[BITList] Is Algebra Necessary? - NYTimes.com

[HUGH]

Mike,

I don't recognise much of what this man writes.  What are parametric equations?  And what are algebraic algorithms?  The maths taught in schools is elementary, the ABCs that lead on to higher stuff.  I used maths a lot at work, and the theory of structures, and dynamics, but all of that came from night school.

He mentions rigour, but that concept is wholly absent in school maths.  Getting the answer right doesn't involve rigour  Even at HNC level I didn't encounter anything resembling what later I was introduced to as rigour. Rigour comes into mathematical proof, more or less the art of not deducing a fallacy from a true statement, as in the old "prove that 1 = 2 trick".

On this side of the pond we are reading the same stuff, only it's centred on undergraduates trying to study engineering and physics with an abysmal grasp of maths. If anything (I've tutored some), the stuff taught in schools nowadays is more elementary than the stuff I got at a lower level, so whence comes this wave of ignorance?  Is it the curriculum, the teachers, the pupils?  And will things improve if they don't study maths at school?

At least it makes a change from the interminable debate on the definition of marriage.

Hugh.
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