Re: Math (in)competence

[Brian Whatcott <betwys@DIRECTVINTERNET.COM>]

At 02:30 AM 7/3/02, Michael Bowen, you wrote:

> At 20:41 2002/07/02, Herb Gottlieb wrote:
> >It's hard to believe that the college students in Tina's
> >math class have such difficulty doing the most simple
> >arithmetic problems. ...

> Believe it. Remember, Tina is teaching at a community college, which means
> they have to take everyone, including "those high school graduates who are
> not accepted into any [other] college."
>
> The students are most likely not accepted into any other college precisely
> because they lack math skills (and often academic skills of any flavor)....

> ===== Begin true story =====
>
> Several years ago I went to a music/video store in my area that was having
> a sale on audio tapes: 4 for $10.00. I found only three tapes that I liked,
> and (not knowing whether the sale price was to reward volume purchases
> only), asked a very young store clerk whether he would sell me just the
> three tapes for $7.50. He eyed me suspiciously...

> ===== End true story =====

...

> --Michael Bowen from southern California
> (where knowing even a little math can be one's passport to a dynamic,
> high-paying job in the exciting, fast-paced recording industry).


Hmmm....I am a frequent visitor to the local hardware store, where the
cashiers are typically in junior college. I heard one mention being a
math major and she expressed interest in the possibilities of engineering
 - so I said I would try her on routine math problems so she could get the
feel of  the field.
 I asked how she would solve for the roots of an equation like
ax^2 + b.x + c = d   : for a,b,c,d known constants, and she responded with the
quadratic formula, and the factorizing method.

My next visit, I asked how many inflections she might expect to sketch in an
equation of one unknown in the fifteenth power: she hesitated, and the
next cashier along proposed a figure of fourteen.

(After exploring one or two other questions, I realised that Sherry had
just one semester of math in junior college at that stage, and her helper
 - a blonde who wore rather tight jeans, easy to pigeon-hole - wrongly!
was holding at the high school graduate stage, and considering college
(she had been something of a 'teacher's helper')

The only young person I know who works in a videotape store
recently received an associates with a music concentration: she
is a coloratura soprano with a voice comparable to the divas I
have heard at La Scala and Covent Garden.
(Perhaps, with luck, you too will hear Tinia Brunet's aria
from the Magic Flute; titled the Queen of Night's Vengeance:
I asked the local classical NPR affiliate to forward the
demonstration CD she recently made, to the national distribution
for possible use as a filler of some kind...)


....but this is a small town, and junior jobs are hard to find in
SW Oklahoma, rather than SoCal.



Brian Whatcott
  Altus OK                      Eureka!