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Monday, March 25, 2019

" Why the Professor Can't Teach " by Morris Kline


How Struggling Through Calculus Taught This UMass Professor To Push Her Limits

 
" McCusker agreed to stick with the class. To improve her grades and understanding of the material, McCusker started to go to after-school practice sessions with other calculus students. For two hours every day, calculus became her after-school activity that year."

        I read that Calculus was a bit of a LIMITING challenge even for popular science writer genius Isaac Asimov . But years ago I came across a book that explained how difficulty in advanced math learning could be the professor's fault : " Why the Professor Can't Teach " by Morris Kline .

 Kline made the point that teaching of math in school ( beginning with basic Algebra ) must be connected with the real , sensuous world of physics. All those abstruse abstractions find application in practical Science. But the average math student would hardly guess this.

              Basic Calculus is needed to explain even Newtonian motion problems involving the concept of ACCELERATION and instantaneous rates of change ( radioactive decay, exponential growth, Newton's law of cooling .

         Studying HARD is not as effective as studying SMART- making connections with the real, sensuous world.

          Now just reflect on this amazing fact : " The null set is a subset of all sets ". With that insight you can conquer the world.
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