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David 
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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I've been enrolled in three: Bachelor of Arts (ANU), Bachelor of Journalism (Monash) and Associate Degree of Professional Writing and Editing (RMIT). The latter is the only one I graduated from (I spent one and two years on the first two respectively).
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"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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Pies4shaw 
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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| David wrote: | Why would you have to take a maths unit in order to graduate from a university? I can understand someone in, say, an engineering degree potentially needing to take a remedial unit if their high school maths isn't up to scratch, but obviously someone studying history or journalism isn't going to need to do that. I'm more bewildered that that was ever a requirement than that they're walking away from it now.
Mandatory 'diversity' courses sound ridiculous, but I'd have to get some sense of what they actually entail before jumping on the outrage bandwagon. If it's a subject like geography, culture or some such, then maybe that's fine – though I still don't see why such courses should be mandatory for people in unrelated disciplines. |
My wife is a world-renowned expert in her field. She has published more books and articles in her field than most of us have had hot dinners. She can neither count nor spell unassisted but - funnily enough - that doesn't seem to stop people mistaking her for an intelligent, indeed brilliant, person. Over the years we've shared a little black humour about how the rules about maths (introduced after she commenced her undergraduate studies, in a pathetically-misguided attempt to "keep up standards") would have prevented her qualifying to do an Arts degree, let alone graduate in two unrelated faculties with first class honours, get a PhD, publish widely and advise governments.
Personally (and I've probably said this before on here), I think people aren't properly human unles they can get through Liszt's Gnomereigen without making a mistake - let's implement that rule and see how many of us qualify. Really, maths is something most of you won't ever really need to use - but you never know when you might be called upon to play a Chopin Ballade to prove your basic humanity. Got to keep up standards. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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^She sounds like an excellent person and I am sure she is. In addition to her many achievements she apparently forms a basis for broad public policy in education. You are fortunate indeed to be married to such a principle. I'm sure you're right that mathematics is only as important in intellectual and economic life as obscure piano pieces. if we had realised earlier how irrelevant STEM subjects are, we might have led the world in pontification as well as in coal and rocks by now.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: the edge of the deep green sea
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Point is, maths is relevant to fields of work that maths is relevant to and not relevant to fields to which it isn't. And I dare say there are more than a few job descriptions in the latter category.
Otherwise, is it a good general life skill? For sure. That's what high school is for.
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"Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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Yes, that is the point. I suppose I could add that maths is entirely irrelevant to my present occupation. I happen to be good at maths but, happily, I'm not so smug about it that I think that other people who can cross-examine well should be prevented from doing so because their differential calculus is poor.
How stupid would we have to be as a society to exclude clever people from doing the work for which they're best suited merely on the basis that they don't have the technical required to do some other work? |
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stui magpie 
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| Pies4shaw wrote: | Yes, that is the point. I suppose I could add that maths is entirely irrelevant to my present occupation. I happen to be good at maths but, happily, I'm not so smug about it that I think that other people who can cross-examine well should be prevented from doing so because their differential calculus is poor.
How stupid would we have to be as a society to exclude clever people from doing the work for which they're best suited merely on the basis that they don't have the technical required to do some other work? |
My highest formal qual is yr 12 and I'm currently acting head of HR. Most of the PA's are more highly qualified.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| David wrote: | Point is, maths is relevant to fields of work that maths is relevant to and not relevant to fields to which it isn't. And I dare say there are more than a few job descriptions in the latter category.
Otherwise, is it a good general life skill? For sure. That's what high school is for. |
As I said above I'd consider it a positive educational policy if people were taught mathematics competently to school leaving level, and we could then assume that at tertiary level wherever it is necessary. Unfortunately our unruly public schools are not an easy place for people to learn rigorous and mentally challenging things (though mathematics is, in truth, easier to teach than English) so the universities have to pick up the slack, as they frequently do in English as well.
If we are to treat universities as trade schools then clearly there are a few tertiary subjects where maths is not relevant - music might be one - literature, perhaps. And advanced mathematics, as I said above, is not really the issue here. Tertiary courses where maths is irrelevant, however, are relatively few and these could be justified by exception.
The reason for keeping pressure for some mathematics in most degrees is that most people are more competent in most tertiary fields if they have sound mathematical skills. There will of course be laudable exceptions like P4Ss wife, but I suspect she is probably not typical. Without the positive pressure for graduates in most disciplines to have a reasonable grasp of mathematics, our universities will continue to turn out the semi-literate and largely innumerate young people who routinely find it hard to find work in the modern economy, and our economy will continue to fall down against the powerhouse economies of Asia.
