[FRIAM] New Mexican's Sunday's story on education proficiency

[glen]

Humans are fast learners. We learn what our environments demand we learn, within some variation, of course. In my part time job slinging beer, we don't expect employees to be able to subtract numbers like 13.54 from 20. The Point of Sale (PoS, funnily also an initialism for another common phrase) does the math for you. However, at my particular gig, we don't deal in dimes, nickels, or pennies. So the PoS does some math, I look at the number, then I have to round up or down, in favor or detriment to the customer or the house, such that we only trade with quarters and up. The objective of the game is to reach the end of the evening with the electronic till count within $0.25 of the actual till contents.

To my mind, this iterated arithmetic game is WAY more fun than the simple game of adding or subtracting numbers, at which I'm an abject failure. But I'm pretty good at the long game of knowing how many times to short the customer versus shorting the house such that the PoS' final count is within a quarter of the actual count.

You're always gonna fail to teach people skills they don't need to learn. If you want them to learn something, engineer the environment, not the person.

On 8/8/24 06:10, Edward Angel wrote:
> The following is hard to believe but true.
> 
> Last weekend, I was in line at Walgreens. The older woman in front of me gave the cashier a $20 bill for a $13.54 purchase. The young cashier was completely unable to figure out the correct change. After a couple of failed tries, the older woman tried to teach the cashier how to subtract $13.54 from $20 but that was a failure. She then tried to get the casher to add to $13.54 until the cashier reach $20. When that failed, she helped the cashier add small change and dollars until she got to $6.46.
> 
> I don’t think giving everyone a calculator is the solution.
> 
> Ed
> _______________________
> 
> Ed Angel
> 
> Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab)
> Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico
> 
> 1017 Sierra Pinon
> Santa Fe, NM 87501
> 505-984-0136 (home)angel at cs.unm.edu <mailto:angel at cs.unm.edu>
> 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel <http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel>
> 
>> On Aug 7, 2024, at 9:28 PM, Frank Wimberly <wimberly3 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I'm not sure my 30+ year old daughter knows the times tables.  She works for the Secretary of Public Education. If you ask her about it she will say she uses calculators and spreadsheets.  I think.
>>
>> ---
>> Frank C. Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>
>> 505 670-9918
>> Santa Fe, NM
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 7, 2024, 9:12 PM Russell Standish <lists at hpcoders.com.au <mailto:lists at hpcoders.com.au>> wrote:
>>
>>     It is a test that you know your 7 or 8 times table. And the definition
>>     of a prime number (which could be given as part of the question, if
>>     not the curriculum).
>>
>>     I would expect most 9 or 10 years olds should know their times tables.
>>
>>     Or am I wrong abut kids these days?
>>
>>     On Mon, Jul 22, 2024 at 12:43:54PM -0600, Tom Johnson wrote:
>>     > Ms. O'Hara:
>>     >
>>     > RE your story Sunday, "Does proficiency give full picture?"
>>     > From your lede:
>>     > "Pop quiz: What number is both a prime number and a factor or 56"?
>>     >
>>     > If I understand correctly, this is a question on an exam given to fourth
>>     > graders, 9- or 10-year-olds.
>>     > Could you please point me to some source in the city or state education
>>     > departments who can tell me what short- or long-term value this question about
>>     > mathematics -- NOT arithmetic -- has for students that age?
>>     >
>>     > We live in a state where it is a rare cashier who can do the mental
>>     > arithmetic to make change from a $20 bill. Can we first find out if fourth
>>     > graders can do that before getting into primes and factorials?
>>     > *--


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