The Antiracist educators are at it again, creating racism everywhere they go:
Here’s a case of soft racism disguised as a righteous lecture (and a call for funding)
Profs help push program that claims math is ‘racist’ because it requires a ‘right answer’
Wyatt Eichholz, CampusReform
A new program promoted by the Oregon Department of Education is designed to “dismantle” instances of “white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom.”
Calling all victims! (And if you aren’t one now, you will be soon.)
“White supremacy culture infiltrates math classrooms in everyday teacher actions,” the guide states. “Coupled with the beliefs that underlie these actions, they perpetuate educational harm on Black, Latinx, and multilingual students, denying them full access to the world of mathematics.”
From the headline, this new “maths” has all the racist underpinnings of a gloriously oppressive education — one that tells students that maths is really a “white” thing. It’s implicit in the mission statement that those with a colored complexion probably won’t be good at maths and furthermore, that they can blame white supremacists for that. It’s almost like someone was working to make it harder for black mathematicans to believe in themselves, and white mathematicians too. For starters, it has people thinking about their skin color and not the numbers.
…
Lordy! Imagine having to show your work?
Examples of “white supremacy culture” cited by the document include a focus on “getting the ‘right’ answer” and requiring students to show their work.
It is as bad as you thought.
The authors of the program state that “The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false, and teaching it is even much less so. Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict.”
Whatever you do, don’t perpetuate objectivity.
The document is truly a powerhouse of hate:
…
How many young impressionable student teachers would come out of this training feeling more empowered, more able, and more enthusiastic about teaching maths?
White supremacy culture infiltrates math classrooms in everyday teacher actions. Coupled with the beliefs that underlie these actions, they perpetuate educational harm on Black, Latinx, and multilingual students, denying them full access to the world of mathematics.The table below identifies the ways in which white supremacy shows up in math classrooms.
Have you harmed anyone today by talking about maths?
Speaking of Toxic cultures, read what happens to Falun Gung practitioners in China. That’s “Toxic”
h/t Steve H
Unbelivable and so stupid.
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Yes.
Those pushing this barrow should not complain then if they don’t receive the correct change after purchasing any chattels.
After all…to be given the ‘right’ change is racist! Right?
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Accidental red thumb.
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Maths has a correct answer
As a road and bridge engineer, get the calcs wrong and have a catastrophic disaster then you could go to jail regardless of race.
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What is the difference between a scientist and engineer?
Answer. A scientist has to convince others that he is right, an engineer has to be right.
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Are the Asians, who are so good at maths, economics and accountancy, also racist “white supremacists?
The word “algebra” is derived from the Arabic word الجبر al-jabr, and this comes from the treatise written in the year 830 by the medieval Persian mathematician, Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, whose Arabic title, Kitāb al-muḫtaṣar fī ḥisāb al-ğabr wa-l-muqābala, can be translated as The Compendious Book on Calculation . Are these stupid people also calling the early Islamists “white supremacists”? Tell an Ayatollah that and see how long you will survive.
Yes, Mal below. Engineers in Italy have been jailed for a collapsed dam which killed people.
An a person who was involved with the design of the collapsed TV tower in the Christchurch earthquake which killed many was fined $750,000 for falsifying qualifications and not being properly registered as an engineer.
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And al-Khwarizmi got a lot of it from the Hindu mathematician Brahmagupta.
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The propaganda claims that Asians have internalized whiteness.
https://medium.com/a-m-awaken-your-inner-asian/internalized-racism-among-asians-49980f984401
Personally I think you need to be totally nuts to believe this, and quite likely the whole story is intentionally designed to drive people nuts. Many go along with it to get along, and don’t believe a word of what they say but that’s not healthy either.
Communists require class struggle and Capitalism has delivered so many material goods that the narrative of material hardship has become completely unconvincing on the face of it … therefore in order to continue their divide and conquer strategy they need to find other ways to split people up into identity groups.
It’s about power.
It’s about power.
It’s never been about anything other than power.
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Yes. The word algorithim is derived from al-Khwārizmī’s name. He is supposed to be the first to formulate them.
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The basis of all this is that somebody, somewhere, is getting paid, or at least hopes to get paid, for generating this nonsense.
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Have any of the authors actually published peer-reviewed mathematics research papers?
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Kind of proves the Left is a 100% demented anti human , Luddite , reactionary, evil force.
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From the guide itself
It’s not that the formulas and equations taught in current math classes are racist, Castro-Gill said it’s about how they’re used in daily life.
“Nowhere in this document says that math is inherently racist,” she said. “It’s how math is used as a tool for oppression.”
One example teachers might mention in an ethnic studies math class, she said, is how black voters in the South were given literacy and numeracy tests before they could cast their ballot. Another might be a lesson on ratios that discusses gaps in incarceration rates and how the weight of a type of drug determines the length of a sentence.
“The numbers are objective,” she said, “but how we use it is not objective.”
But, you know, white privileged is fragile, and must be defended even if it requires lies and untruths
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Yes, there is Human Ugliness, and it is not bound by colour or gender.
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They did mention the defining element of racism – “multilingual“.
Mathematics does have a language of its own.
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How strange that ‘white supremacy’ does not affect the ability of Chinese, Indian, Korean and Vietnamese students. I’m just having a wild guess here, but just maybe there’s another reason for poor performance. But I’m sure I’m being racist even suggesting that.
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Harves, the Chinese maths program would undoubtedly be skewed towards the Han, if you were to study under that curriculum (and according to the paper) you would suffer a 10-15% decline in your results.
So thanks for proving my point
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I’m talking about in the US and Australia. Perhaps you can explain why these Asian students thrive in such a racist environment, rather than trying to deflect.
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” Perhaps you can explain why these Asian students thrive in such a racist environment, rather than trying to deflect.”
The Asian students thrive primarily because their families are well aware of the importance of education an attitude that is lacking in Australia. I cannot comment on the attitude to education in the US as I have insufficient knowledge of that attitude.
With regard to maths, it is true that there are many different ways of arriving at the correct answer and although the wording of the book that is the centrepiece of this thread is challenging, the thinking behind it understandable.
It is true that maths is/has been taught using procedures that the teachers themselves have been taught to use. This could be considered racist as these procedures may be different from the procedures used in the pupil’s own home.
This link
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/04/racist-math-education/524199/
examines “How Race Affect a Student’s Math Education and the ways “whiteness” reproduces racial advantages and disadvantages.”
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“The Asian students thrive primarily because their families are well aware of the importance of education an attitude that is lacking in Australia. I cannot comment on the attitude to education in the US as I have insufficient knowledge of that attitude.”
Also, here in the US, the attitude of “the importance of education” is often lacking and this the program defined in “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction” will not improve the situation and most likely it will make it worse.
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In maths it is the reasoning that is the whole point. A correct answer for the wrong reason is wrong!
Similarly the method must be reasonble. A slip in the calculation can cause a wrong answer. How the problem is addressed is maths. A wrong answer can score better than a correct answer for the wrong reason.
It is good to show your calculations.
Multiple choice can hide flukes.
However flukes are limited and can be revealed with test result processing. With multiple choice distractors can be designed to diagnose incorrect thought processes.
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Multiple choice is the ruination of education.
It was introduced because they had trouble getting a sufficient number of competent examiners.
Which in turn was due to there being in an affluent society too many easier ways to make a living.
Now why did the Roman Empire fall?
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Maths is an inert subject.
Its right or wrong.
It cares not who you are or where you come from.
Its like rain – it falls on everyone.
Why are we even talking about a non-issue?
Seriously…..if the Left cant fine something to whine about, it invents it. Are Lefties permenenatly bored?
2/10 – must try harder.
Hows that for maths?
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Ian, you’re confusing race with culture. If a student learns a different method to arrive at the same answer it’s not because of their race. It’s how they were taught to work it out.
If they only learnt from the teacher they would use the teacher’s method and not a method that’s supposedly peculiar to the pigment of their skin.
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Unfortunately, many “indigenous” households are not conducive to learning and the same applies to lower white socio-economic backgrounds. This is FACT – not elitist or racist. The enabling and will to learn for the sake of it is most important. Failure of policy and a failure of domestic environments. I dropped Maths in Year 4 in 1970 and found it again later on in life. I know 2 and 2 equals 4.
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This isn’t even a class issue, much less a race issue, but is about how to objectively solve problems. Many people of all races across all socioeconomic backgrounds can’t do math, many of whom become Progressive Socialists.
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Please provide evidence to support your, thus far, unfounded claims.
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no – look it up yourself
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Why bother as your sources are constantly from dubious, tainted political leftwing trash.
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Umm. When you look it up, how do you know it is from the same source?
