Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2004-05-16 09:37 pm
azurelunatic) wrote2004-05-16 09:37 pm
Random notes from Erbe's class back in 2001
Me:
All this rigamarole is to trick the computer into doing substitution/elimination, which you do easily.
Her:
So what relevance is it to know this incomprehensible garbage?
Me:
If you are programming a computer to do it -- he's showing how the computer does it.
Her:
If the computer does it, why do we need to know? And I'm saying too -- I have no clue how I'd be able to explain the procedure to anyone, let alone a computer.
Me:
Programmers work w/ it and love it. He hates it.
Me:
You don't ever have to deal with this crap unless you are dealing with a programmer.
Her:
Programmers make more sense than this.
Me:
He's a teacher.
Me:
In short, it's magic and he learned the words by rote and he's mispronouncing half of them and the gods have been pleased to grant his plea anyway.
[Her:
What's rote?]
Me:
Rote learning = examples -- multiplication tables, certain definitions, anything you memorize and rattle off and then they ask "What the hell did you say?" and they rattle off the same thing again.
6x6 = 36
6x5 = 30
5x6 = 30
You know it, but it's just stored in your head and you have no real clue what it means.
All this rigamarole is to trick the computer into doing substitution/elimination, which you do easily.
Her:
So what relevance is it to know this incomprehensible garbage?
Me:
If you are programming a computer to do it -- he's showing how the computer does it.
Her:
If the computer does it, why do we need to know? And I'm saying too -- I have no clue how I'd be able to explain the procedure to anyone, let alone a computer.
Me:
Programmers work w/ it and love it. He hates it.
Me:
You don't ever have to deal with this crap unless you are dealing with a programmer.
Her:
Programmers make more sense than this.
Me:
He's a teacher.
Me:
In short, it's magic and he learned the words by rote and he's mispronouncing half of them and the gods have been pleased to grant his plea anyway.
[Her:
What's rote?]
Me:
Rote learning = examples -- multiplication tables, certain definitions, anything you memorize and rattle off and then they ask "What the hell did you say?" and they rattle off the same thing again.
6x6 = 36
6x5 = 30
5x6 = 30
You know it, but it's just stored in your head and you have no real clue what it means.
no subject
no subject
This is someone who'd been intimidated by math all her life, and was just now beginning to think that she might be able to do it and that she wasn't a complete hopeless loss at it as she'd been told by what seemed to have been every teacher from elementary school on up.
It was this teacher's class where I asked a question about simple interest -- if the period for the simple interest is not given in the exercise, are we to assume that the period is one year? -- and the teacher interrupted me halfway through, and started answering a completely different question. We spent five minutes arguing back and forth, with no communication established, and then I gave up, stood and announced that the class sucked, and marched out. After getting my question answered in 30 seconds by another instructor, I marched up to the Dean's office and shared, admitting that I might have been a bit hot-headed in my response.
I was not reprimanded, other than asked to please try and think things through before saying them. The instructor took the next term off.
/*Were you learing the low-level stuff in this lecture?*/
Re: /*Were you learing the low-level stuff in this lecture?*/