Okay, peoples. This is going to be a rant. Not sure if it’ll be long or short- but it’s going to be one. I’ll put the rant after the bump. A coworker sent me this article and I am flipping out. A PROFESSOR of Mathematics, a man who is now the dean of the college of arts and sciences at University of Pennsylvania, believes this. AGH!
Okay. Seriously? Whatever this guy is taking, I want some. He says fractions are as obsolete as roman numerals. (I don’t know about you, but I actually still USE roman numerals. Maybe just because I’m a math teacher.) However. Fractions obsolete? Decimals are better? No. Nonononononononono. And here’s why.
I think a fraction gives you a better grasp of how much you are talking about once you go past the obvious .5 and .25 and .75. Not to mention, most fractions are *not* rational like that. They don’t come out to be nice, simple, and terminating. No. Most of them are irrational. One-third. One-sixth. One-ninth. What does that mean to you when you see .167 or .17? Well. Not much to me. One-sixth? Okay, that makes more sense to me. I know how much is missing from the whole.
And to delay teaching fractions until after students have taken Calculus?! What. The. Fuck. Last time I checked, both Precalculus and Calculus was heavy into the use of fractions. He wants to wait until students have a better understanding of fractions. Um, hello? Students don’t know what the fuck a decimal means. It’s a part of a whole. That’s it. I am not knocking that decimals are useful and necessary. However – better than fractions? No, thanks. I’ll pass.
I cannot believe it. Something like this would only make calculator use MORE prominent and using the brain LESS prominent. Why? Because he thinks multiplication by hand is also obsolete. It’s like he’s saying – “Well, they are too stupid to do it themselves, so let’s just teach it so they can do it.”
My god. I am trying to get my students to STOP using their calculators all the time. And this guy is trying to make it impossible for that to happen.
Seriously, dude? What are you on? I want some. You talk about Mathematicians questioning axioms, making progress. Calculator use, on the whole, makes students think LESS. And the majority of the time – they have no idea what the answer means or if it even makes SENSE. Go jump off a cliff, buddy. And take your calculator-based math with you.
Yeah, this is ridiculous. I feel that fractions are part of the fundamentals of math. I mean that’s how I learned a lot of things.
You don’t say it’s .25 past the hour. You say it’s a quarter(1/4) past the hour. and so on.
This guy is on crack. Tell me this. How many chefs or carpenters (as they specified in the article) would EVER take calculus. I know I never did. So would they have to take calculus to become a chef? to take carpentry? Come on. Seriously.
LOL@yoshi, on crack! I agree though, he’s totally nuts! I may not like doing fractions but how can you have half a piece of cake without them?!?!
That’s what I’m saying! He’s nuts! Totally ridiculous!
Fraction is still very useful for me. It gives me a concrete idea of, in you words, “how much you are talking about.” Decimals are more confusing.
I can’t believe it. Calculator is my life way back on college during my accountancy course and I can’t live without it. I think manual computation makes me complicated and time consuming, I’ll become crazy without it. Ha…ha…ha…
Haha this is actually a funny post for me. What a ridiculous idea for this professor. Everyone has been saying about the coming of the digital age but there’s no need to make everything obsolete. We just don’t shed old clothes just because we get new ones.