daijobu
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Posts posted by daijobu
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For my transcript I wanted to keep things simple. I had simple rules for what counted as honors (AoPS, AP, what the instructor called "honors."). I would put DE in that category unless you disagree.
I didn't have more than 2 categories for weighting. It's either honors or it isn't. If you think all the DE courses are honors level, then give them that weight. If they aren't, give them a regular weight.
Maybe some DE courses are more akin to an honors level than others? Then I think it's fine to decide which is which and give it the appropriate weight.
I would not have 3 weights just because of the added complexity, I suspect that's pretty non-standard, and I don't anyone really cares about the nuance.
I'm eager to hear what others have to say.
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For fun I looked up some of my own logic exams from high school. Note the handwritten and barely legible purple mimeographed print straight from the 1980s! And yes, students who scored >90% earned a smiley face on their papers. In high school. I'm not ashamed to admit that I lived for those smiley faces.
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Here are some more fun logic problem for practice if your students are having difficulty:
https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/1974_AHSME_Problems/Problem_13
https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/1986_AJHSME_Problems/Problem_22
https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/1985_AJHSME_Problems/Problem_25
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It also makes sense to me that a definition would have a double arrow. Triangle and 3-sided polygon are the same thing, so one implies the other and vice versa.
What specifically is your objection?
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The photos you have posted seem okay to me from a mathematical perspective. A statement is equivalent to its contrapositive. A statement is not necessarily equivalent to its converse.
I prefer to read the statement
as "p implies q" or "if p then q."
The example I learned in high school is to let
p = "you are human"
q = "you have a heart"
The statement
The converse,
reads "If you have a heart then you are human" and is false because dogs and other animals also have hearts.
However the contrapositive
reads "If you do not have a heart then you are not human" is true.
I had not seen those Venn style diagrams in the margins before, but they make sense to me.
Sometimes it is easier to evaluate whether a statement is true if you can rewrite it in terms of variables as in the AMC problem here:
https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/2022_AMC_10B_Problems/Problem_11
I'm not familiar with how Aristotle handles logic. What is his approach to these sorts of statements?
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Could you post some photos or screenshots from the portions of the textbook that illustrate the issue? Or reproduce the statements here?
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I believe you have an obligation to present your student in the best possible light. Present all the best qualities of your student and omit anything negative.
If you want to know if a particular school offers adequate disability support for their students, you can ask other parents or their disability office. You can also wait until your student has been admitted to do this investigation. Don't let the school decide they don't need another disabled student.
My students did not have learning differences, and I described their personal strengths in detail. I did not go digging for dirt on my own students.
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I'll add that if you are really having a difficult time, you might make some inroads by contacting anyone on the "inside" at the MAA (try here), especially if that person is local to you. If an MAA board members in your area learns that nearby talented math students are unable to participate without significant hurdles and expense, you may get some sympathy. If you do complain, you can also try using the phrase "equity issue" in your complaint.
The MAA should be trying to make it easier, not more difficult to participate.
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The MAA never allowed parents to proctor, but I had found it easy to coordinate with librarians to host the AMC , but that is no longer an option. You'll need to contact middle schools, maybe high schools, and any college math departments, especially if they are already doing community outreach like math circles.
You do need to sign up through a school, not directly yourself with the MAA. They tend not to be very helpful but you can also try calling them and asking for help, but your best bet might be to call around locally.
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9 hours ago, Soror said:
I really don't want to teach other people's kids for free just so my kid can have friends.
From my perspective this was a fair trade. I led math teams through much of my homeschooling, mostly for free or low cost, so my kids could hang out with other mathy kids. But then, I also just enjoyed it at face value.
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On 8/11/2023 at 11:58 PM, ThomasT said:
How can we support/advise her? Suggest to work directly on previous contest problems, or take some crash courses?! Compared to the systematic learning based on a curriculum, we wonder if this will make the knowledge fragmented and is not a way to build solid foundation?! Kind of a distraction?! Or, it's better to accelerate/enrich math background first and have a longer-term plan?!
The best way to prepare for these contests is to take the old exams at home and study the problems you could not solve. You can find them free at the AoPS wiki: https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/AMC_Problems_and_Solutions
AoPS offers crash courses, and they are fun and I wouldn't dissuade students from taking them. But I think their ROI is low compared with self-study.
I generally don't recommend using math contests in place of a systematic curriculum, though I do know a student who hated math curriculum, and learned algebra, geometry, c&p, and NT just by taking old MathCounts exams for 3 years, lol. Rather I would have your student take an old AMC, say, once a week or as often as you like. You can read about interleaving and spaced repetition, and see how supplementing with math contests helps with long-term memory.
I made a little video about the AMCs for parents who are unfamiliar:
Also, girls who do very well on the AMC should apply to Math Prize for Girls which I also highly recommend.
