There is no hope II
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As a continuation to this previous post by Henry Minute on 4 May, 2012[^], I offer more evidence that there is no hope for the future: My 8 year old daughter was doing a class project in which she had to pick one country from her ancestry and make a presentation. My wife's family is Ukrainian, so she picked Ukraine. Fast forward to the final day of the project, they had to make flags of their country in class. My daughter, who has seen a Ukrainian flag hundreds of times, and even owns one, tells her teacher that the flag is blue and yellow. The teacher looks in her 25+ year old encyclopedia and says 'No, this book says it looks like this' and, despite my daughter telling her over and over again that it is blue and yellow, she FORCES her to make the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic flag instead, which is basically the Soviet flag with a blue stripe on the bottom. 1. She wouldn't listen to my daughter who told her over and over again that she knew how the flag looks. 2. She didn't even recognize the fact that the flag is basically the soviet flag, and the Soviet Union hasn't existed for 20+ years. Even during Soviet times, that flag was rarely seen. 3. She thinks a 25+ year old encyclopedia still has up-to-date flags. This pretty much sums up this whole situation[^] LISTEN TO THE 8 YEAR OLD! SHE KNOWS MORE THAN YOU! I weep for the future... :doh: :wtf: :sigh:
I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone - Bjarne Stroustrup The world is going to laugh at you anyway, might as well crack the 1st joke! My code has no bugs, it runs exactly as it was written.
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Alexander DiMauro wrote:
I weep for the future.
So when you went to school were the teachers all perfect and fonts of knowledge? Certainly wasn't true when I went to school. And that was true of all education up through university graduate courses. Of course when I went to school it was significantly harder to verify information for teachers and students.
Alexander DiMauro wrote:
The teacher looks in her 25+ year old encyclopedia and says
So the only encyclopedia in the classroom is 25 years old and might even be the personal property of the teacher. Certainly seems possible that there might be more to blame in this case than the teacher, for example the fact that the school system doesn't provide more up to date materials. And given that you have a very specific vested interest in this I am curious as to exactly what you have done in the past year to improve the school?
Alexander DiMauro wrote:
LISTEN TO THE 8 YEAR OLD! SHE KNOWS MORE THAN YOU!
So every time a single student in a class of perhaps 30 students (hopefully no more) says that the teacher is wrong the teacher should agree? Even when perhaps the best available source says otherwise?
There's expecting your teacher to be a font of knowledge and then there's expecting your teacher to have some vague idea what's going on in the world. Anyone who didn't notice that the USSR dissolved and its member states got new flags in 1990 (ish) shouldn't be in charge of knowledge distribution. I wouldn't necessarily expect everyone to know what a Ukrainian flag looks like (although everyone in Europe should), but I would expect everyone to know that one with a Soviet hammer and sickle on it is clearly out of date. And as Ravi says, when you get a story like this from your child you should mention it to the teacher in question, (a) to get both sides of the story and (b) to help them improve their knowledge for the next child to ask a similar question.
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yes, but to write 3,14 as a fraction, one can write 314/100 =P you only need some transformation...
I'm brazilian and english (well, human languages in general) aren't my best skill, so, sorry by my english. (if you want we can speak in C# or VB.Net =p)
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What's an encyclopedia? :)
There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
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yes, but to write 3,14 as a fraction, one can write 314/100 =P you only need some transformation...
I'm brazilian and english (well, human languages in general) aren't my best skill, so, sorry by my english. (if you want we can speak in C# or VB.Net =p)
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Of course you can, for 3.14 and other rational numbers anyway, but with the square root of 2 you can't do that[^].
OK, you asked for this:
(20/10)^(1/2)Here it is, iterate and you will find sqrt(2)(20/10) = 2 2^(1/2) = sqrt(2)the teory is here[^] Math is really contradictory in some points...I'm brazilian and english (well, human languages in general) aren't my best skill, so, sorry by my english. (if you want we can speak in C# or VB.Net =p)
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OK, you asked for this:
(20/10)^(1/2)Here it is, iterate and you will find sqrt(2)(20/10) = 2 2^(1/2) = sqrt(2)the teory is here[^] Math is really contradictory in some points...I'm brazilian and english (well, human languages in general) aren't my best skill, so, sorry by my english. (if you want we can speak in C# or VB.Net =p)
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20/10 is ;P i don't know how to put fraction simbols here, so i used that syntax, and i rememember no one saying that exponentiation is invalid ;P
I'm brazilian and english (well, human languages in general) aren't my best skill, so, sorry by my english. (if you want we can speak in C# or VB.Net =p)
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20/10 is ;P i don't know how to put fraction simbols here, so i used that syntax, and i rememember no one saying that exponentiation is invalid ;P
I'm brazilian and english (well, human languages in general) aren't my best skill, so, sorry by my english. (if you want we can speak in C# or VB.Net =p)
Sentenryu wrote:
i rememember no one saying that exponentiation is invalid
Well consider that
x^0.5 = sqrt(x).. clearly you can write the square root of 2 in terms of a power of a rational, because it is just a power of a rational. Anyway, I was talking about common fractions, not "anything you could write as a division between any two things of your choosing". -
Sentenryu wrote:
i rememember no one saying that exponentiation is invalid
Well consider that
x^0.5 = sqrt(x).. clearly you can write the square root of 2 in terms of a power of a rational, because it is just a power of a rational. Anyway, I was talking about common fractions, not "anything you could write as a division between any two things of your choosing".i think I've learned fractions a little different from what you say, odds of the system, probably.
I'm brazilian and english (well, human languages in general) aren't my best skill, so, sorry by my english. (if you want we can speak in C# or VB.Net =p)
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There's expecting your teacher to be a font of knowledge and then there's expecting your teacher to have some vague idea what's going on in the world. Anyone who didn't notice that the USSR dissolved and its member states got new flags in 1990 (ish) shouldn't be in charge of knowledge distribution. I wouldn't necessarily expect everyone to know what a Ukrainian flag looks like (although everyone in Europe should), but I would expect everyone to know that one with a Soviet hammer and sickle on it is clearly out of date. And as Ravi says, when you get a story like this from your child you should mention it to the teacher in question, (a) to get both sides of the story and (b) to help them improve their knowledge for the next child to ask a similar question.
BobJanova wrote:
Anyone who didn't notice that the USSR dissolved and its member states got new flags in 1990 (ish)
The first has absolutely nothing to do with the second in terms of significance.
BobJanova wrote:
but I would expect everyone to know that one with a Soviet hammer and sickle on it is clearly out of date.
I wouldn't. Such knowledge presumes that one would be required to know that absolutely no nation decided to adopt that same flag or one that looked similar. And memorizing flags might be interesting to some people but in terms of general knowledge it is little more useful than memorizing what the national athem of each is.
BobJanova wrote:
...for the next child to ask a similar question.
Unless the school is in a district with a strong Ukraine population I wouldn't expect that that expectation is reasonable. More importantly, as I already said, if the teacher had the proper reference materials then it would in fact be more likely to lead to a better result since it would cover a much broader spectrum of knowledge. And would also also include knowledge that is actually useful.
