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  1. #1
    YOU ARE SEARED
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    70% of kids don't understand the equals sign

    COLLEGE STATION, Aug. 10, 2010 — Taken very literally, not all students are created equal—especially in their math learning skills, say Texas A&M University researchers who have found that not fully understanding the “equal sign” in a math problem could be a key to why U.S. students underperform their peers from other countries in math.

    “About 70 percent of middle grades students in the United States exhibit misconceptions, but nearly none of the international students in Korea and China have a misunderstanding about the equal sign, and Turkish students exhibited far less incidence of the misconception than the U.S. students,” note Robert M. Capraro and Mary Capraro of the Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture at Texas A&M.

    They have been trying to evaluate the success of math education through students’ interpretation of the equal sign. They have published several articles on this topic, with the most recent one published in the February 2010 issue of the journal Psychological Reports.

    Students who exhibit the correct understanding of the equal sign show the greatest achievement in mathematics and persist in fields that require mathematics proficiency like engineering, according to their research.

    “The equal sign is pervasive and fundamentally linked to mathematics from kindergarten through upper-level calculus,” Robert M. Capraro says. “The idea of symbols that convey relative meaning, such as the equal sign and “less than” and “greater than” signs, is complex and they serve as a precursor to ideas of variables, which also require the same level of abstract thinking.”

    The problem is students memorize procedures without fully understanding the mathematics, he notes.

    “Students who have learned to memorize symbols and who have a limited understanding of the equal sign will tend to solve problems such as 4+3+2=( )+2 by adding the numbers on the left, and placing it in the parentheses, then add those terms and create another equal sign with the new answer,” he explains. “So the work would look like 4+3+2=(9)+2=11.

    “This response has been called a running equal sign—similar to how a calculator might work when the numbers and equal sign are entered as they appear in the sentence,” he explains. “However, this understanding is incorrect. The correct solution makes both sides equal. So the understanding should be 4+3+2=(7)+2. Now both sides of the equal sign equal 9.”

    One cause of the problem might be the textbooks, the research shows.

    The Texas A&M researchers examined textbooks in China and the United States and found “Chinese textbooks provided the best examples for students and that even the best U.S. textbooks, those sponsored by the National Science Foundation, were lacking relational examples about the equal sign.”

    Parents and teachers can help the students. The two researchers suggest using mathematics manipulatives and encourage teachers “to read professional journals, become informed about the problem and modify their instruction.”


    http://tamunews.tamu.edu/2010/08/10/...ign-not-equal/
    Really? REALLY?

    Do they not do fraction conversion in grade school anymore? I would think most kids would pick up on it at that point...I just can't figure how someone would look at that example equation and come to the conclusion that they have to keep solving.

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  3. #3
    Ridill
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    After the posts I've read today? Not surprised in the least.

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    I blame shitty maths teacher who barely studied mathematics in the first place. Most of them don't teach mathematics properly, they teach some sort of step by step method to reach a solution.

    For too many students, the "=" numbers isnt an egality, it's a computing decive that will calculate everything you wrote before. It's not so bad for number only, but good fucking luck if it involves lot of variable.

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    Ridill
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    The way I drag equations and variables through problems used to piss off a lot of my teachers when I was younger since I'd pretty much just link everything together from one step to the next with a series of "--->" lol. Wouldn't pop an = into the problem until I was actually ready to SOLVE the equation.

  6. #6
    Vuitton
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    n=x

    mind blown.

  7. #7
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    I read a statistic a while ago that said like 50%(I'm not too sure of the exact percentage now) of people don't know the sun is a star. I even did a little test with a friend, our percentage was a little lower, but for still...

  8. #8
    Tyven's Xbax Fren
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kaylia View Post
    I blame shitty maths teacher who barely studied mathematics in the first place. Most of them don't teach mathematics properly, they teach some sort of step by step method to reach a solution.
    .
    statements like this only serve to give teachers a bad reputation.


    teachers can only teach what the curriculum is...even if the curriculum is shitty (and around here they taught math in a really fucked up manner for about 8 or so years, bad enough where kids who went to college were failing all math courses - they recently changed it back to 'the old math')

  9. #9
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    Honestly doesn't surprise me. Much of elementary math is done using the vertical method, with no equals sign. Honestly though, with how many symbols mean the same thing in upper level mathematics or shortcutted to mean the same thing, IE Therefore ∴ and = are often used with calculus interchangeably in the classroom, when really they aren't.

  10. #10

    Teachers are all horrible these days sans a few. Back in high school in 10th grade I think it was, I went through switching math classes every semester to try and find a decent one. I had a shitty one in 9th grade that I did horribly in (70's), although she got pregnant around the end of the year, so I was glad she would be gone at least...or so I thought.