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A good point! There seem to be a few red thumb bots out there.
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I’m guessing your last sentence is your take on the subject. So I’ll challenge you on that only.
What in tarnation is “white privilege”?
The voting example seems to be a good one, but the times were different as well. Clearly people who were educated to a fundamental level could vote. But I will say this in defense of history; if someone wants to be racist they will be, they’ll find a way. In this example you’ve pointed out, they weren’t denied the vote, but they were means tested to do so. A sorry affair for sure, but it’s not racism as it seems you think it does.
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I had the same question. Well put.
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People with white privilege never admit it
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Gawd!
…and there are 173 genders and Joe biden is the greatest president ever!
(sarc off)…as if that was necessary
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You do no the difference between gender and ethnicity?
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Given your privileged university employment Peter, you probably know the difference between “no” and “know”.
Is pointing it out to you indicative of sexism, white privilege or something else?
Can you feign offence for us please?
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Ian, you’re confusing race with culture. If a student learns a different method to arrive at the same answer it’s not because of their race. It’s how they were taught to work it out.
If they only learnt from the teacher they would use the teacher’s method and not a method that’s supposedly peculiar to the pigment of their skin.
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Don’t know how my comment 3.3.2.1 got down to there. Was a reply to 3.2.1.1
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And what about you Peter Fitzroy? Anglo-something plus Scots origin maybe? (Son of Roy). You’re here a lot so you must have a degree of privilege. I am white and I am privileged, not through wealth, but from the experience and opportunities that have come my way. One of the privileges I have enjoyed is working in PNG (Papua New Guinea). Over 800 languages. Not just dialects. Not even the same root language; many Non-Austronesian. Each language has its own counting system. Sometimes Base 10 (decimal eg fingers), but a whole lot of other numerical formats and bases. Frequently a different system for whatever object you happen to be counting. Look up “Glendon Lean counting systems of Papua New Guinea and Oceania”. My wife (a material anthropologist) assisted Glen in this work. My students at PNGUT Department of Architecture could speak 5 languages on average. They would have recognised this “maths is racist” for what it is – BS.
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FitzRoi more likely Norman French. With the king in or in like. Fitzgerald is common with Norman Irish.
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So, if you are white and admit you are privileged, then you are. If you do not admit it, then you are as well. Presto, all white people have white privilege. Do we get to wear a white star or what?
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Seriously not racist but “used as a tool for oppression “ , never stop being you Fitz please you are funny.
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Read the thing there is a link. An Example of what they complain about
Of course the emphasis is on getting the answer right. Mathematics is logic that is established, set – forget – then just use. The point being that progress is stifled if you need to work things out like a kid. Theoretically, you need to repeat all the work in attaining the knowledge that you learnt in science. That is impractical, hence the importance of consensus.
It’s important that you understand why the answer is right – for all races.
Independent practice is not valued by teachers. It’s bloody hard to get students to do activities where the instructions are explicit enough to keep control but not so explicit that it’s a pointless exercise.
I can’t even see what the third complaint is all about. Maths is not about solving the problems used in the examples that you can just do in your head. The examples are for building confidence in it’s use for more complicated problems that require computing power rather than just pen and paper.
I Don’t want to go on. This is destructive BS.
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As one of our sons (a maths whizz) commented of a friend he tried to coach in maths and physics: ‘I wouldn’t want to drive over a bridge he designed!’.
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Look at the original article which I quoted, not a piece of gutter press.
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I cut and pasted from the original.
Is arguing reasonably a racist thing?
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Rereading my comment, it was written too much in a rush. For anyone still reading.
Keeping control of the class is the number one important goal, and too many choices freak out too many students. And too many is barely anything at all.
One eye-opening incident in my first year was where I was teaching some science to 14 yo students. I had them plot some data on a computer instead of just reading the text. They behaved well because of the explicit instructions, including how to go through the menu and select a symbol for the data. They automatically went feral because I told them it was their choice which one to use, no right or wrong. They behaved again straight after I lied, picked one and told them it was the best. For most classes in most schools, it needs to be like that. Good luck to you if you want to try to change things, but remember, if the kids don’t get to you, the other teachers will.
Like road rules, you need people to just follow the rules instead of make them up. You will be a better driver if you learn by discovery the reason for those rules, but there is still right and wrapping yourself around a pole.
As stated above, teachers love group work where the students actually take it seriously. I took two double y9 maths at a school, who were to begin probability. I quickly made up a lesson plan based on the game-show conundrum. The supposedly good class were a pain in the ass. Complete waste of time. The dodgy class did it well, got something from it and enjoyed it. Absolutely no doubt that the group centred learning is great, if you’re allowed to bring a cow prod to class (or get those supposedly good teachers to do their job properly).
The point of the exercise was to show that the truth is sometimes counterintuitive but reveal themselves if you use formal logic like the rules in probability ie you only see the real world if you use real maths.
Students are tracked so that the good ones continue learning, if it happens these days. It only needs to happen if you don’t get through to the ones that ask why they have to learn it that they don’t. Be up front. Only a few in the class need to learn it for real. The rest need to pretend and learn to get a job done. You make it easy for them to do that but you need to get them to realise the class needs to be designed for the ones who will actually use the maths. It ain’t many.
I’ll stop there. These authors have taken issues in education and painted it as old white teachers being racist.
Good luck fixing anything with academics like this.
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Your comment reminded me of the movie; “To Sir with Love” starring Sidney Poitier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Sir,_with_Love
The song by Lulu was No1 on the pops and is still played occassionally.
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It’s a bit more than treating them like adults, although a huge part. They really don’t know what an adult is.
A big part is not appreciating having a bit of fun figuring things out, so I would use puzzles to get them to start enjoying being challenged rather than freaking out.
It’s the lefties who ingrain them with the idea that its punishment for not listening that they were asked something that they couldn’t do straight off the bat.
My best worded puzzle was the one with the father and son who are in a car crash. Only the son survives and is taken to hospital. They wheel him in and the doctor looks at him and says “I can’t operate him. He’s my son”. Why?
At the risk of being described as teaching sexist maths, I had a bit of fun while refusing to just tell them the answer (absolutely forbidden) and subtly gave hints like “boys seem to better than girls at figuring it out. I don’t know why”. Eventually someone twigs. I stupidly gave a bit of a lecture after the first time. After that, I just mentioned a friend who was a female lecturer at uni whi couldn’t figure it out.
There were a few more puzzles. Target word as a group with rules like putting your hand up or the volunteer at the board couldn’t keep up, and waiting for the volunteer to look at them. As the words dried up, it was no longer necessary to enforce so it wasn’t. I would then interject and offer advice like adding er to words. And off they would go, yelling over each other again. A stern “hands up” please would get a laugh as well as respect.
It took a while to figure this out, and not a single experienced teacher to help out.
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Maybe the problem is explained in this study?
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.503.9118&rep=rep1&type=pdf
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Hmmm. Maybe it is:
“….providing vitamin and mineral supplements to enhance cognitive functioning, should be examined. (There is evidence that vitamin ± mineral supplements can add necessary trace elements to the brain in those who may have been deprived of them and so improve test scores; Eysenck & Schoenthaler, 1997.)
Examining these questions will tell us a lot, not just about group differences, but about the
nature and nurture of intelligence as well.”
Page 263.
Perhaps the green left might also benefit?
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In Peter’s world, a black minority maths lesson in basic arithmetic, or tallying you might say, consists of being forced to sing along to Harry Belafonte.
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Peter Fitzroy – you need to spend a day working in my department. Chinese, Brits, Indians, Iranian, Canadian, South Korean, Irish, Aussies and a guy from Bangladesh. None of them have any time for this crap apart from the Indians, Aussies and Brits arguing over cricket, and it’s bloody funny to hear the good natured inventive insults.
It’s every social justice warriors nightmare!
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Mathematical symbols and numerals are normally black, unless chalked on a black board.
So how can that be white racism?
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Sarc On/
Likely because in the former case, the paper is usually White, and in the latter case, because the blackboard is Black.
But with a Greenboard, oh my gosh, we don’t know what to think, eh?
Sarc off/
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Lance!
The sleeping dog has woken up.
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Oh goodness, Lance.
The chalk is always white. Always.
Even when it’s blue.
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The hatred of maths is not only due to difficulty comprehending it.
When I was a teacher, I talked to a year 11 student about how maths is used in art and it really upset her. Her personality was very much to smile, be lovely and get what you want. I’m guessing this racism thing is trying to turn those sort of people into useful idiots.
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Maths, music and art are quite interlinked.
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Don’t forget the math of physics where only the right answer matters. If you don’t get the math right, you end up with junk science like climate alarmism.