In that regard, of course, a far, far greater issue in my view is the fact that we lag so terribly behind the Asian economies of the future in the number of STEM graduates we produce, and this is one factor behind our relative economic decline and poor innovation. In truth, I would be happy to leave the Sociology graduates alone if there were far fewer of them. But since we do educate large numbers of people in narrative-weaving and attitudinising, (often because we failed them earlier in their education, so they don't have enough maths for more practical subjects) it would be a good idea to ensure that they learnt something rigorous along the way.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007
Location: Between London and Melbourne
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| stui magpie wrote: | | Pies4shaw wrote: | Yes, that is the point. I suppose I could add that maths is entirely irrelevant to my present occupation. I happen to be good at maths but, happily, I'm not so smug about it that I think that other people who can cross-examine well should be prevented from doing so because their differential calculus is poor.
How stupid would we have to be as a society to exclude clever people from doing the work for which they're best suited merely on the basis that they don't have the technical required to do some other work? |
My highest formal qual is yr 12 and I'm currently acting head of HR. Most of the PA's are more highly qualified. |
Yes but you probably learned more by year 12 than most of today's Nintendo generation.
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Two more flags before I die! |
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think positive
Side By Side
Joined: 30 Jun 2005
Location: somewhere
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Gees people! Dumb it down!
"What we’re finding is a lot of students need remediation in math. They’re not at a high school level.”
I discovered just a few years ago that kids are getting to high school without knowing their times tables. Do you all remember (maybe not baby Jezza) chanting them at the start of every school day? I can still rattle off the answer to any times table quiz like greased lightning, don't even think about it. It's a bloody big problem, the education system is failing miserably in the most basic things. It's not just my kid. The kid working the til at Kmart can't take $5.20 from $20 without a machine. Texting and the like are truly killing spelling, with a lot of help from spellcheck, which seems to mangle everything!
It's not about knowing calculus or algebra, it's basics and it's bloody scary.
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You cant fix stupid, turns out you cant quarantine it either! |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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OK, here's a basic maths question in a practical sense.
You get a new job, your employment offer quotes a total remuneration figure rather than a salary.
the TR figure is $100,000pa.
You ask, and are told the TR is your salary plus the compulsory super component, which is 9.5% of salary.
So your salary plus 9.5% of your salary equals $100,000.
How do you calculate the salary?
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
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| By going and getting a new job with a proper salary? |
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What'sinaname
Joined: 29 May 2010
Location: Living rent free
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| stui magpie wrote: | OK, here's a basic maths question in a practical sense.
You get a new job, your employment offer quotes a total remuneration figure rather than a salary.
the TR figure is $100,000pa.
You ask, and are told the TR is your salary plus the compulsory super component, which is 9.5% of salary.
So your salary plus 9.5% of your salary equals $100,000.
How do you calculate the salary? |
Ask HR as they should give you the breakdown, or
100,000 / (1.095)
so you'll earn 91,324pa and get 9.5% super $8,676 |
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Jezza 
2023 PREMIERS!
Joined: 06 Sep 2010
Location: Ponsford End
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| think positive wrote: | | I discovered just a few years ago that kids are getting to high school without knowing their times tables. Do you all remember (maybe not baby Jezza) chanting them at the start of every school day? |
I'm not that young! 
I remember learning my times tables in second and third grade (2002/2003) from 1 to 12 and I was able to understand the patterns and trends very quickly so I have no issues answering a multiplication question in my head within a few seconds.
Whether they still teach this to primary school kids these days is something I'm not sure about, but I've always assumed they continue to teach it.
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| 1902 | 1903 | 1910 | 1917 | 1919 | 1927 | 1928 | 1929 | 1930 | 1935 | 1936 | 1953 | 1958 | 1990 | 2010 | 2023 | |
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stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005
Location: In flagrante delicto
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| What'sinaname wrote: | | stui magpie wrote: | OK, here's a basic maths question in a practical sense.
You get a new job, your employment offer quotes a total remuneration figure rather than a salary.
the TR figure is $100,000pa.
You ask, and are told the TR is your salary plus the compulsory super component, which is 9.5% of salary.
So your salary plus 9.5% of your salary equals $100,000.
How do you calculate the salary? |
Ask HR as they should give you the breakdown, or
100,000 / (1.095)
so you'll earn 91,324pa and get 9.5% super $8,676 |
Keerect and you may (or not) be surprised at how few people can figure that out.
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Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
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HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
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| They are not available right now, would you like to wait? |
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