Rust wgpu now has a
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@MaddieM4 @r @mcc @decay @amarioguy it's the schools to blame, and the policymakers who decided it should be that way. it was never your fault.
@ireneista @r @mcc @decay @amarioguy thank you, really. I did get there on my own in the end, but I wish so badly I could tell that to teenage Maddie. Among other sage advice that would have saved me a lot of heartache.
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@ireneista @r @mcc @decay @amarioguy thank you, really. I did get there on my own in the end, but I wish so badly I could tell that to teenage Maddie. Among other sage advice that would have saved me a lot of heartache.
@MaddieM4 @r @mcc @decay @amarioguy for sure.
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@ireneista @MaddieM4 @mcc @decay @amarioguy on this note, it's an absolute shame that "pre-calculus" in the USA K-12 "traditional" math pathway is such a poorly-implemented clusterfuck
for those not familiar, as far as i can tell, this was *supposed to be* a wrap-up of elementary algebra and *the bridge* into the "real math" mode of thinking (i.e. the "correct" blend of formalisms, beauty, discovery, abstractions, etc. that mathematicians actually use)
instead, it typically turns into a poorly-motivated grab-bag of topics that aren't clearly "calculus" but that they couldn't fit anywhere else
a bunch of the "i wish i knew the math needed to do X" i've seen where X is something computer+art-ish doesn't actually require much beyond this (okay, probably some extra discrete math bits because the USA curriculum just refuses to add any of that)
@r @ireneista @MaddieM4 @mcc @decay @amarioguy
yeah, i ended up having a lot of pre-calc students drop into tutoring hours in college, and i could see how it was stuff you needed to know for calculus (maybe they did a bit better job of that),
but a lot of students were just taking it as a sole math requirement, the last math class they'll ever take, either because they didn't place into calculus or didn't want to take calculus ... and it really was not a good fit for that purpose. i felt sorry for those students.
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@r @ireneista @MaddieM4 @mcc @decay @amarioguy
yeah, i ended up having a lot of pre-calc students drop into tutoring hours in college, and i could see how it was stuff you needed to know for calculus (maybe they did a bit better job of that),
but a lot of students were just taking it as a sole math requirement, the last math class they'll ever take, either because they didn't place into calculus or didn't want to take calculus ... and it really was not a good fit for that purpose. i felt sorry for those students.
@monoidmusician @ireneista @MaddieM4 @mcc @decay @amarioguy i... outright forgor that college-level precalculus even exists. that sounds like it'd be an *even bigger* design-by-committee too-many-competing-interests clusterfuck
bit of a self-dox, but somebody really should replace it with a "The Beauty and Joy of Mathematics"
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@amarioguy @MaddieM4 @ireneista @mcc @decay ... did i just accidentally stumble into a much bigger problem/rabbit-hole than i expected?
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@amarioguy @MaddieM4 @ireneista @mcc @decay ... did i just accidentally stumble into a much bigger problem/rabbit-hole than i expected?
@amarioguy @MaddieM4 @ireneista @mcc @decay istg *every* time the american traditional math pathway has a jump in abstractness and/or complexity, some portion of students get traumatized for life and give up on math forever
there's the well-known tropes of "fractions" ("pieces of a whole" and "ratios" --> division as a general operation), "negatives" (inverse operations), and "algebra" (symbols)
but i didn't realize this *continued*
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@monoidmusician @ireneista @MaddieM4 @mcc @decay @amarioguy i... outright forgor that college-level precalculus even exists. that sounds like it'd be an *even bigger* design-by-committee too-many-competing-interests clusterfuck
bit of a self-dox, but somebody really should replace it with a "The Beauty and Joy of Mathematics"
yeah, I could imagine it's like that at other places. I went to a small liberal arts college (Bard College), and professors were given a lot of latitude and trust to teach even core courses their way, I think, even if general requirements are agreed upon.
there are some interesting courses for non-majors. I can find “Mathematics and Politics” and “Games of Chance” listed. Lauren Rose focuses on games/puzzles, stuff like Rubiks cubes and Set and generalizations.