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Referring to climate alarmism as junk science is racist…no wait, it’s white supremacy…no wait, it’s the patriarchy…um..
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Seventy years ago it was commonplace to have a small vegetable plot and garden in the back yard.
Clearing, planting, watering, weeding, harvesting in the open air and swatting flies and mosquitos.
People were in touch with reality in a way that made it harder to mislead them.
The world has never been perfect but looking back, the last fifty years has been a progressive decline in society that is ominous: we don’t have much room to manoeuvre.
Manipulation and misdirection have brought us to the cliff edge.
Leadership?
Where?
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“The world has never been perfect but looking back, the last fifty years has been a progressive decline in society that is ominous: we don’t have much room to manoeuvre.”
Longevity and overall health have certainly not experienced a progressive decline.
Education has been made available to many more people than was the case in 1971.
The attitude towards women although still well short of acceptable, is significantly better than in 1971.
The attitude to those in need has improved even though Conservatives still believe the poor are poor due to their own fault.
Manipulation is easily overcome by those that are able to recognise manipulation and act accordingly.
I think most thinking Australians would agree that although far from perfect, society today is preferable to that of the 1970s. That said, I do believe the Conservatives think the 1950s were the epitome of Western society.
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The 1950s were good in many ways. Today is even better; ‘we’ve never had it so good’ as Harold McMillan said then and it applies more so now. Why, when many more of the human race have better standards of living than in all of its history, do we have so much whinging and huge efforts to undermine our remarkably good standard of living? We should be doing our level best to bring poor countries up to it rather than seeing the World Bank, among others, denying them the means, via loans to build RELIABLE electricity generation, not intermittant, short-lived, environment-wrecking, so-called ‘renewables’.
Training in the basics of mathematics, good science and literacy is essential for a civilised, self-confident people.
Are there people who actually believe this ‘bravo sierra’ rubbish about maths (music notation too!) for real? How to lose the will to live!
Is it now considered ‘offensive’ to suggest that 2+2=4?!
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“Conservatives still believe the poor are poor due to their own fault”
In a western democracy, your level of wealth is mainly attributed to your level of work effort. This is why we have so many poor refugees fleeing from countries that are not western democracies and they come here to work hard and prosper and in the vast majority of cases they succeed. We are very fortunate to live in a country where your level of wealth and prosperity is largely one of personal choice. I recall at my 30 year school reunion seeing the very different outcomes from those that studied hard compared to those that wagged school and cared little for study and work, despite all of us being provided the same opportunity.
Whilst no system is perfect, you can be sure this one beats the heck out of your alternative, where work is optional and everyone receives the same income regardless of work effort and value. Unless of course you aspire to the elite ruling class where privilege allows unlimited spoils with indefinite power and control.
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Hilarious and DANGEROUS Grrrrrrr!!!!
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Is that why Tesla seems to be having problems with its automatic driving system?
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In Leftist political ideology reality is whatever you decide it is.
With all matters of Leftism, consult their manual and you’ll have the answer.
As in Nineteen Eighty Four, 2 + 2 = 5.
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Sarc on/
But, But, (2 + 2i) = 2.828 at an angle of Pi/4 🙂
Sarc off/
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e^(iπ) + 1 = 0
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ϖ shows up places where you’d never think it belonged… one of the great mysteries of the universe I guess.
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I’m sure I recently saw a movie where three black women mathematicians were critical in the success of the Apollo Space program. Clearly it must have been fictional, because apparently black people could never thrive in an environment where you needed to get the ‘right answer’.
Just another push to convince non whites that the reason for any poor performance lies outside their own abilities or effort … the system is against them.
Same way as the left pushes that voter ID is racist because black people couldn’t possibly know how to apply for an ID.
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It is the inverse of Marten Luther King Jr.’s Dream, they believe that the content of your character is irrelevant, only the color of you skin maters.
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Black conservative surgeon Dr Ben Carson who worked in the Trump Administration once said that among Republicans he felt judged by his character but among Democrats he felt judged by his skin colour.
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I would love to put these people in an Apollo capsule programed by one of their students. Even these dills would probably see their error, just before they died.
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lost in space…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBAijg5Betw&ab_channel=JeanMallart
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Hidden Figures.
https://www.npr.org/2016/12/16/505569187/hidden-figures-no-more-meet-the-black-women-who-helped-send-america-to-space
Now who says that American negroes can’t do maths?
There is a subtext here and it is apparent that the problem is not innate ability. If there is a problem with underperforming in maths we have to look closer at the possible reasons.
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She’s furious when she learns that the courses she needs to advance her career are only taught at Hampton’s all-white high school. “Every time we have a chance to get ahead, they move the finish line,” Jackson bemoans. “Every time.”
OK.
Can somebody remind me which political party was primarily responsible for Jim Crow?
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The Klu Klux Klan was affiliated to the Democratic Party. They paraded at Democrat Conventions.
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I am not surprised that someone would write this drivel but it is somewhat surprising that anyone would believe it, though I suppose those people most inclined to get the wrong answer are likely to be its biggest proponents.
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You can never underestimate the gullibility of people like Peter.
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I surmise that this thesis was intended for April Fools’ Day release, but the writer, being mathematically challenged, couldn’t interpret the calendar correctly.
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No, I got a copy of it several months ago.
The main thing I got from reading it was that the authors completely missed the point of what they were trying to say – they forgot to include the home life and discipline of the family. Remember this is in the US where a vast amount of the blacks are in one parent families with no sign of a father figure, or a different on every few days. This is NOT conducive to the kids being able to learn anything especially when a lot of them just cut school rather than knuckle down and apply themselves. In other words it is a problem of their own making and nothing to do with being a white skinned teacher – just more leftist BS.
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Well perhaps the Wokies just got their word jumbled.
Dismantling mathematics instruction… cause Racism?
Dismantling poor brown children’s future opportunities cause stupid racist teachers?
“We care so much we must destroy you?You poor uneducatible coloured children.”
These foul creatures make me very hostile,they pretend benevolence while they impose malevolence.
Wormtongues one and all.
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Perhaps the poor dears really jumbled their words and ‘right’ answer should read ‘white’ answer.
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That’s our future. The muscle always wins over the brain.
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The Left now also think the board game MONOPOLY is “racist”.
This news item is from conservative news channel, Australia’s Sky News.
https://youtu.be/DGNO7caR0_c
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In order spruce up Monopoly’s image, Hasbro is changing their Community Chest cards to be more Woke:
Monopoly replaces ‘outdated’ Community Chest cards
For the first time in 85 years, all 16 of the famous Community Chest cards are being changed to appeal to a more modern audience.
…
New cards will require players to pay for donating to an animal shelter, failing to recycle the trash or not choosing to shop local.
…
https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/monopoly-replaces-outdated-community-chest-cards/ar-BB1eLAAY
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Oh good grief! What next?
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You’d think the simple answer would be “If you don’t like our game, then go play a different game.”
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You’d think the simple answer would be “If you don’t like our game, then go play a different game.”
Yes, that does seem like the logical reply. I am glad I still have my pre-woke version of Monopoly by Milton Bradley before Hasbro bought them out in 1984.
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Hang in to it, it will become a valuable collector’s item – if the stormtroopers don’t confiscate it and burn it first.
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The “Go directly to jail” card will be re-written as “Go directly to jail if you are white. If you are black or indigenous pass GO and collect $200”.
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Think of all the graduating Engineers viewing Maths so. I’ll never step into a building again!
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That is why there is License and Liability requirements for Registered/Licensed Professional Engineers.
That said, I’m hoping the Aeronautics testing, Civil Structural , Pressure Vessel Testing, Welding Certifications, etc, aren’t compromised by Affirmative Action Influence.
The “Correct” answer is mandatory in Real Life.
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A friend sent me this related comment in an email the other day.
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“I have said and done a lot of things through out my life that looking back on, I am completely ashamed of, and I am taking responsibility.
I did watch the dukes of hazard when I was a kid.
it was one of my favourite shows.
I just thought they were some good ole boys, never meaning no harm, but, now I know who they really were.
I have eaten a lot of eskimo pie ice cream bars, and I never once considered the impact it would have on the Innuits population, the politically correct term for eskimo.”
https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/441259/#respond
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When interviewing people (for employment in retail) – I always test their maths.
But, because I am a bit of a bastard, I make it ‘tricky’.
As an example,
Now, I don’t necessarily care if they get it right (it would be nice) – rather this ‘test’ is to see if I can follow their thinking.
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Once they’ve got the job, I bet you care that they get it right. You racist.
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Not really – not with all the ‘idiot’ proof point of sale that tells them what the items costs, required them to enter the tender amount and then how much change to give.
