[ExI] probability

[William Flynn Wallace]

All of which is to say that what is being taught is unavailable to the
average student, who is very unlikely to take precalc.  I still vote for a
class in, say 11th grade, which teaches everyday probability and everyday
finance.  Most people are unaware of just how powerful compound interest
is.  Oh well.  English is taught every year starting about the 7th grade,
isn't it?  Most of it is useless to the average student, since grammar
takes a back seat to literature.  Result;  college students don't know
grammar.  Some people in our group are not good at it.

Biggest problem out there:  nobody asked me!   bill w

On Sat, Dec 18, 2021 at 11:51 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

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> *…*> *On Behalf Of *William Flynn Wallace via extropy-chat
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] probability
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> >…Spike - our college offered a statistics course in the Math dept. in
> addition to the one I taught.  Talking with my friend who taught it, it was
> all about equations and derivations and nothing at all about how to use or
> misuse statistics.  Which he did not know anyway…
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> Ja, I marvel at how practical is the high school statistics course.  If
> you look at all the equations in introduction to statistics, there aren’t
> that many of them and none of them are particularly complicated really.
> Note this assumes the non-calculus non-linear algebra based course, the
> first one taken by engineers, business majors and such.  The calculus based
> statistics course is often an upper division, and the linear-algebra based
> stats would often be graduate level.
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> >…My point:  is Isaac getting the math end and the everyday use of
> probability in real situations?
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> Ja, and it includes combinatorics now a lot more than it did in the olden
> days, which is the most common real world application setting.  Details
> cheerfully available.
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> >…and what grade is he in now
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> 10th.
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> >…And do you know if all schools in the district teach it?
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> I do not.
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>  >…Prerequisites?
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> Pre-calculus.  It is considered an alternate path to the calculus, and has
> gained popularity over the decades.
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> >…I suspect his course will be too hard for most students and so they
> miss the practical applications of probability.  bill w
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> Ja, entirely possible.  Fun aside for those into competition math: the old
> tests for American Math Competition are available online, so a prole can
> compare modern tests to ones given 60 years ago.  The most striking
> difference is that now nearly every competition includes a combinatorics
> problem or two, and sometimes three on the same test.  If a prole does not
> know how to do those, she will suck.  I am a poster-child example of that
> sad condition: I haven’t mastered the skill-set, but my son did, so now
> when we play a match he wins every time.
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> spike
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