Thursday, June 18, 2009 . 9:44 AM

math fail!

thanks to tima, i've been thinking (again) about and re-evaluating the education I've been getting here in the United States for the past 3 years. What have I learnt? Did my undergrad provide me with the necessary foundation and adequate grounding for graduate school, and for pursuing a career in science. I need more time to ruminate over this while I work on my paper... at the meantime, i've been watching trashy (but entertaining) youtube videos, like the one you will see below, and the dvd 2 million minutes, a documentary which compares the various education systems in America, China and India. The video below (watch it!) comes across unsurprising to me, because, really (and I'm embarrassed to even say this on a public blog), I doubt my math ability after being exposed to an American education system. It's not because I haven't been taking math classes. Yes, I did take 1 semester of calculus (and that was in my freshman year) and I was, back then, astonished at the things the professor have taught us in a 2nd semester calculus class. Totally high school stuff, in India, China and Singapore, included. The academic standards of college physics and math (especially) is pathetic... to say the least. I'm sure those under the asian education system can attest to that if they sat through any college level calc class. Some of those stuff are taught as early as 7th or 8th grade in Indian and Chinese schools. When I took the SATs 5 years ago, I was confident I could do well in the Quantitative section of the test. Just last week, before I took my GREs, I was scared. Scared of the quantitative section... because I felt that my math standard has stagnated at where it was when I was in JC at the very best, or might have deteriorated to that of a high-school kid here. Just a couple of months back, a student from my pchem class was asked to give an identity for the squares of sines and cosines. He couldn't answer. I bet my JC teacher would have skinned me alive if I ever forget such (as Tima would say) a "basic" trigonometric identity. I guess, at least for the math education here, students are not expected to remember everything (or to memorize formulas at the back of their hand), but just to "know that such formulae/methods exist". My pchem classmate, not only did not know how to put that identity into use, but also, I highly doubt, he hadn't an inkling that such trigonometric identities exist. I was comforted, in a very perversed sense then, that my sec and JC education equipped me with strong foundations in math and science. I wondered if I'd remember those identities if I had been taught the way math was taught here in the US. Still, I remain skeptical about my quantitative abilities.... but not the extent that $0.002 = 0.002 cents. Enjoy!



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