However, I very much do care if they cannot ‘do’ that…
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The logical extension of the original article is that expecting anyone to get something “right” is inherently racist.
52
🙂
60
Sadly, I did peruse the booklet reading sections of it. What a load of offal that is.
I’m not sure what their purpose is with a book like this. Their statements of fact throughout the book seem utter nonsense to me, and unsubstantiated within the booklet itself.
100
“Their statements of fact throughout the book seem utter nonsense to me, and unsubstantiated within the booklet itself.”
You are assuming that they believe in objective facts that can be proven, but from their point of view, all they have to do is believe its true for it to be true, requiring proof is just another form of White Privilege Racism.
111
I think the purpose is not reform but destruction.
The sowing of discontent and disunity.
Purposeful nonsense by design.
110
We all know almost all university courses have been extensively dumbed down so as not to offend anyone by not graduating.
However, I wonder to what extent engineering, medicine etc. have been dumbed down such as dangerous structures, machines or medical procedures will be built or undertaken because of lack of appropriate knowledge?
141
The premise of this article is about as racist as it gets. It’s sending a message that black people are not as clever as white people. IMO this is exactly the type of stereotyping that we need to remove in society, but it’s exactly the kind of racism that is being pushed by the vile lefties to make sure people only judge others by skin colour and race, and once again pushes the false “white supremacy” race-hate doctrine.
After reading this left-wing anti-math dribble, it would seem that the only real change being sought is to ban teachers from making students show their work. This will obviously provide an easier path for students to cheat by looking at the answers from the student sitting adjacent or via other more sophisticated means. Or perhaps the teachers themselves will be asked to put in a correct answer for black students after the test is handed in, so as to create the equity they seek.
This is completely bat sh..t crazy.
152
And yet, showing your work can get you some or even most marks even if the final answer is wrong.
90
Golden Rule of my Marist Bothers Maths Teacher, studying for Honours Maths in Leaving Certificate or any Maths exam –
“Always show your working, as if you make a mistake, the marker can identify you were/were not on the correct path and award some marks if on the correct path”
60
At first I thought you had spelt Marxist Brothers wrong, then I remembered the Marist Brothers
10
Math teachers should concentrate on teaching mathematics to their students.
The idiots who are pushing Non Racial Mathematics are clueless about what math is and how to teach it. They recommend group work to ‘teach’ math.
The problem is, math is concepts and practice using the concepts to ‘solve’ problems. These idiots do not understand the concepts of applied math and what they are teaching. They do not understand why some students do not get it.
Applied math is a practical tool. The idiots teach it as if it is scripture. To a person who does not understand the concepts, group math work is frustrating, what is the point?
The math and problem solving concepts need to be understood one mind at a time. A correct group answer, will not help failing math students understand concepts or use concepts in their lives.
Making every class a fight about US history/politics is going to keep fighting about things that will never change. We can change the future, not the past.
Each month, you will complete a set of exercises as outlined in the calendar.
You will complete a five-step cycle as follows:
1. Engage with the ways that white supremacy culture shows up in math classrooms.
2. Reflect on your current classroom practices to identify the ways in which
they perpetuate white supremacy culture.
3. Plan to dismantle white supremacy culture by creating a goal that
incorporates specific antiracist practices
4. Act with accountability by carrying out the plan.
5. Reflect on the ways in which your practices align with antiracist math education.
Blacks are falling to launch (be successful statistically as a cohort) in the US/UK and so on, primarily because of a medical issue that is not addressed or discussed, not due to white supremacy. The black students are (because of their skin) severely Vitamin D deficient (82% of the US blacks have a blood serum level that is less, than 20 ng/ml (50 nmol/L) which is level at which skelton problems start to appear. In terms of cancer protection, energy, brain functioning, and so on. Optimum Vitamin D level is above 60 ng/ml or 150 nmol/L.
https://tahomaclinic.com/Private/Articles4/WellMan/Forrest%202011%20-%20Prevalence%20and%20correlates%20of%20vitamin%20D%20deficiency%20in%20US%20adults.pdf
Prevalence and correlates of vitamin D deficiency in US adults
Mounting evidence suggests that vitamin D deficiency could be linked to several chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disease and cancer.
The purpose of this study was to examine the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency and its correlates to test the hypothesis that vitamin D deficiency was common in the US population, especially in certain minority groups. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2005 to 2006 data were analyzed for vitamin D levels in adult participants (N = 4495).
Vitamin D deficiency was defined as a serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentrations ≤20 ng/mL (50 nmol/L). The overall prevalence rate of vitamin D deficiency was 41.6%, with the highest rate seen in blacks (82.1%), followed by Hispanics (69.2%).
31
What I quoted in my comment above… Came from one of the Left wing Non Racist Math foundation’s links. Here is another from the same foundation.
https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf
Each month, you will complete a set of exercises as outlined in the calendar. You will complete a five-step cycle as follows:
1. Engage with the ways that white supremacy culture shows up in math classrooms.
2. Reflect on your current classroom practices to identify the ways in which they perpetuate white supremacy culture.
3. Plan to dismantle white supremacy culture by creating a goal that incorporates specific antiracist practices
4. Act with accountability by carrying out the plan.
5. Reflect on the ways in which your practices align with antiracist math education
30
I think I see the reasoning. Most people find math difficult. These folks believe that we suffer from a universal form of systemic racism, where racism guides all our actions. Under those circumstances math classes would indeed be a great place for racism, using difficulty to push inferiority.
However, their premise of systemic racism as a form of action is false, making their claims very wrong. Systemic racism is a false doctrine derived from true statistics.
I have studied this fallacy a bit:
https://www.cfact.org/2020/09/14/systemic-racism-is-not-racism/
https://www.cfact.org/2020/09/10/systemic-racism-is-emotional-semantics/
Systemic racism is not racism. It is not even evidence of racism today, although it has its roots in past racism. As the song said “$5 a day is white man’s pay”. Not today.
93
David, I doubt that those who lead the Marxist cause today would believe in any of this garbage. I think that all of these systemic racism identifiers and virtue causes are designed to harness an anti-white hatred within western society. The ultimate goal of the Marxists is to change the system and they are clever enough to know that the only way to change the system is to create enormous civil unrest by turning person against person based on identity and to then create a belief that the democratic/ capitalist system is the root cause of the unrest. This is indeed an evil plan as it is purely based on creating hate from peace and using the ensuing violence and unrest to gain support their totalitarian dream. In essence it’s all about tricking people to vote one last time for a system that bans voting and can never be reversed.
122
Quite possibly, Serge, but I am analyzing what people say, not why they are saying it. That would be either political science or security analysis. As an issue analyst I simply assume they believe what they say and look for faulty reasoning.
Confusing systemic rascism, which is unhappy racial statistics, with actual rascism is a deep confusion.
73
It should be remebered that the Communist Party of Australia started the Land Rights movements and Aboriginal Activism in the early 1950s
22
https://www.bitchute.com/video/1dop1XthtIMc/
10
I missed the title of the clip above “HOW IDENTITY POLITICS DISMANTLED AMERICAN SCIENCE”
In moderation, again.
00
I used to be a chemical engineer. Getting the maths right in that profession is essential or things blow up and people of all ethnicities die.
Maybe these guys should attempt to design a bridge or build a wind turbine with their non-racist maths,
290
As a retired Mechanical Engineer, I agree: aircraft structures, pressure vessels, steam piping, turbomachinery, engines, compressors, hydraulics, pneumatics, all work nicely with the Correct answers. But get it wrong, and people die by the truckload. Oops doesn’t cut it.
260
Keith and Lance
Having had the experience of warning the general manager at the Chemical company I worked at that the new product he wanted to make could not be done in our main reactor due to inadequate cooling, being overrulled and then having the reaction run away with the contents of the batch having to be vented and a substantial proportion end up on the ground outside it seems people have no clue on maths.
The maths I did showed the reaction could not be held but the GM and others knew better. What was particularly angering is that I had proposed another pathway which would avoid the issue and this complete idiot, having been shown he was wrong and I knew what I was talking about, did not do it.
I got back at him when he announced the imminent closure of one of the plants. I had not done much work there, but by listening to the operators, applying knowledge and maths within 2 months we had cut costs by over 15%. The closure was cancelled and a year later the output had doubled (further reducing costs) and the impact on the bottom line was substantial. This maths dunce would have wiped out the jobs and profits without thinking.
I have made similar situations a feature of my career but its not just me. I remember years ago at Mars visiting their Ballarat plant where a young fellow read a book on cardboard boxes and then did the maths and applied the theory and saved over $1 million per year….