    Come 10th grade math, first semester I think I got a 55 in that class. Switched teachers to some cool as fuck guy, got a 96. Everything he said just made sense to me and he actually made the class enjoyable. Found out he was only a temp for my 9th grade preggo skank teacher, who I had for the third and fourth semester, and went back to the 70's range.

    tl;dr Good teachers are few and far between these days. They need to get rid of "seniority" in schools when they're determining who to fire.

  11. #11
    The Mizzle Fizzle of Nikkei's Haremizzle

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    Quote Originally Posted by OWS_Tonx View Post
    I read a statistic a while ago that said like 50%(I'm not too sure of the exact percentage now) of people don't know the sun is a star. I even did a little test with a friend, our percentage was a little lower, but for still...
    That is actually true. I always refer to the Sun as "our star" and I get the "whaaa?" look 9/10. Shit makes me sad.

  12. #12

    Quote Originally Posted by Acturus View Post
    =.=
    All they see is ?.?

  13. #13

    Quote Originally Posted by SaviorSelf View Post
    Teachers are all horrible these days sans a few. Back in high school in 10th grade I think it was, I went through switching math classes every semester to try and find a decent one. I had a shitty one in 9th grade that I did horribly in (70's), although she got pregnant around the end of the year, so I was glad she would be gone at least...or so I thought.

    Come 10th grade math, first semester I think I got a 55 in that class. Switched teachers to some cool as fuck guy, got a 96. Everything he said just made sense to me and he actually made the class enjoyable. Found out he was only a temp for my 9th grade preggo skank teacher, who I had for the third and fourth semester, and went back to the 70's range.

    tl;dr Good teachers are few and far between these days. They need to get rid of "seniority" in schools when they're determining who to fire.
    100% on this. Some teachers explain things in ways that just make it easy. I've never had much problems in math, was always good at it, but in other subjects that was always the difference between a C and an A.

  14. #14

    Man, that would be like a friendship ending moment if anyone I ever knew didn't know the sun was a star.

    Big problem I've personally seen and hear is that so many teachers don't actually...TEACH. They just say shit, talk, etc...without really teaching it to kids. Hell, this goes all the way up to college even, a lot of professors I've known were straight up awful. Sure they knew a lot about their subject, but they couldn't teach worth a shit. Having knowledge doesn't necessarily make you a good teacher, which is a notion that doesn't seem to be accepted by a number of learning institutions.

  15. #15
    Tyven's Xbax Fren
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zoolander View Post
    Man, that would be like a friendship ending moment if anyone I ever knew didn't know the sun was a star.

    Big problem I've personally seen and hear is that so many teachers don't actually...TEACH. They just say shit, talk, etc...without really teaching it to kids. Hell, this goes all the way up to college even, a lot of professors I've known were straight up awful. Sure they knew a lot about their subject, but they couldn't teach worth a shit. Having knowledge doesn't necessarily make you a good teacher, which is a notion that doesn't seem to be accepted by a number of learning institutions.
    And conversely, being a good teacher and having to follow very poor curriculum is a fact that is ignored more often than not.






    But yes, kids should know what a fucking equals sign is. Does not surprise me one bit, unfortunately. When I was in high school, it was not surprising in my US History class that most kids couldn't name the states on a map.

  16. #16

    When kids don't know what an equal sign is, it's time they learn to ask the one question that they will be using for the rest of their lives:

    "Do you want fries with that?"

  17. #17
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  18. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by Diamicles View Post
    Does not surprise me one bit, unfortunately. When I was in high school, it was not surprising in my US History class that most kids couldn't name the states on a map.
    I don't think memorizing where states exact location is equals the retardedness of not understanding what an equal sign means. Shit, I still get some of the square ones mixed up, lol, maybe just cause I live on the west coast so I don't really care to remember that shit.

  19. #19
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    You are going to deal with poor teachers, professors, curriculum what have you at least at one point, likely many in any educational process. The responsibility for ensuring an education is ultimately the parents and/or the students, depending on where they are in the process: k-12 or secondary education. I had plenty of times when I blamed my lack of understanding or poor performance on a professor, looking back on it, had I really worked on it and developed a strict habit of teaching myself, I would have achieved more.

    Students not understanding something as universal as an equals sign is not entirely the fault of the school system.

    Sun = A Star

    mymindisfulloffuck.png

  20. #20

    Quote Originally Posted by Diamicles View Post
    statements like this only serve to give teachers a bad reputation.


    teachers can only teach what the curriculum is...even if the curriculum is shitty (and around here they taught math in a really fucked up manner for about 8 or so years, bad enough where kids who went to college were failing all math courses - they recently changed it back to 'the old math')

    ^ This

    Don't blame the teachers, sure there are some horrible teachers but what they actually teach you is written up from them and they can not deviate from it at all or face being sacked from the job. I substitute teach off and on and it's just fucking horrible in grades K-12th. Things I teach kids in 10th grade I was learning in 5th back when I was in school.

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