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On 8/6/2023 at 7:42 PM, Gil said:
WIKtJD is basically a subject-by-subject comparison of the education a typical 1960s child gets in the United States of America and Soviet Union. It's a very eloquent way of saying "My fellow Americans, we're doing a terribly inefficient job at this Education business especially when compared to the Russians."
If you want another cross cultural study of attitudes toward education you can read:
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17 hours ago, cintinative said:
I was able to remove it. 🙂
Thanks for reporting this. I was wondering if there had been a change because some years ago when I completed the CA, I uploaded and re-uploaded my documents multiple multiple multiple times because I was unhappy with the appear of the documents, and I adjusted the margins to prevent the "shrinkage" in my PDFs.
I also agree that the customer service at CA used to be quite responsive; I would receive a response within a few hours.
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Did your student name you as his/her counselor who will provide the recommendation? I believe that needs to happen first, before you submit.
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I'm really sorry, I totally missed the mark here.
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1 hour ago, Janeway said:
He is regretting it big time because he has a job in a research setting and has found that he loves it, but his math skills are too weak to do a science major. And he is already a sophomore in college and earning almost all A's (and has dropped remedial math twice so has never completed math) in all his other subjects, and is in the honors college. He is kicking himself and wishing he did better. I want to head off this problem for the future.
However, this means that basically, we are doing two lessons in a day. The goal is to be solid on arithmetic and be ready for algebra by 8th grade.
Is this just a recipe for burn out? Or is this a good idea? I know a lot of families around here have their children in school during the day and then the kids do to extra math class after school and/or on the weekends and during the summers.
I'm very sorry about your son's regrets re: math.
Do 2 math lessons take 2 hours or 30 minutes? Are there tears or is she happy and gaining confidence? If you think burn out is a possibility, can you check with your daughter on a regular basis and remind her that if it's getting to be too much you can reduce the load?
And if you don't mind, I sometimes encounter folks who tell me their kids don't need to study math because they are going into a non-quantitative field. Or they argue that if they need to learn math, they'll pick it up later when they are motivated. What would you tell them? What kind of lab is your son working in, and what specifically does he use math for? Is it not an option for him to remediate before continuing college? (Thank you and I'm sorry for the OT questions!)
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If your student is interested in stepping up his solution-writing skills, he might look into learning Latex and Overleaf. In particular, critical equations should be on their own line and center justified. More white space will make it more readable.
But my sense is that he seems to be writing to himself, not for an audience. There is just something about writing things out by hand, whether that's a solution or a graph or a diagram. It slows the student down and causes then to really think about what they are doing.
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One typical math sequence in the US by year is:
Algebra I
Geometry
Algebra II
PreCalculus
Calculus
Taking calculus in senior year, while somewhat arbitrary, is what naive application readers at highly rejective colleges look for in a STEM student. And frankly, the strongest engineering students at state flagships are going to have already seen calculus in high school, so it's a good idea to keep up with them, though technically not required.
If you are on this sequence, then you'll want to have completed algebra by the end of 8th grade so your student can take geometry as a freshman. But if you check the older messages on WTM you'll find that AoPS Introduction to Algebra covers a typical algebra I class plus a lot more, including algebra II topics. So if you think you'll be switching to another math curriculum in high school, you may not necessarily need to complete the entire AoPS Intro to Algebra text. Check the archives or start a new thread if you need to drill down on this topic.
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My goal for mathy kids is to have algebra completed by 8th grade, because that gives students enough time to take calculus by senior year. I would only intervene in another year or so if it looks like he might not make it. He may pick up the pace as he matures.
Those legal pads are going to be a fun keepsake for him!
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Also, his solution is very similar to--but not quite the same as--the AoPS solution:
Solution: We’ll say that a student “touches” a locker if she either opens or shuts it. So, the first student touches every locker, the
![$\color[rgb]{0.35,0.35,0.35}2\textsuperscript{nd}$](https://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/2/d/b/2db17e68127c70d92f5e94086ff0666dbc61f8cf.png)
student touches every locker, the ![$\color[rgb]{0.35,0.35,0.35}3\textsuperscript{rd}$](https://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/f/b/3/fb38ac879eb2d348af3158ef81b818e3a548345c.png)
student touches every locker, and so on. Since the student touches every locker starting with locker 2, the student touches every locker that is a multiple of 2. Similarly, the student touches every locker that is a multiple of 3, the ![$\color[rgb]{0.35,0.35,0.35}4\textsuperscript{th}$](https://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/6/7/4/674f57e307d1bf12568d0ab2513f7a3a9676c1cc.png)
student touches every locker that is a multiple of 4, and so on.
Therefore, locker number
![$\color[rgb]{0.35,0.35,0.35}n$](https://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/5/7/4/574340cac616339696808ddfec42247f7d8ad47e.png)
is touched by every student whose number evenly divides . So, the number of times locker gets touched equals the number of positive divisors of . If a locker is touched an even number of times total, then it is closed after the whole process, since each “opening” touch pairs with a “closing” touch. Similarly, if a locker is touched an odd number of times, the last touch will leave the locker open.