And here we have clueless idiots incapable of allowing Engineers to have a say in the way our Electricity grid will be supplied and managed….obviously the maths is beyond them…
110
Would you like to buy a pedestrian bridge in Florida?
Only been used for a few weeks, other than that mostly in good condition.
It’s a truss bridge, cleverly set with the angles on the struts more appropriate for a cable-stayed design, so that the addition of a purely cosmetic tower gives the appearance that it might be strong. Oh … actually that tower is missing but never mind because it looks pretty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_International_University_pedestrian_bridge_collapse
You gotta wonder some days, but gravity is not easily fooled.
20
Remember when the Pacific northwest of the US was the breeding ground of invention? Nirvana, Microsoft…..now they’re caught up in their own egos believing they ARE civilisation! Burning and looting people’s homes and businesses, telling white people they have to apologise to current or prospective workmates for being white, Universities telling Asian applicants they are considered white for assessment and quota reasons, screaming at white resident’s to give up their homes to ‘oppressed people of color’ despite slavery not existing in that region. The lunacy of destroying the language for their own purposes to create people of color instead of colored people. This math argument is another power wielding attempt by cancel culture and only succeeds if reasonable people don’t stand up and take that power back. Explaining to your own kids that Microsoft, Google and Boeing wouldn’t exist if math didn’t have a right answer would be the best option to start with parents, followed by taking kids out of any school district with that stated aim.
141
Michelle Simmons Australian of 2018 and a physicist said we were setting our education standard bar too low.
In a follow up interview she expressed her concern about physics and the failure to have physics questions.
There was too much provision for expression of opinions and justification raher than objective accurate ‘right answer’ measuring.
I wonder if Michelle could be employed at JCU?
112
Ok. Let’s accept that maths is a white cultural construct. Non-whites should cease their cultural appropriation – use something else instead.
212
Simultaneously, make certain everyone is acutely aware that Algebra in Arabic is “Al-Gebra”, The Order. And Zero was created by the Mesopotamians in 3 B.C. The early Abacus was used as early as 190 C.E and the modern abacus was described in China around 1200 C.E.
Perhaps we can logically force math racists to use an abacus, as it is not tainted by whiteness.
No more calculators or computers. No, that might be insensitive.
Non White people MUST use the Abacus.
Similarly, no Smartphones, no iPads, no Tablet Computers, no LED Televisions, no Radio, No antibiotics, no plastics, no electricity, no printers, no aircraft, no automobiles.
To be ideologically consistent, all non white people must renounce all white creations of any type or sort. Otherwise admit their inherent racism and carry on. 🙂
121
Having put in some effort to find this in the dark recesses of academia one question remains – and it is the only question that matters here.
If it is applied anywhere at all, where is it applied and to what extent? If this is just a book that gets no attention then let’s move on.
btw- why the falon gong reference? Abuse against cultures/groups/religions etc is pernicious and wide-spread and I hope this is widely agreed here, even if we disagree on other things.
212
here is the draft framework https://www.k12.wa.us/sites/default/files/public/socialstudies/pubdocs/Math%20SDS%20ES%20Framework.pdf
here is the background https://news.stanford.edu/2016/01/12/ethnic-studies-benefits-011216/
and the book https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf
all the quotes listed do not appear in the source documents
111
the background link seems to be about ethnic studies, keep or not.
27
It’s a challenge to understand who the audience is for this book. Or how to apply it.
They aren’t say the “maths” is racist, but how mathematics is used is racist. It’s not well stated within the book (that I can see anyway), but they’re trying to argue that requiring people to learn the times table by rote is racist because some people can’t do that.
This fails to recognize that everybody has strengths and weaknesses. Artists are arty because they don’t like maths and physics. And math guys are nerds because that’s what they’re good at.
50
The idea, if I understand correctly was that the idea of ethnicity, as outlined in this old paper could be applied in subjects like maths. Not to the math but to the context. eg Igor/Eric/Ishmael/Isaac could walk at 2.5 km/h, how far would they go in 35 minutes?
05
I cut and pasted the quote in blue from
https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf
Nobody misquoted them.
51
btw- why the falon gong reference? Abuse against cultures/groups/religions etc is pernicious and wide-spread and I hope this is widely agreed here, even if we disagree on other things.
Professor,
May I ask a question of you?
Your comment is No.28, hence supposedly a response to Jo’s Blog Post.
Consequently, having re read Jo’s Blog Post I am struggling to understand your comment? Can you explain further?
What is the issue that matters here?
In particular, where did you pick up the Falan Gong idea?
10
It is the lat sentence of the OP. It is out of place IMO.
02
*last
00
No wonder the left have screwed up the climate and global warming BS. They cannot do mathematics so their wonderful models are also BS since a right answer is not required.
92
“No wonder the left have screwed up the climate and global warming BS. They cannot do mathematics …”
Who needs math when you already know the right answer?
(/sarc)
112
A good point or are they saying that Blacks and Hispanics are too dumb to do White man Maths. I do note that Asians have no such problems.
51
When I wrote my maths courses out each year the aims stated at the start began with, “To teach students to think logically.”
That remains paramount in maths. Maths is pure logic and logic is lacking in many opinions. Emotional thinkers often struggle with maths.
My nephew married a Japanese girl and lived in Japan for 8 years where they had 3 daughters. He has an Australian Masters degree in education and is fluent in Japanese. He had studied engineering in Australia. The family returned to NSW where he did releaving teaching. He was not allowed to teach Japanese because he did not have a formal qualification. (He could improve our professors Japanese language and culture.) Then came senior maths and physics. He did not have formal qualifications but was capable. A blind eye was turned to that technicality because they could not get teachers capable of understandig mahs and physics at year 11 and 12 level.
To add to the distress he had to pass students in English that he would have failed in Japan, to keep the NSW numbers up.
120
I don’t know how much this applies to your nephew’s situation in NSW, but in the US they don’t not require teachers, or even want, to be competent in the subject matter. An education degree is about classroom technique and political correctness sensitivities, not expertise in the subject matter at hand. In fact they want teachers to follow the script without deviation. A teacher who is too knowledgeable is less likely to follow the script. No matter how competent a teacher may be on the subject matter he/she can not teach in an American school without a current teaching certification. Einstein would not be allowed to teach physics in an American high school.
This ridged situation has been brought about by the teacher’s unions. Unions are mostly about controlling competition in the labor market. Without sufficient competition quality suffers.
50
My younger daughter and her husband qualified in education around 1990.
No jobs in Victoria so they went to a P-12 school for Aliens in Japan. They had to use the American system and found it very regimented. They really appreciated the 6 monthly ‘NAPLAN’ like testing at all year levels as it helped them appreciate the strengths and weaknesses from their teaching and students being in a diffrent culure where English was not usually spoken.
I think the unions have destroyed standards in USA and Australia. That educational demise is a clear goal in the 45 Communist goals exposed in 1958.
The biggest problem in our education is the AEU. Teachers are genuine but don’t have the experience to realize they are pawns. The official AGW policy is illogical nonsense. I had 6 grand children shown Gore’s nonsense. The youngest was told anybody who disagreed could address the class. Even the oldest grandchild was after the court case in England. I accepted the offer but was told they had finished the topic. I reminded the teacher of the English court and settled for donating 3 copies of “The Great Global Warming Swindle” to the school library.
I spoke socially to a top science student at the school recently and asked her to get a copy from the school library.
I arranged a copy for her. The school did not have it. She had been shown Gore’s Garbage. It was over 10 years since the film was made and both could be considered retrospectively. She learned. All my grandchildren and their friends know scepticism indicates wisdom and many people are gullible.
21
Where is the union involvement in curriculum development documented?
00
Everywhere.
Principals capable of free thought are frustrated by the union intrusion.
I refer particularly to AGW. Principals I Associate with complain. If we want to lift standards let Principals have more control. It is interesting to see Principal’s politics change when they have been socialists and are put into the world that requires responsible results. Sadly some are rusted on to illogical ideals.
The eduction departments specifically demand items be taught that empirical data proves untrue about AGW.
A friend who is a principal was disciplined for excluding a child addressing the students as boys and girls.
All evidence internationally proved the safest place to protect children re covid was in schools. Unions fight the science.
01
I am seeing assertions here. Every statement you made has no basis.
02
The assertions are official documents that are written policy.
There are no assertions. None!
20
yep… the unions did it I’m sure.
02
I am glad you agree the unions did it.
Actually they didn’t they were just forcing it on departments but their control over the ALP makes them even more powerful when applicable. Richard Bolt was getting some sanity into Victorian Education but he has been moved to another department.
The crazy boys and girls not including children who hadn’t decided their gender was from the safe schools nonsense.
The changing political opinions when teachers become principals is not an assertion but an observation.