sometimes the courses for non-majors are one-offs. I think there was a more conceptual course taught one semester, focusing on the larger picture like what are proofs and why do we care. I don't know any details or how it did.
but I agree. The Beauty and Joy of Mathematics needs to be a standard course
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yeah, I could imagine it's like that at other places. I went to a small liberal arts college (Bard College), and professors were given a lot of latitude and trust to teach even core courses their way, I think, even if general requirements are agreed upon.
there are some interesting courses for non-majors. I can find “Mathematics and Politics” and “Games of Chance” listed. Lauren Rose focuses on games/puzzles, stuff like Rubiks cubes and Set and generalizations.
sometimes the courses for non-majors are one-offs. I think there was a more conceptual course taught one semester, focusing on the larger picture like what are proofs and why do we care. I don't know any details or how it did.
but I agree. The Beauty and Joy of Mathematics needs to be a standard course
@monoidmusician @ireneista @MaddieM4 oooh, those all sound like pretty fun ideas
but yeah, this ought to be gathered into something repeatable
i wonder if there's a particular reason why the US doesn't really like to introduce discrete mathematics? (is this part of the same cold war math push that gave us much of the rest?)
since that's a *major* feature of recreational mathematics, puzzles and games, *and computing*
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@monoidmusician @ireneista @MaddieM4 oooh, those all sound like pretty fun ideas
but yeah, this ought to be gathered into something repeatable
i wonder if there's a particular reason why the US doesn't really like to introduce discrete mathematics? (is this part of the same cold war math push that gave us much of the rest?)
since that's a *major* feature of recreational mathematics, puzzles and games, *and computing*
discrete math was taught in the CS department, by the professor who also taught Haskell lol. (he, uh, wasn't a great teacher. didn't really meet the students where they were at or check that they really understood. yay for perpetuating Haskell's elitist reputation...)
but i'm not sure, i don't know the history of why discrete math is so rare. it's not exactly rare in pure math research either, is it? but it probably gets less attention on its own, and its biggest success, graph theory, is seen as its own thing.
i made a language based on hereditarily finite sets, for if i ever feel the need to explain set theory again haha
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@ireneista @MaddieM4 @mcc @decay @amarioguy on this note, it's an absolute shame that "pre-calculus" in the USA K-12 "traditional" math pathway is such a poorly-implemented clusterfuck
for those not familiar, as far as i can tell, this was *supposed to be* a wrap-up of elementary algebra and *the bridge* into the "real math" mode of thinking (i.e. the "correct" blend of formalisms, beauty, discovery, abstractions, etc. that mathematicians actually use)
instead, it typically turns into a poorly-motivated grab-bag of topics that aren't clearly "calculus" but that they couldn't fit anywhere else
a bunch of the "i wish i knew the math needed to do X" i've seen where X is something computer+art-ish doesn't actually require much beyond this (okay, probably some extra discrete math bits because the USA curriculum just refuses to add any of that)
@r i thought it's like algebra 3 -
@r i thought it's like algebra 3
@nyanpasu64 it is, except that the US split of "algebra 1" and "algebra 2" is itself a weird americanism and arguably not that well-motivated either
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@nyanpasu64 it is, except that the US split of "algebra 1" and "algebra 2" is itself a weird americanism and arguably not that well-motivated either
@r what alternative organization/progression of topics would make more sense to you? -
@r what alternative organization/progression of topics would make more sense to you?
@nyanpasu64 i mean, i'm not a policymaker, so i can just make up whatever i want, right?
