youcubed

This site is all about fresh ideas for teaching high school math. Apparently a lot of people agree that the traditional U.S. approach of algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2, and calculus is not working. A lot of people seem to think data science is the answer. It sounds okay to me to start with interesting data and then work backward to math theory and systems concepts. I do use geometry pretty much daily in my work, at least concepts like areas and volumes. Are those geometry? I think I originally learned them in high school chemistry class. I almost never use calculus symbols, but I use calculus concepts like rate of change and accumulating and depleting stocks daily. I solve those numerically rather than symbolically. So maybe this is what we should be teaching in high school, then working our way to the symbols for people who really need it, for example the ones who are going to be programming the computers that the rest of us use to solve various problems. A little statistics and probability is a good idea, but even that can be more experiment based and less symbolic at first.

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