Mixing with many principals I find the thoughtful ones when confronted with staff problems rather than students they realize their socialist ideology causes most of the problems.
We used to make decisions. Now if you are considering a career in education the paramount job question should be, “Do you like spending time in useless meetings talking in circles about trivial matters?”
00
“Having put in some effort to find this in the dark recesses of academia…”
It really doesn’t take much effort to find, I googled “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction” and got 5,800 hits.
“If this is just a book that gets no attention then let’s move on.”
The Oregon Department of Education (ODE) recently sent a newsletter to math educators in the state promoting this program, so I’d say it has escaped from “dark recesses of academia” and definitely needs to get attention.
130
It needs to be called exactly what it is: A divisive racist trope against society and a threat to the education, livelihood, future, stability, and happiness of every child in the world.
Children need to be taught How to use and apply Maths in the Real World. Not confuse that issue with the liberal progressive ideology that has no place in any classroom because it is a provably failed ideology.
121
It is no good to anyone if when trying to calculate how many gallons of water can I lift out of the community well in an hour using a four gallon bucket, if the answer is a pineapple.
61
pineapple? I thought the answer was 42.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42_(number)
40
Ric- I found your reply never fear. So the thing to address is still
21
“If it is applied anywhere at all, where is it applied…”
I addressed that, it is being applied by the Oregon Department of Education.
and to what extent?
Posting it in a newsletter to math educators in the state is more than enough to warrant a discussion. From my checking around, it was apparently created in California, has moved to Oregon and I also saw references to it in the Massachusetts Education System so it appears to be metastasizing fairly quickly. Time to cut it out now before it spreads any further.
80
There is no evidence it is being applied and you have no information on how it is being applied and who it is being applied to.
47
“There is no evidence it is being applied and you have no information on how it is being applied and who it is being applied to.”
That is irrelevant and simply a distraction on your part. If it hasn’t been implemented then that is the best time to discuss it because it’s easier to stop them from digging themselves into a hole than it is to extract them from a hole that they have already dug.
62
Well that is your choice.
I’d rather have a triage of its actual importance before discussing since there are thousands of irrelevant unimportant low impact stupid reports and recommendations out there that I also don’t want to waste time on, when I could be giving consideration to the ones that are important.
28
Well that is your choice.
I’d rather discuss things in their formative stages and there by have a chance of avoiding the creation new problems. Your head-in-the-sand approach almost always ends in tears.
51
The authors of the program state that “The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false, and teaching it is even much less so. Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict.”
The authors are clearly conflating Stats, epidemiology and climate science with maths
51
The art of grooming black people for revolutionary purposes and not improving their lives.
193
It’s race baiting and race warmongering, Democrats and Marxists have done this for decades.
71
It’s simply making poor performance acceptable. Keeping them on the plantation so to say.
The black community (or anyone else) will never get above the weeds if they take this on board. Society needs skilled people to do skilled work. Anything else is just pretend.
140
“The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false, … Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuate objectivity as well as fear of open conflict.”
Imagine that at some point in the future an astronaut on Mars was lost, and to survive, she would have to calculate where she was so that she could be rescued. It would be more than an embarrassment if she couldn’t calculate her location — defined as the ‘correct’ answer — in order to be rescued.
These ethnic zealots are certifiably loony. Their bizarre rationalizations will not only get some people killed, but undermine civilization.
71
On another discussion of this exact document, I like the comment by
Aebersold Peter says:
“People of color” are by definition all non-whites.
For Asian immigrants, none of the explanations about racial discrimination seem to apply:
In the United States, immigrants from Asian cultures are highly successful high school and college graduates, with 49 percent holding a bachelor’s degree, compared to 28 percent in the general population. They make up just five percent of the US population, but for example a third of the participants in national math and physics competitions.
I would like to suggest that much of our modern mathematics originated in India and was brought only recently to Europe and thus to the world by the needs of the Muslim Arabs. Under Islamic law they needed to be able to divide an estate exactly for the number of heirs, so the invention of the decimal point changed everything. New concepts like zero. And then negative numbers.
Until that time, things were measured only in whole numbers and reference to humans aspects, like foot for foot, cubit for forearm, yard for a pace and the duodecimal system so you could divide things up by 2,3,4,6 and easy fractions. Decimal was far from obvious. And metric was a Napoleonic invention rejected by one vote in Britain by a committee member who hated everything French. So America is still saddled with an Imperial system with fraction, a system which not even the English use.
It is amazing that the world celebrated the millenium on the end of 2000 years as Christ was born on 25th December 1. Because the priest who created the calendar had no concept of zero. The first year was the year 1.
Some of the greatest mathematicians of history are Indian. Luckily India is not racist. That’s just a Hindu caste system.
Now we have to apologise for racist mathematics which came from Asia through an Islamic culture to the Christian Europeans only recently. Is there no end to the racism in Western Culture or is someone pulling our legs?. Luckily there is no racism at all in India, China, Russia, Turkey, Africa. Some have not finished with tribalism let alone racism. So would someone explain what the massacre in Rwanda was all about? Surely it was not African racism in which a million black people were killed by other black people for being slightly different? Or perhaps an argument over mathematics?
152
And if the paper said that you would have to teach mathematics differently for a different culture in which mathematics proficiency is not prized, that would be a fair point. But it is easier to blame the teaching system and the teacher and racism than the social disaster which is the extremely violent inner city black African culture which does not see education as a path to anything worth having.
142
‘The violent inner city black African culture which does not see education as a path to anything worth having.’
I don’t know, surely they have a need for maths to weigh the drug shipments, divide it up into baggies and keep a tally of all the cash.
102
Given the state of US government schools and the direction their tertiary education system is going … you can understand why it doesn’t seem particularly attractive.
40
The biggest mathematical problem I have is trying to explain Capacity Factor. It’s a relatively simple mathematical equation, and is the ‘thing’ I have to explain the most.
You (really) would be surprised as to how many people believe that when Nameplate is quoted, most people believe that is the power that is actually delivered.
I have been told that CF is an ‘artificial construct’ and is meaningless, and is something that is never used.
Capacity Factor is the relationship between actual generated power and the Nameplate. It is calculated over a year, and is the Industry Standard.
It is
From that you can then extrapolate out an equivalent, and here I’ll use an example of Macarthur Wind Plant. It has a Nameplate of 420MW, so with a CF of 27% (current for Macarthur) then the equivalent is 113MW. So here I can equate Macathur as delivering on average the equivalent of 113MW on a year round basis.
Okay, some responses have been.
Shouldn’t Nameplate be two words.
Shouldn’t Nameplate be Capacity.
You can’t use the extra .25 for days in a year.
You can’t change from MWH to GWH to TWH.
You made a mistake with the buttons on your calculator.
Nameplate is total power, and GWH is Energy. You can’t compare the two.
And there have been a number of others.
People question the fact that the end result is so low (for wind and solar) and say that it ….. ‘must’ be wrong.
Oh, and with this specific CF calculation, I’m also occasionally asked my political affiliation, as that has a bearing on the result as well.
Some have even said that CF is irrelevant because fossil fuels need to be replaced.
Sometimes I just have to stop explaining, because the person just does not want to know.
Tony.
252
What is needed is power on demand. Like when you put your foot down in a car. That is not possible with solar and wind. You can only have what it is available at the time and that is often zero. That is the capacity factor, the average of what random power sources deliver, regardless of demand. You would not buy a car which worked like that.
For example and as you reported at the time, when Hazelwood was closed for being ‘too old’ it was delivering 98% of its design capacity. Misleadingly named ‘renewables’ are utterly dependent on random power sources, which for solar is zero for at least half a day. Renewable really means random and quickly replaceable and unserviceable where a coal power station can be maintained like a factory for ever. And coal is free too, but not random.
Soon our landscapes will be covered in dead windmills and solar farms. Capacity Factor zero.
111
But I suppose zero and capacity factor are more white supremacist racist ideas.
82
I read in financial news today that many solar and wind businesses are for sale or being sold.
I have been waiting for this time when the major shareholders abandon ship before the machinery needs removal and replacement at a cost exceeding their return on original investment.
How many will be closed and forgotten?
101
The only guaranteed output of wind and solar farms is ZERO. They have no way of guaranteeing anything else.
00
Tony, Capacity Factor, like Baseload is just an accounting term.
lol
31
I would like to heartily disagree. It is the expression of the fundamental mismatch between what you ordered and paid for and what you received, the amount actually delivered over what was promised on the nameplate.
As the ultimate purchaser, we pay all the bills for this financial disaster. Like a bowl of soup which is delivered 2/3 empty or even completely empty at the same price. Who would tolerate this? That’s not renewable. It’s ridiculous, infuriating and an utter ripoff.