Therefore, the lockers that are open at the end are the ones whose numbers have an odd number of positive divisors. The only positive numbers with an odd number of positive divisors are the positive perfect squares, so we must count the number of positive perfect squares less than 1000. Since
![$\color[rgb]{0.35,0.35,0.35}31^2 = 961$](https://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/3/b/9/3b94845e67bc529f1b7cf1c5a30b8d1d781f102c.png)
is less than 1000 and ![$\color[rgb]{0.35,0.35,0.35}32^2 = 1024$](https://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/4/d/b/4db3a030efba99ac729da2aa3a6013ee687b39bd.png)
is greater than 1000, there are ![$\color[rgb]{0.35,0.35,0.35}\boxed{31}$](https://latex.artofproblemsolving.com/b/b/f/bbf3634cb6cbb0ea155d5c58c0a615a1415a405c.png)
positive perfect squares less than 1000.
I mean, even if he were copying the solution text, I would not necessarily discourage the practice. I copy math equations by hand as a tool for my understanding. But I might ask him about it. Not in a negative accusing way, but just from a position of neutral curiosity.
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Wow, that is a lot of writing. But I'm reluctant to discourage any student from writing. It's just such an unusual occurrence, I'm kind of in awe. It's actually longer than the AoPS solutions.
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On 7/9/2023 at 2:28 PM, madteaparty said:
Many people do, as most colleges, even some fancy ones, do not actually offer that many Arabic classes. My son was intermediate when he applied to college and he would have ran out of classes had he chosen to major in Arabic in a number of schools he was looking at. There just isn’t that much demand for the language.(he started taking classes in 7th grade at our local state public and there were 3 people in his class. That school no longer offers any Arabic at all. And it’s a bit sad that if you want to *major* in Arabic you should look at either (i) state flagships that have a critical language program (IU comes to mind) or (ii) extremely rejective schools like Yale. Middlebury is somewhere in the middle but an exception as far as LACs go.
Just to add a little nuance, extremely rejective schools are not always so very rejective for all applicants. I can speak better of Stanford, which attracts many future techies, so if your applicant is interested in liberal arts, they may get a second look from admissions committees who don't want to shut down the history department for lack of interest. This isn't to say that Arabic speakers are in high demand at Yale, but they could be?
Also, I'm studying Farsi which has a lot of Arabic loan words that are weird and inconsistent and subject to inscrutable grammar rules. My tutor and I have to laugh at how difficult the language is!
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18 hours ago, ktgrok said:
But...aftere reading a bunch of threads here I'm now considering Jacobs Algebra 1 for her next year. I just read a bit of the version that Masterbooks put out and I really found it understandable, and I LOVE that as someone here said, "it doesn't let the numbers get in the way of the concept". I HATE when curricula use stupid numbers for math teaching. (looking at you, CTC math!)
I'm not familiar with CTC. Could you provide an example of what you describe in the bold?
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2 hours ago, cintinative said:
There are four courses but no, they are not each semester courses. I had only copied this text
"This four-course sequence exposes students to the fundamental skills required to make sophisticated graphic design: process, historical context, and communication through image-making and typography. The sequence is completed by a capstone project that applies the skills of each course and peer feedback in a finished branding project suitable for a professional portfolio.
The goal of this specialization is to equip learners with a set of transferable formal and conceptual tools for “making and communicating” in the field of graphic design. This core skill set will equip learners for formal studies in graphic design, and a starting point for further work in interface design, motion graphics, and editorial design."
How did you pick the instructor? There are five listed for this total course specialization.
He seemed like the most important. At the top of the page you linked, it reads "Michael Worthington + 4 more instructors" so he's the only one listed on the main page by name. He has 7 courses (the other guys have 1 each) and 900,000 learners, so possibly the most well known? However, if one of the other instructors has greater name recognition among people in graphic design, I might include them instead/also. (Louise has a few gray hairs...is she famous in her field?)
I shortened the text to make it more readable to whomever might want to read it, including only the most impressive stuff like the capstone project. I left out the "peer feedback" because that makes the course seem less impressive and the "conceptual tools" because what is a "conceptual tool"?
The fact that the phrase "equip learners" was written twice in 2 consecutive sentences suggests the course description was written in a hurry and in need of some editing.
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Helping your kid advocate in a poorly run class (without becoming a nag)
in The College Board
Posted
Isn't there some proverb about repeating the same action and hoping for a different outcome?
Your student already emailed and nothing changed.
I'm with your husband and son. More emails won't turn a bad prof into a good one. More emails won't turn a bad class into a good one.
Also your son can't expect the class to change. It will continue to be a bad class. I agree with you that he should drop it, or else prepare for an unexpected grade, possibly bad or who knows?