* push basic single-variable equations throughout the integrated pre-middle-school curriculum. use empty boxes or something if "x" looks too scary (e.g. the UK does this)
* put all of elementary algebra involving polynomials, up to the fundamental theorem of algebra into just a single "algebra"
* make sure "euclidean geometry" is *actually* doing proofs and formalisms and the "real math" way of thinking. maybe throw some more discrete math ideas into here too, and spend less time on specific well-known euclidean geometry theorems (i certainly don't remember many of them)
* make trigonometry and all the haphazardly scattered bits of analytic geometry be its own actual thing. maybe even combine it with drafting (very oldschool), CAD, and/or gamedev
* "just" shove pre-calculus into either algebra or calculus
* do Something
️ more coherent with statistics (i'm not very experienced here, "probability and random processes" is somehow totally-different-yet-the-same in a way that doesn't actually transfer over)* maybe offer linear algebra for the tryhards
* Somehow
️ fit in a "how to _actually_ use computers (mostly for math)" thing? (spreadsheets, computer algebra systems, UI automation?, the rest of the "the difference in gen Z computer literacy is whether they had to install minecraft mods before the modern launchers" computer skills) -
@nyanpasu64 i mean, i'm not a policymaker, so i can just make up whatever i want, right?
* push basic single-variable equations throughout the integrated pre-middle-school curriculum. use empty boxes or something if "x" looks too scary (e.g. the UK does this)
* put all of elementary algebra involving polynomials, up to the fundamental theorem of algebra into just a single "algebra"
* make sure "euclidean geometry" is *actually* doing proofs and formalisms and the "real math" way of thinking. maybe throw some more discrete math ideas into here too, and spend less time on specific well-known euclidean geometry theorems (i certainly don't remember many of them)
* make trigonometry and all the haphazardly scattered bits of analytic geometry be its own actual thing. maybe even combine it with drafting (very oldschool), CAD, and/or gamedev
* "just" shove pre-calculus into either algebra or calculus
* do Something
️ more coherent with statistics (i'm not very experienced here, "probability and random processes" is somehow totally-different-yet-the-same in a way that doesn't actually transfer over)* maybe offer linear algebra for the tryhards
* Somehow
️ fit in a "how to _actually_ use computers (mostly for math)" thing? (spreadsheets, computer algebra systems, UI automation?, the rest of the "the difference in gen Z computer literacy is whether they had to install minecraft mods before the modern launchers" computer skills)@r ~~trigonometry is computational geometry~~ it's not completely wrong i think -
Anyway, I spent the last week writing documentation for Redox. The Redox project seems to be happy for my documentation patches. One thimble full of water, out of the sinking boat.
(Clarification on degree to which Servo relies on wgpu. I may update this post later once I've read more.)
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This thread is probably meandering and maybe solipsistic. My point is this: My weird background means I can look at this staircase full of missing stairs, identify one step, and go, "I can fix that". But I don't know if there's enough of me to fix multiple steps. I haven't decided what to do from here. Pick a step and fix it anyway? Pick a "fun" project, like the GPU [which face it, even if I finished it chances are not high more than 3 people would ever use it]? Give up and learn electric bass?
@mcc Music is unironically a great hobby for someone in your position
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@r ~~trigonometry is computational geometry~~ it's not completely wrong i think
@nyanpasu64 ehhhh not really?
i'm not sure why trigonometry gets _such_ a strong emphasis in the US either? or why it's done in such a toil-filled way (protip, instead of doing so many exercises with totally *useless* identities, just do them all in euler complex-exponential form?)
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@nyanpasu64 ehhhh not really?
i'm not sure why trigonometry gets _such_ a strong emphasis in the US either? or why it's done in such a toil-filled way (protip, instead of doing so many exercises with totally *useless* identities, just do them all in euler complex-exponential form?)
@nyanpasu64 all of the "but trigonometry has so many practical applications!" scenarios would be covered so much better if the US actually did a principled "analytic geometry" rather than spreading these ideas into all sorts of random places
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@nyanpasu64 ehhhh not really?
i'm not sure why trigonometry gets _such_ a strong emphasis in the US either? or why it's done in such a toil-filled way (protip, instead of doing so many exercises with totally *useless* identities, just do them all in euler complex-exponential form?)
@r complex exponentials yum
iirc they're a lot more obvious than memorized identities (largely went in one ear and out the other)... but i tried doing that in college once, messed up cancelling the duplicated terms, and confused myself -
@nyanpasu64 all of the "but trigonometry has so many practical applications!" scenarios would be covered so much better if the US actually did a principled "analytic geometry" rather than spreading these ideas into all sorts of random places
@r TIL analytic geometry
probably the concept i meant by "computational"