91
Imagine if they had to put a disclaimer on ‘renewable’ energy. On solar panels they would have to say
No output at all when there is no sun in winter up to 19 hours a day.
Greatly reduced output when it is cloudy or the panels are dirty. They must be cleaned regularly.
No components are serviceable.
Lifexpectancy does not exceed ten years and may fail after five years.
No guaranteed output level.
Output will never exceed nameplate.
Expected lifespan does not exceed ten years
Not legally disposable. The cost of disposing of this product is not included.
For wind
Only works when the wind blows
Intermittency is normal.
Will shut down if the wind is too strong
No components are serviceable.
Blades are not disposable.
Not designed to be serviceable
Expected output cannot exceed 100% and can be as low as 0%
No guaranteed output level.
Output will never exceed nameplate.
Average output (capacity factor) will never exceed 28% over time.
Expected lifespan does not exceed ten years
Blades are not legally disposable
22
As to capacity factor compared to actually delivered, I read a report on the Poms offshore wind farms and they averaged over several years, 27% of nameplate.
70
Sorry, ‘capacity factor should read nameplate’. My bad.
50
Tony,
CF or Capacity Factor is racist.
11
With renewables it can go as low as zero when you most need it not to.
50
Those responses sound like you’ve encountered what’s called “critical thinking” as taught in education nowadays. If a result doesn’t comply with the desired outcome then the premises must be criticised. That’s “critical thinking” in today’s academia.
30
Mod, can you unmod my post at 22, please?
10
George Orwell said that Freedom consists in the ability to say that two plus two equals four.
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1 + 1 = RACISM
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The Square root of an Imbecile = Woke
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And banning coal is clearly racist – part of the great white supremacism movement to cast out all things black.
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The solution to this is simple. When someone who believes in ‘evil white maths’ orders a $4 coffee, and they hand over a $20, give them 35c change.
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Honest counting is not for the Left,
As their maths in the U.S. was theft,
Which they knew all along,
Wasn’t right, it was wrong,
But at diddling elections are deft.
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Racist, patronising leftists obviously regard any non-white person as too stupid to understand what a “whitey” does.
As with biology and physics, the modern left think that maths is mutable.
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As a kid who struggled with maths and still avoid thinking about it now, I have to say how much respect I have for the power of this language.
Regardless of what demented drivel this latest faction of the left invent Maths is something that cannot lie (elections excepted) and simply does not care about human emotions or frailty, a side bonus of this is the dumber people get the smarter I appear.
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The Englishman G.H. Hardy (ie a white supremacist) rate himself as 25 out of a hundred and the great Indian mathematician
Srinivasa Ramanujian (who died at age 32) as 100 out of 100.
So maths must be racist if an Indian is a better mathematician than a white supremacist.
G.H. Hardy came up with a scale of mathematical ability that went from 0 to 100. He put himself at 25. David Hilbert, the great German mathematician, was at 80. Srinivasa Ramanujan was 100
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Mathematics predates the western world by several centuries. Only a true racist would say otherwise.
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I seem to remember a film about several coloured women who were employees of NASA and were highly competent mathematicians who worked out the trajectory of the Apollo 11 flight to the moon. Without using computers! They were absolutely invaluable to many of the space projects that NASA was involved with at that time. No racist maths for them!
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that was the point of the movie it was about them doing well despite racism. Sadly in the end, once the demand from NASA eased, none of them gained ongoing employment whereas white colleagues did. Initially they had to use a segregated bathroom in another building.
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Surely this is all history now?
Are they resurrecting past ghosts, or does this sort of thing still go on?
There are existing laws in place if it does.
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Some movies are made about history. Or so I hear.
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You are confusing a script device with real life, where this particular problem did not occur and incident
did not happen. The follow on career paths of the Black NASA employees were generally quite successful, and they were
riffed in large groups as the program evolved in a formally non-discrimintory way (there probably were personal affronts, which I can’t
speak to, but the formal process was structurally fair, however he overall number of such positions was vastly reduced. Note that the film reduced layers of employee groups into individuals for dramatic effect; there was no Kevin Costner role in the program at that level in real life. The drama of checking the calculation for launch as depicted in the film was not last minute; the incident did occur as the use of the Euler method for re-entry was proposed more or less as depicted, was an unusual calculation, and was requested by the pilots.
NASA, for it time, was very forward looking, operating in a very backward civil environment. The tasks were sufficiently difficult to make it a clear meritocracy….we were racing the Russians and we were behind.
No Gee, I don’t have a link….I am speaking from personal knowledge.
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Since it is unreferenced and is the opposite of texts I have read, I will be sceptical.
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Jo, check this out:
https://townhall.com/columnists/justinhaskins/2021/03/30/how-big-banks-are-planning-to-force-americans-into-the-great-reset-trap-n2587085
“Although many Great Reset supporters have called for dramatic expansions of government welfare programs, including job guarantees, government-provided health care, etc., the heart of the Great Reset is something called environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics.
“ESG metrics offer public policy leaders, economists, investors, and banks an entirely new way of evaluating businesses. Instead of looking at how profitable a company is, how many employees it has, its business model, and other traditional metrics, ESG adds to those concerns a whole host of left-wing causes, including how “green” a company is, having the “right” ratio of minorities, whether a business is involved in politically disfavored industries (such gun manufacturing and sales), as well as other, similar considerations. Companies are then given a score or rating to determine how well they align with ESG goals.
In other words…a Leftist “backside kissing” rating…..?
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Underneath this madness is certain war.
What fate do persons fomenting warfare deserve?
War occurs when trade fails, a broad but fairly accurate take on human nature.
Now what is going to happen,when the mathematically challenged stiff their trading partners and then call them rude names, when called to account?
The Gods of the Copybook Counting are coming around again.
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On such texts, I have to recount a book mandated for HSc computer science in Victoria. Ostensibly it was about computing. At best it was about attitudes to computers, fear of computers, coping with computers. As a very senior computer scientist/physicist remarked to me after reading the book, it was completely content free.
This strikes me as similar. The old saying is that those who cannot do, teach. Here it may be that those who cannot teach mathematics write books on teaching mathematics. And they blame their failure on racism.
A reverse example was Sidney Poitier in “To sir with love”, a black Engineer teacher trying to teach a white working class slum group in London’s East End. The song alone was the biggest selling song of 1967 in the United States. How racist is that?
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And Poitier did it again in 1967 in “Guess who’s coming to dinner”. Wth Spencer Tracey and Katherine Hepburn, stars at their peak. There was not a shred of racism.
In this new Woke world the roles are reversed. And somehow both films would be condemned as racist. It looks more like a communist attack on Western society where racism has long been illegal and equal opportunity legislated.
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Racism has been weaponized by countries which have no such freedoms at home as a ridiculous attack on free non racist Western societies.
The abject failure of inner city black communities to prosper should be traced to its sources as Hispanic, Vietnamese, Chinese, Polish, Italian and other communities have all prospered in wealth through hard work and education.
And even the US President says he is proud of his poor Irish origins.
So the question really is, what is wrong with black inner city communities? Crime causes poverty. Poverty does not cause crime.
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There was the story of a Southern guy who rang up the Drive in Theatre and asked what the film they were showing. The operator of the theatre answered “Guess who is coming to Dinner?”. The enquirer then said “guess who is going to burn down your theatre? Joke best told using Texas accent 🙂
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I think if I were black and I was told my inability to do maths was because of my DNA I’d find another school. But being white and told my math skills are due to my DNA I’m inclined to put that down to one of the most ignorant things I’d ever heard.
Maybe we’re not really talking about black and white as characteristics of our DNA but of our cultures. Maybe we need to start talking about cultural problems, then, and keep our DNA out of it.
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dp, fear not. You can be assured that there is no mention of white DNA in any of the materials being discussed here.
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“White” is explained only by DNA. Same with “race”.
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oh dear.
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We used to have a subject known as Mental Arithmetic in the 1960s. The age was 16 years old. I was top of the class in normal maths but I could never beat my friend at Mental Arithmetic. I later realised that Brownie was a long time dart player who knew his mental calculations from his involvement in that game.
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Once you realise that what these people are trying to doing is pull down the entire edifice of Western civilisation it all makes sense.
At the end of the Communist Manifesto we find:
“Communism abolishes the present state of things.
The Communists openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forceful overthrow of all existing political and social conditions.”
They believe that once they have smashed everything, the new world of true Communism will appear.
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I fear the future Mark.
I was a former Comrade, a union delegate.
Unions were established to protect workers rights.
No longer. It is used by the Union delegates and executive, as a vehicle to use member funds to push a political agenda and political careers, rather than protecting their comrades.
