Seriously, I hope this is just a bad joke. Students should be learning two things:
1. A cigarette is a legal survey unit in Texas. At least once a year I get a call from someone at the Uni asking for the length because they have a plan and they have no idea what it is. In old Texas it is the length a man can walk whilst smoking a cigarette. The old plans still exist because of old title. It is not on the survey textbooks – all written outside Texas and it is only in one legal judgement in a court somewhere. Students learn to ask if they hear something they do not understand. 2. I set exams of 150 questions – multiple choice in 50 minutes. All of the questions are out of the textbook, except for a couple of odd questions to reward the students who attend class, or get the class notes 3. The alternative is to take attendance as required by Uni and the Federal Government – my method provides a simple statistical count did you attend class – so you do not have a harsh taskmaster who leans on you – it is your decision and responsibility – I am there to teach them responsibility – some of these people have spent 4 years at war – they are not high school students 4. The 150 question exam has a long term average of 82 +- 10 --- 5. A fortnight is commonly used in Canada – I mention it as some of the students move to NY and will strike new words. 6. A stone is common unit – watch BBC tv 7. A bc is a third of inch it is a legal US unit, J Heymann’s text book on masonry has bc as a unit – published in 1998. 8. My students are often given an essay topic with a required Turnitin score no higher than 4 -- that is very hard and your essay has to be original ---and each student has a separate topic. Students learn to be working human beings who can solve problems and get on with people. Thinking is a learned skill, but anyone who goes into a lumber yard and asks for a 2 inch board is a simple newbie who does not speak the correct language. I do not talk to a plumber the same way I talk to you, but I do speak both languages, Finally one of the best engineers in England is at Exeter University, my good friend who is his friend took us to have dinner with his family. My friend has a PhD in engineering and teaches at a good UK uni. We had a great conversation about an obscure form of dynamics. As we were driving away I looked at my friend and said to her – did you enjoy the talk and she said – I understood Hello and good bye and the rest was gibberish. And at the end, my friendly world class statistician from Australia asked me to participate on a list server and teach the statisticians on the list how to do a quite obscure statistical method that she thinks they need to do Corona Virus analysis – her comment this morning was: You are on the arduous path here. We ought to be "learn &share" and you are doing it gracefully - for a statistician not knowing what FFT(? linear regression without even serial correlation? - I'm withholding). So relax and enjoy, we learn from a lot of different teachers and having some with a sense of humour helps. It is known that ten hard teachers in a Dept turn out poor student, there has to be some kindness. A lot of my students also speak Spanish – Enjoy the day John *From:* John Steele <[email protected]> *Sent:* Monday, 11 May 2020 5:29 AM *To:* [email protected]; John Nichols <[email protected]> *Subject:* Re: [USMA 1364] Teaching students Seriously, I hope this is just a bad joke. Students should be learning two things: *To think *Material that will be *useful* in the profession the course relates to. It is bad enough students need to convert between metric and the Customary units still prevalent in some professions in the US. Teaching (and examining them) on units too obscure to even be defined in Rowlett's Units of Measure, moreless actually used in the US is torture, not teaching. As a potential employer, students who have wasted class time learning nonsense like this would be less useful to me than students who have learned more useful material. I think this needs to be rethought. While being pedantic, I need to point out that the kilogram is a unit of mass, not force (the concept of kilogram-force being entirely deprecated in the SI) so kg/bc² can not be a unit of pressure. You need to multiply by local gravity (as the building likely is designed to stay put) and use N/bc². Also, we use Customary, derived from more obsolete British units, not Imperial. We were independent when Imperial was conceived and adopted none of its changes. Only units which did not change in 1824 are common. I have to ask. In Texas, is a cigarette the length of the tobacco product or the boat? On Sunday, May 10, 2020, 4:46:41 PM EDT, John Nichols <[email protected]> wrote: It is very easy to demonstrate to a class of Freshman the stupidity of the Imperial System used in the USA. 1. Teach then about a cigarette – a legal length in Texas 2. Tell them about stones once in class and the use it in the exam 3. Use barley corns 4. A llath is a great UK unit – it is legal in the UK so I tell me students it is acceptable here 5. Do all board work in feet and change to inches in the exam -- Then set a math problem – A building weighs 4000000 stone, what is the ground pressure if the building is 2/3 of a cigarette by 200 llaths in kg/ squared bc. Who said you cannot fix stupid. *John Nichols* _______________________________________________ USMA mailing list [email protected] https://lists.colostate.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/usma <https://nam01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Furldefense.proofpoint.com%2Fv2%2Furl%3Fu%3Dhttps-3A__lists.colostate.edu_cgi-2Dbin_mailman_listinfo_usma%26d%3DDwMFaQ%26c%3Du6LDEWzohnDQ01ySGnxMzg%26r%3D2z9QGiy5Dxy8_0qMMqfA98Bie-nGD-VfgJgfw4byoU4%26m%3DtJsuZPy3RbP02tjH5YYieFTcw4pdmtn4nWLyK0cF9AA%26s%3DQhKuWUJ9TRPBCOl8qplafDLb5fIW_tEraHOaT9uEoXE%26e%3D&data=02%7C01%7Cusma%40lists.colostate.edu%7C8936319b441b4f7c1d1708d7f5c00463%7Cafb58802ff7a4bb1ab21367ff2ecfc8b%7C0%7C0%7C637248077380650013&sdata=iPbJvJPnKYyqfDPj4d8949CyyQWnoGiXTsXgljiLo18%3D&reserved=0>
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