Heartland

markfiend wrote:OK, I see your point, maybe maths should be optional, not compulsory until 16, but that isn't an argument in favour of gutting the subject.

That's not what I said! I said very clearly, twice, that basic maths should be taught in schools but that advanced maths should be optional. We disagree on what's basic and what's advanced but your concession is the exact opposite of what I said. Compulsory maths up to 16 then optional. And calculus and trig at university level.

OK. Sorry I misunderstood. But I had finished what you're calling 'basic' by the end of (what is now called) year 8, so if I hadn't done what you're calling 'advanced' I could have dropped maths at that point.

Meh, anyway. I agree that we disagree on what is basic and what is advanced.

But what is to be included in maths if you're ruling out what I'm calling advanced?

What did year 8 used to be? Would that be 2nd year in high school? (Which, I think, is different to 2nd year in Scotland. Aren't the ages different?) What on Earth did you do in maths after that? Fractals? Chaos theory? Prove the four colour theorem? (No, I'm not that mathematically advanced - I had to look the last one up.)

So does that mean you were doing calculus and trig at about 12 or 13? Surely that's tantamount to abuse!

If I remember rightly, I didn't do calculus until 5th year, although it may have been 4th. So I'd have been around 15 or 16. I think we probably did trig in 4th year.

I think you certainly should have had the option of dropping maths after 'O' level (or 'O' grade as it was called here in my time but is now Standard Grade. Unless they've changed it again.)

stufarq wrote:So does that mean you were doing calculus and trig at about 12 or 13? Surely that's tantamount to abuse!

well I like maths, and I was good at it...

I never "got" maths but as fas as I can remember we did Trig at GCSE (year 10/11 - aged 15-16). I don't remember doing calculus... then again, I don't know what it is

The main parts of calculus you'd have been likely to come across would be differentiation and integration. I'll try and explain them, but I'm probably going to get this wrong (only done A-Level Maths):

Differentiation lets you find the gradient at any point of a function (curve, line, etc). One can substitute the word "gradient" for "rate of change", since that's basically what the gradient of a line is, the rate at which it gets steeper or shallower.
And since it's the rate of change, it can be applied to loads of other things. Power is the rate of energy transfer, force is the rate of change of momentum.. basically, if anything's changing at a measurable rate, it is a differential.

Integration is basically the opposite, like turning a differential back into a function. On a graph of a curve, if you turn the function (say y = 3x) into its integral (y = 1.5x^2), then put in two values of x (say 1 and 0), and subtract the lower from the higher, you get the area underneath the curve, between those points.

It's difficult to explain textually, to be honest. Wiki may help, just don't try and understand everything all at once.

Sorry, I realise I'm going to get some nice sarky messages for making this post.

can someone remind me where sine, cos and tan fit in?

emilystrange wrote:can someone remind me where sine, cos and tan fit in?

Trig.

emilystrange wrote:can someone remind me where sine, cos and tan fit in?

That's trigonometry.. not quite as easy to get your head around, mostly because at A-level, you practically never use degrees any more, it's all in radians.

Mind, you can integrate and differentiate sine, cosine and tangent functions as well...

Diff:
sin --> cos --> -sin --> -cos --> sin
Int:
sin <-- cos <-- -sin <-- -cos <-- sin

It's in radians because then you get fun things like e^(i &#960;) = -1

I sure hope that the pi character shows up properly...

i was quite good at trig... back in the day

I finally took the time to take a really close look at that.
Wow, what an orgasmic mindf*ck!
Thanks for posting this geek-porn, Paul!

I´ll require some time to compile thoroughly. Right now the processed output mainly consist of:

geek porn is my speciality.

I think I did trigonometry at 12 or 13! (Memory may be hazy here...)

Wish I could remember it, there actually are times when I have a use for it...

lazarus corporation wrote:geek porn is my speciality.

i do teacher porn. although i'm sure i've phrased that completely wrong...

I remember my biology teacher from back in the day. Mmmmmmmmmmm...

Most definitely was not a good idea to have an attractive young lady in her early 20s teaching Chapter 8 of the textbook to a load of horny 14-15 year olds.

markfiend wrote:It's in radians because then you get fun things like e^(i &#960;) = -1

I sure hope that the pi character shows up properly...

I wonder if it'd be worth dropping degrees and just teaching radians in schools when trig is introduced... I mean, I can see the point in using the number 360, with all its factors, and trying to get kids to get their heads around using irrational numbers, but radians are basically what is used in everything involving using angles.

Possibly. I wouldn't mind all angles being in radians.

360 degrees to a circle has some long ancestry though; all the way back to the Babylonians. I think it would be even harder to shift than the Imperial -> Metric that people are still struggling with here.

Grandpa Simpson wrote:My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it.

360 degrees also works well with lines of latitude and longitude, so at least it's not an arbitrary scale that has no frame of reference elsewhere. Easier for kids to deal with too, because they can be taught integer multiplication and division on the back of it. 180 degrees in a triangle, 3 60s for an equilateral, a 90 for a right angle and so on. Try doing that with radians when you're 8 years old. The only time it gets awkward is when you get into negative angles.

Ah yes. Good point. (Although the radian scale isn't arbitrary: one radian is the angle whereby the length of the arc is the same as the length of the radius, hence 2&#960; radians in a circle.)

Another point; at the equator 1 nautical mile = 1 minute of arc.

(Interestingly at Mars's equator, 1 minute of arc ~= 1 km)

emilystrange wrote:i do teacher porn. although i'm sure i've phrased that completely wrong...

Does that mean you take naked photos of teachers or that you are the teacher and appear in dirty films?

Or do you teach a class in porn?

Whichever it is, I'm pretty sure you're going to hell for it.