Two of our state secretarys’ have run in elections for the Green Party. Both State and Federal.
If an industrial issue is brought to their attention, they won’t keep the employer compliant to the award. They will on purpose, prolong the case and use it to attack the Minister in charge of the portfolio.
Why?…. Simple. For political gain.
They do not care about the members whom fund them.
It is all about forging their own personal agenda and political views.
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Hunter-gatherer maths . . .
One, two, plenty
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As I write it is Wed 31 Mar 2021
Tomorrow is Thurs 01 Apr i.e. April Fools’Day.
Hmmmmm??
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Yes, it was just slightly early. A very poor, tasteless April Fools Day joke, with bad consequences if the purveyers of it aren’t thoroughly ridiculed.
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Funny that. A lot of our math is based on the efforts by Greeks, Indians and Arabs.
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Don’t know about the Greeks, but certainly the Indians as passed by the Arabs. Pythagoras could not calculate a hypoteneuse. No square root, no decimal point, no zero, no mathematics. His solution was based on blocks of wood.
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All of our math is based on Euclid, and calculus from Archimedes, by way of Newton and Leibniz. Period. And they got it from much earlier sources. Arabs did nothing but contribute the “Arabic numerals”, and pass along the ancient knowledge.
And what Pythagoras may or may not have known is irrelevant, incompetent, and immaterial. The number of elementary ways of proving the Pythagorean theorem (with blocks of wood, or even just rough sketches) are many. Dragging him in, and modern academics’ “knowledge” of him, is a strawman, when used to judge all ancient knowledge.
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Euclid was indeed the father of geometry, not mathematics. He introduced the concepts of straight lines, circles and right angles and truisms of geometric constructions. This was in a time when a circle or a triangle was not a common concept but a philosophical construct. While geometric construction is not mathematics it provided critical construction tools for drawing, architecture, visualization.
Even the Romans did not have mathematics. They counted with letters with no letter for zero. The Chinese had an Abacus. And the largest Arab number was a thousand, so a thousand and one was a way to express infinity, as in a Thousand and One Arabian Nights. Arab mathematics came from India after the conversion to Islam and the Arab empire was huge.
Nor did the Greeks have a decimal point, or a concept of zero or negative or equations or algebra.
To suggest calculus is a Greek invention is silly. Without Cartesian algebra and equations, Liebnitz and Newton could not have started. If the Indians though the Arabs introduced mathematics, base 10 long division and multiplication to a medieval world, it was Renee Decartes who created the foundation of what we know as mathematics and rational science today. This is recent stuff, from 1600 onwards, the time of Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth 1. It was not the Greeks.
Core to this discussion is the absurd idea though that mathematics is somehow racist, an example of white supremacy and is taught somehow in racist way to black students in North America. That is rubbish. And I suppose not putting a woman on the moon fifty years ago was sexist. There seems to be no end to this invention of victimhood, systemic racism and sexism.
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Have you seen the proof in Euclid’s Elements that every prime number of the form (2^n)-1 generates a perfect number of value {(2^n)-1}{2^(n-1)} where n is a positive integer? The Greeks did algebra alright, they just wrote it out in words rather than symbols, which is rather limiting.
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The numerals we use are not Arabic…they are Indian!
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“Etymology
The Hindu-Arabic or Indo-Arabic numerals were invented by mathematicians in India. Persian and Arabic mathematicians called them “Hindu numerals”. Later they came to be called “Arabic numerals” in Europe because they were introduced to the West by Arab merchants.”
Which is as I remember the story.
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While all this presents a large pond of humour, it also presents a divide between honour and cause. We can sit here and type till cows come home.
No bullet fired, no blood spilled. Blood pressure might fluctuate
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There are many who walked this earth before us and died with an honour for peace and freedom to prevail. As you all have noticed, humans are crafty and cannot handle peace.
To die for peace and freedom meant a short lived pain. In history of humanity those that suffered the most are those left behind to pick up the pieces. The families.
To be privileged also means to have made the right choices or started existence under right circumstance. In light of freedom many cannot handle that too well.
It might also be a privilege to be give a platform like this one to exchange words rather than a field to exchange ammunition.
Communism died many years ago and in blood, yet its idealism keeps luring lost and weak souls. Marxist books don’t say, it only looks good on paper. For this reason leftists and communism will forever remain a juvenile self-distracting movement with no contribution to the good of the earth and life.
While the educated keep preaching from the books of knowledge it is evident that such closed system is showing cracks within through sheer lunacy.
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I can’t wait to hear Dr Karl promoting the new non-racist mathematics. He seems to be attracting more truly silly questions lately too. It must privately embarrass him.
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I am looking forward to the day that I can submit purely subjective tax returns that do not need to add up to HMRC!
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There was an Asian guy in my Calculus 2 course that took tests in ink. I’m sure it was because he felt oppressed by crackers.
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This isn’t worthy of any respect at all, only contempt. There is no point in discussing it or even reasoning why it is wrong. It is a declaration of intellectual war, and it should be met with like.
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This is as obvious as 2 + 2 = 6.02 * 10^24, is it not?
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So what kind of (difficult) math are we talking about? Algebra, trigonometry, logarithms, or pre-calculus? No. We are talking about basic Arithmetic. As volunteer to teach math for the General Equivalency Degree (for high school dropouts) I have seen the results of liberal educators who thought the calculator could replace learning basic multiplication and division tables by memory. Regardless of race, if the (adult) student didn’t know his/her tables, or didn’t want to learn them, then none would advance to algebra and trig to pass the exam. Of course, the blacks blamed racism, but the (predominant) whites had no such excuse.
Dumbing down the population.
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Professor, it’s time to work out how much we, your publishers, pay you for selling your book. Over the last year we’ve sold 1000 copies and made $10 per copy. That’s a total of $10,000. Our contract states that we take 10%. By our calculations that is $2,000. I know that you won’t dispute that otherwise that would be racist.
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Difficult to see that Euler equations = racism. Oh well, the rest of the school curriculum (English, history etc) has been polluted by woke thinking…why not mathematics? It has already been used to justify CAGW; Newton and Einstein would be turning in their graves.
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Absolutely [Snip] Not, Math’s is not and never has been racist, But wokeness is extremely dangerous. Because it seeks to control anyone and everyone it can.
Here is a sample of why Math’s is not racist: Wikipedia Maths History:
“From 3000 BC the Mesopotamian states of Sumer, Akkad and Assyria, together with Ancient Egypt and Ebla[,] began using arithmetic, algebra and geometry.”
“Chinese mathematics made early contributions, including a place value system and the first use of negative numbers.”
“The Hindu-Arabic numeral system and the rules for the use of its operations, in use throughout the world today, evolved over the course of the first millennium AD in India and were transmitted to the Western world via Islamic mathematics…. Islamic mathematics, in turn, developed and expanded the mathematics known to these civilizations. Contemporaneous with but independent of these traditions were the mathematics developed by the Maya civilization of Mexico and Central America, where the concept of zero was given a standard symbol in Maya numerals.”
“[O]ur knowledge of Babylonian mathematics is derived from more than 400 clay tablets…. Written in Cuneiform script, tablets were inscribed whilst the clay was moist, and baked hard in an oven or by the heat of the sun. Some of these appear to be graded homework.”
“Sumerians wrote multiplication tables on clay tablets and dealt with geometrical exercises and division problems.”
“The most extensive Egyptian mathematical text is the Rhind papyrus, dated to c. 1650 BC but likely a copy of an older document…. It is an instruction manual for students in arithmetic and geometry. In addition to giving area formulas and methods for multiplication, division and working with unit fractions, it also contains evidence of other mathematical knowledge.”
“Greek mathematics was much more sophisticated than the mathematics that had been developed by earlier cultures…. Greek mathematicians, by contrast, used deductive reasoning. The Greeks used logic to derive conclusions from definitions and axioms, and used mathematical rigor to prove them.”
“In the 9th century, the Persian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī wrote an important book on the Hindu–Arabic numerals and one on methods for solving equations … instrumental in spreading Indian mathematics and Indian numerals to the West. The word algorithm is derived from the Latinization of his name, Algoritmi, and the word algebra from the title of one of his works.”
Shove this under the woke and Social Justice Warriors SJW (better known as vigilantes) Noses.
Regards
Climate Heretic
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I apologize for the profanity
Regards
Climate Heretic
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You’ve missed the point. This isn’t about race per se. It’s about eliminating rigor so anyone can pass, no matter how stupid they might be.
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Now that it has been proven we need equity rather than equality of opportunity (you know, scientifically by cartoons of people climbing mountains), this is just the logical next step.
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