Lament 3: Cry Hard With A Vengeance

[timmy]

Is this proper parenting y/n?



I am definitely getting some use out of that suit

[Infinity Biscuit]

♪ You should get a medal or be even made a knight ♫

[timmy]

The better part?

His older sister was mortified beyond belief that I would come to school in costume and asked to be dropped at the other gate.

[Questor]

You have achieved true greatness as a father, but you have not achieved legendary status until your very presence inspires the other children to cheers and your own to humiliation.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

This is because you're majoring in Math right? They aren't going to make someone learn this if they want to teach say, History or Government or something like that?

Math education is not the same as a flat out mathematics degree. The program at my school has a huge portion of the degree devoted to education. It's about half and half, really, between math and education. But I am a firm believer that if I'm not using this material in the classroom, I'm wasting stress, time, and money.

Edit: I will say that while this is hard as hell to me, it's still fun.

The most important part of High School Geometry is learning how to do proofs. Not memorizing. Understanding. Learning how to construct a logical argument, how to see an end statement and figure out how to support it and prove it with the given tools, is vitally important for logical thinking. The proofs aren't about SAS so much as they are about achieving a mindset that allows you to understand the logical consequences of statements (mathematical and eventually otherwise) and to use those consequences to build an argument or proof.

You need to memorize his definitions and postulates, yes, but maybe not his proofs. Most of the early proofs build on the previous proofs like lego bricks, and thus are each 'based' on applying a single logical concept. I find that it helps to look at his props and think "what theorem or idea did this fall out of?" When in doubt, try a proof by contradiction.

Hilbert's Axioms (and Playfair's Axiom in particular) are what you get when modern mathematicians take a crack at reforming Euclidean Geometry. Perhaps they might help put his work into a more modern paradigm.




On a related note, a deranged psychologist kidnapped an engineer, a physicist and a mathematician and locked them each in a separate cell with only a cot and several cans of beans. After a week, he checked up on them.
The engineer had used the bolts on the edge of his cot to cut open his cans. He was slightly malnourished, but resting comfortably.
The physicist had beaten the cans against the cot until they broke open, smashing his cot in the process. He was malnourished and poorly rested.
The mathematician''s corpse was on his cot. He had written on the wall, "Theorem: If I don't eat these beans, I'll die. Proof: Assume the opposite and arrive at a contradiction."

[thejester]

timmy

[Agent Bert Macklin]

Bob: I don't remember doing proofs in Geometry while I was in high school. But the common core standards say that it's c rrently being taught, so the class is useful.

http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Conte ... troduction

[timmy]

[Questor]

Bob: I don't remember doing proofs in Geometry while I was in high school. But the common core standards say that it's c rrently being taught, so the class is useful.

http://www.corestandards.org/Math/Conte ... troduction

Out here in CA, at least at the honors level, we had to. I seem to remember doing them in trig, too, but I had the same teacher both years, so they blend together a bit,

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Yeah, kids should at least prove some of the basics in Trig or they might end up really stuck later if they forget one little formula. Understanding where all the identities come from and why the Pythagorean Theorem is the cornerstone of Trig can really help a student fill in any gaps or brain burps.

And I had to do proofs when I took Geometry in high school.

Most of the complaints I hear from Geometry students are about the proofs, and I find it somewhat helpful to explain to the students why we teach them proofs and math in general when they will have calculators if they ever need to do math again. Besides tradition, I mean.

[Questor]

I use the concepts and mental tools I learned doing proofs just about every day. Yay for programming and having to write good requirements and documentation.

[Agent Bert Macklin]

After studying a bit for the test, I am doing better with the proofs. I do like the structure Euclid has to his proofs and how they build off one another. I just wish the language wasn't so horrible.

[Oxymoron]

Well, they were originally written in ancient greek, so that must play a role, I suppose.

[Agent Bert Macklin]

Well, they were originally written in ancient greek, so that must play a role, I suppose.

Yeah. Proposition 7 is crazy. It took us a while to decipher it in class.

"Given two straight lines constructed on a straight line (from its extremities) and meeting in a point, there cannot be constructed on the same straight line (from its extremities), and on the same side of it, two other straight lines meeting in another point and equal to the former two respectively, namely each to that which has the same extremity with it."

[Big Orangutan]

I'm getting round to doing a Math test in the next few months and I'm getting butterflies in my tummies. Also I'm seriously contemplating going into some kind of art college.

[evilsoup]

aww mang
so I'm doing a sort of collaborative writing thing with my cousin, who is visiting for the week. I write a bit, then he writes a bit, and so on (hey oxy we're using one of the images from your thread as a prompt, thanks for that)
and it's pretty interesting, from a psychological perspective. I started writing about a bunch of kids playing hide and seek, and one character I introduced was basically characterised as 'is good at finding people'
but since it's a little girl, he of course undermined that as soon as he had a chance & shifted things to the boy character, ho ho ho. And then he put in a nine-year timeskip that removed her from the story altogether
but that's OK, because now I get to make the suddenly-legal main protagonist be in a gay relationship with the side character my cousin has introduced. Just to see the look on his face.

[Oxymoron]

Which prompt are you using, by curiosity ?

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Evilsoup?

(first paragraph by Rebecca)

At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile.
But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.

(second paragraph by Gary)

Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. " Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the ####pit.

(Rebecca)

He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel," Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspaper to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. "Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.

(Gary)

Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dimwitted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace disarmament Treaty through the congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet.
With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid Laurie.

(Rebecca)

This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.

(Gary)

Yeah? Well, my writing partner is a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. " Oh, shall I have

chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of F--KING TEA??? Oh no, what am I to do? I'm such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele novels!"

(Rebecca)
Arsehole.

(Gary)
B*tch.

(Rebecca)
F**K YOU - YOU NEANDERTHAL!!

(Gary)
In your dreams, Ho. Go drink some tea.

(TEACHER )
A+ - I really liked this one.

[evilsoup]

actually that's where I got the idea from originally lol (I saw it on some blog by a teacher)
in spite of the annoyances it's actually a fun/interesting exercise so

oxy we used number 23
you could probably read something into it that I started writing a story about children playing hide and seek (maybe I'm regressing lol) whereas he had a meeting of a bunch of demons (we both started a story each, then switched over)

[RyanThunder]

I'm getting really sick and tired of the trivialization of Nineteen Eighty Four's Oceania through comparisons with the present day United States. They are simply nothing alike. At all. It's like saying a firework is dangerously close to a fusion bomb.

The only countries in the world that are or have been even remotely similar are the Soviet Union (which Orwell based it on) and North Korea.

EDIT: and yes, I have read the fucking book, end to end, thank you. Unlike so many of the people making these comparisons, doubtless.

[Oxymoron]

If anything, as far as dystopias are concerned, the modern US is a far more refined model. The "Elites" still have a shitload of power, but it is far harder to direct anger toward them because they aren't a monolithic block like the Inner Party appeared to be in the book. What's more, as the "Elites" are free to oppose the system that sustain them, they give the impression to those living in the system that the system itself isn't to blame, but only some rotten apples ; helping the system to sustain itself.

Truly, a wonder of social darwinism and Evolution.

[Infinity Biscuit]

Someone does something that severely upsets you

Send them a private message letting them know how what they did bothered you

Feel better

Receive reply notification the next day

Avoid that site for the rest of your life

[evilsoup]

[Infinity Biscuit]

A mutual follower of mine on tumblr made a post that really upset me and I sent them a big fanmail about the issues I had and now that I see the ask box notification light up I'm scared to check :L

[evilsoup]

woman up and have a look I guess