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Douglas S. Oliver
Department of Anthropology
University of California
Riverside, CA 92521
e-mail: douglaso@citrus.ucr.edu
or: dsoliver@earthlink.net
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- To: u971168@DAIMI.AAU.DK
- Subject: Re: Calculating e
- From: "Douglas S. Oliver" <dsoliver@earthlink.net>
- Date: Tue, 03 Mar 1998 00:35:49 -0800
- References: <CALC-TI%1998030303141839@PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM> <34FBBDA6.2781@daimi.aau.dk>
I couldn't agree more. Let's keep in mind here that the US had the lowest achievement in math and science in the world along with South Africa, Lithuania, and a fourth. Denmark and Sweden were at the top, if I remember correctly. There was a severe drop after elementary school, where the US was among the top nations! The reward is learning itself; not everything you learn need be immediately useful. If you look at the history of mathematics, most discoveries remained useless for a very long period of time until someone got an idea of how to use the information. Children normally know how to count, but they still need to learn how to add. I say hurray for the nobel "e". Rene Kragh Pedersen wrote: > Ray Kremer wrote: > > > > It's not useful because we already KNOW what e is to at least as many > > decimal places as you're ever going to get with that program. I said it's > > educational because you kind of get to see the process of calculating e, > > but you're right. It's not educational, either. Several different > > methods of defining e have been in math books for decades, long before > > there were calculators. School teachers don't even bother much with > > where e comes from, at least not at the high school level, they just > > concentrate on using it. So, using the calculator to approximate something > > you already know is interesting, fun perhaps, but not educational or > > useful. Happy? > > No, not really. You argue that because no-one on high school level > bother to say much about it, but just use it instead, it is not > educational. > > At the university they teach you how to prove that there are an infinite > number of positive integers. I knew that there were already, but now I > know why. Can I use that information? No. But I _learned_ something new > about how mathematics work. > > It was educational. > > -- > Rene Kragh Pedersen > ------------------------------------------------------------------ > Apparently my clothes are defective. > - Dilbert. -- Douglas S. Oliver Department of Anthropology University of California Riverside, CA 92521 e-mail: douglaso@citrus.ucr.edu or: dsoliver@earthlink.net
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