Ill stick with the old truths of mathematics On Fri, Feb 12, 2021 at 12:49 PM Adam Moffett mailto:[email protected] wrote: This course seems stupid. The original context is the Oregon DOE newsletter provided a link to it. On the one hand, the DOE is not forcing any teachers to take this course. On the other hand I don't understand why they would even suggest it. On the other-other hand, I don't think we need to flip about it. This is not an actual math curriculum. On 2/12/2021 1:24 PM, Chuck McCown via AF wrote: Yeah, that is what got me too. We all know there are a bunch of ways to arrive at the right answer. But in math, most of the time there is one and only one right answer. Or in the cases of roots, you can have two right elements of the solution but you need both of them to constitute the one right answer. From: Mathew Howard Sent: Friday, February 12, 2021 11:17 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT possibly political I think this quote pretty much tells you all you need to know: "Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict." If they were talking about teaching different methods of arriving at the correct answer, that's a fair discussion. I think it's probably true that there are differences in the way individual's brains work that make some methods work better for some people than others (although I seriously doubt that has anything to do with race, but it could very well be related to cultural and linguistic background), so there's a reasonable argument for saying that we should look at different methods of arriving at the correct answer, but I'm pretty sure that math is one area where there is in fact always a right and wrong answer. On Fri, Feb 12, 2021 at 11:54 AM Cameron Crum mailto:[email protected] wrote: Well if that doesn't spell it out for you, I don't know what does. I was half kidding in my response earlier, but looks like it was spot on now. We are doomed if this crap is allowed to proceed. On Fri, Feb 12, 2021 at 11:48 AM Chuck McCown via AF mailto:[email protected] wrote: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/oregon-math-course-racism-white-supremacy-teachers https://www.foxnews.com/us/oregon-education-math-white-supremacy From: Carl Peterson Sent: Friday, February 12, 2021 10:18 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group Subject: Re: [AFMUG] OT possibly political Not sure of your source but I think you misunderstand. https://www.mathnasium.com/littleton-news-when-one-correct-math-answer-is-not-enough "Reframing the above problem to encourage divergent thinking might look something like this: “Find the sum of 32 + 5 and then create more equations that have the same sum.” Theoretically, someone could keep thinking about this problem forever and generate infinite correct answers." On Fri, Feb 12, 2021 at 10:32 AM Chuck McCown via AF mailto:[email protected] wrote: Just read of a push to teach a “new math” the encourages multiple “correct answers” to math problems and eliminates “show your work”. Supposedly cleanses math teaching from institutional racism. OK, irrespective of your genetics, heritage, cultural backgropund and gender choices, if I tell an employee to go read the sequentials off of a reel of cable and tell me how much is left, they better get one frigging answer, the one and only correct answer. So I am an old fat entitled unwoke white guy. By some accounts automatically racist. I don’t feel that way, but again I am unwoke (whatever in the hell that means) so I wouldn’t know. I simply don’t get how getting the one and only right answer in math class is institutional racism. Can you imagine someone that came up through schools that allow this trying to get into an engineering program? Now who is suppressing whom... -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- Carl Peterson PORT NETWORKS 401 E Pratt St, Ste 2553 Baltimore, MD 21202 (410) 637-3707 -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
-- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
