Doesn’t inspire confidence

Ireland just suspended the use of AstraZeneca. There must be something in the reporting. I hope it turns out to be unrelated.

It doesn’t take much to make an already skeptical public worry. I am mainly concerned with efficacy rates of the vaccine. My friend in Madrid and my mom decided Astra Zeneca is too risky for little reward. They say they want to wait until Pfizer becomes more widely available.

Number of countries have stopped vaccinating with it. It’s not a good news.

A million dollar question is why those schools are failing. I wish the answer was money.

Most kids don’t have that background though. Even with AoPS background DS feels doing both applied and theoretical is very helpful for him. I do think some kids on this forum are simply made out of the different cloth, and it’s hard for their parents to understand “the normal.” Individualization is great, but what is available to those of us who can’t teach this material at home is much more limited.

Well that’s exactly my point. If you had an exposure to a CC style calculus course or a good BC course (should be interchangeable), a normal student would be well prepared to tackle more proof based work. I simply don’t see that in Stewart book anywhere. Now for geniuses, they could probably skip the BC work and do straight into Caltech type course.

DS watches MIT lectures at times. He says they are just much more theoretical as opposed to applied. Basically the difference being Stewart text versus what something like Apostol would cover. Now Stewart I think is a good preparation for Apostle for kids who aren’t natural geniuses and need to see material several times. I mean even teachers at CC who cover proofs do so mostly as illustrations. I have yet to hear a Stewart based course to ask kids to write proofs. So it’s one thing for you to “witness” a proof and quite another for you to write it. And this is just my observational understanding from a completely mathematically clueless parent.

Keep in mind also that most of us haven’t experienced a math course at a STEM university. 😉 From what we have seen on MIT open courseware, even the great teachers at CC don’t come close to MIT depth because the student body at a CC is not nearly as capable as MIT students. Yet the level is still heads above high school.

Surprised. Stewart text is very procedural and not proof based as I understand. That’s what is used at our CC.

Look at UTR ratings of kids playing for various teams. You will see that for places like Stanford, some of this kids have very high UTR rankings (11 at the least). Many have 13, a professional level. But for a small college that’s not competitive, you don’t need that much. Look at actual players from a college you are interested in. And start playing open tournaments. Then you can move on to National ones.

It will lead nowhere good.

this. I can never get that point across well. I am an individual. My kids are individuals. Don’t put me in a box. But overall, people can be really terrible. I think it will take generations to see the change in attitudes. It’s not something we can legislate. We can legislate non discrimination, but you can’t legislate what’s inside people’s heads (I hope I am at least getting my thoughts across here). That sort of change is slow and generational. And all sorts of racial groups can be racist. While we are all aware of white racism, it isn’t sadly unique to whites. It really sucks to be a minority no matter where you are. There was an incident in San Jose where Asian cops were suspended for anti Muslim posts. I mean minorities could be cruel to other monitors as well. Sometimes I really just don’t like people. 😞

Yep. I was going to say bonfire 🔥 🙂

And who does that benefit? 😞 Instead of strengthening elementary school education, creating mentoring/tutoring programs for economically disadvantaged kids so they can have a chance at admissions to those programs and expanding specialized schools (demand seems to be there), we are taking away opportunities from kids who worked hard in the name of equity? Not directed at you. This march toward the mediocrity just kills me.

Am I the only one here who is grabbing popcorn?

Ours used to have a Professor who was a Stanford graduate. Every one of his problems on exams required deep understanding. No plug and chug of any sort. The average in the class was a D. Sadly, he retired.

But selective schools want to see scores, and I don’t just mean the Stanfords of this world. I mean UCs, Georgia Tech.... UNC.... it’s hard to get into those without showing AP scores and SAT scores. I think once you have that, grades explain themselves.

I am curious if she is teaching for non STEM majors. One would hope if you got to a UC, you don’t need algebra remediation.

You are in CA. That explains it. UCs only care about grades, so yes, schools will just gift those A’s now.

It’s a terrible thing too. Parents think their kids are learning. If college admissions wasn’t linked to grades but national exams, then it would be easier to deflate the grading system. My friend’s kid got a 1 on AP calculus exam after getting an A in class. They can’t explain why, so the default explanation is “oh, she just doesn’t test well.” Hmmmmm, really? Because I bet you she just doesn’t understand the material. It’s really heartbreaking.

Yes. I think the key is the goal. People (at least in CA) are obsessed with credit. Oh, you can be done with so much college in high school... bla bla bla..... it’s almost a race to the paper diploma. Everybody is chasing credits and they all think introductory CC lasses are making their kids college students. 🙄 I never hear anybody talk about academic preparation for serious college work. Those CC calculus classes are a very good way to lay the foundation if you get a good teacher. I know Caltech for example expects every kid to come with with a score of 5 in BC but puts all the freshman through the Apostol calculus volumes anyway. So if you look at some of those CC math as pouring foundation, then they can be great. If you go in with an idea that you are done because credit has been earned, then you might end up with a problem if STEM education is the goal. Now a dancer calling it good is a different story.

My friends tell me it doesn’t take much to get an A here. You need to show up and basically all work is done in the classroom. So if you sit in your chair and fill out the worksheet they are working on, you will get an A. It’s really an amazing situation.

The problem is there is no standard at schools. We wouldn’t need tests if our grades and diplomas really meant what they say they mean. DH’s nephew got a B in calculus in high school but managed to fail algebra twice at a CC. It’s mind boggling.

Well, that’s my local high school. Most kids have A’s and most do fairly badly on exams. It’s not a surprising result to get an A in Calculus and a 2 on the exam. Explanation is “some kids don’t test well.” And counselors at school basically are telling kids scores don’t matter for acceptance but only GPA matters. And the GPAs have been increasing steadily while scores have stagnated because it doesn’t take much to get an A - show up, turn in work that they mostly do inside the classroom. Our school sends a ton of those kids to UCs, including UCLA and UCB. The classes are taught for an average child (bell curve) to receive an A. The overall feeling is tests are stressful and should be eliminated. GPA is all that matters. This is also the sentiment now shared by our university system. I am curious to see how this experiment ends. Thanks god for immigrant kids (from Asia) who are working hard and filling STEM programs because I think they are sustaining some excellence at our universities. (Ducking here as I prepare to be called a racist).