On Apr 8, 2013, at 11:35 PM, Rob Studdert <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 9 April 2013 06:30, John Sessoms <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Just out of curiosity, what real life problem does that equation relate to? >> >> It's been long enough since I'd done school-book math that I had to >> Google "order of operations" to be sure I got the answer right. > > Not trying to harp on but given the results from that thread most > people couldn't even manage a simple temperature conversion ie: > > F = 32 + 9 / 5 x C > I think most would have no problem with this. In fact, Grace at age 8 can probably do it. It's quite obvious here that this is not meant to be a series of linear calculations from left to right. The Facebook examples are not so obvious to those who have forgotten the order of operations. People read left to right, so they tend to calculate that way as well. But I agree that many Americans are undereducated. As I said when this thread first shifted, American schools have failed their students. They became complacent, and many of them are packed with bad teachers protected by powerful unions with political connections. Things are changing, but improvement takes time. Grace's public school is a good one, in part because it's subject to heavy competition from excellent Catholic and private schools, but also because it's in a good neighborhood where the residents will accept nothing less. Most American children are not so fortunate. Paul > -- > Rob Studdert (Digital Image Studio) > Tel: +61-418-166-870 UTC +10 Hours > Gmail, eBay, Skype, Twitter, Facebook, Picasa: distudio > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
