Nice People Thread No. 15, a Cyber Summer

zagubov

PasturesNew wrote: »

Maybe a bit like the first 3-4 hours of the Olympics ... "a bunch of people, who you don't know, walking in a row." I've no idea why they televise that, it's of no real interest to people who aren't in it, or aren't connected with it.

You need to watch "My Name is Earl" where his brother talks about that superhero TV series that's on every now and then about people of all different colours that can throw things or swim faster than everybody else.

SingleSue

Somehow my niece thinks I am the font of all knowledge when it comes to maths, really hurts the ego when you have to admit that you are not the oh wise one she thinks you are.

She's 15 and failing maths, she is amazing in English but hopeless in maths, so now I have been tasked with helping her alongside her having extra tuition at school. So far I have shown her BBC bitesize, given her old papers to go through, access to flash cards with easy descriptions of terms, revision notes etc and advised her of a schedule of revision but was completely floored when she asked about multiplication grids...you what? They didn't even exist as a term or method (at least not at my school) when I did my 'O' level!

She got directed back to the flash cards and bitesize....

Edit - I have also directed myself back to bitesize to try to keep ahead of her and all the new methods.

zagubov

SingleSue wrote: »

Somehow my niece thinks I am the font of all knowledge when it comes to maths, really hurts the ego when you have to admit that you are not the oh wise one she thinks you are.

She's 15 and failing maths, she is amazing in English but hopeless in maths, so now I have been tasked with helping her alongside her having extra tuition at school. So far I have shown her BBC bitesize, given her old papers to go through, access to flash cards with easy descriptions of terms, revision notes etc and advised her of a schedule of revision but was completely floored when she asked about multiplication grids...you what? They didn't even exist as a term or method (at least not at my school) when I did my 'O' level!

She got directed back to the flash cards and bitesize....

Edit - I have also directed myself back to bitesize to try to keep ahead of her and all the new methods.

Have you had a look at the corbettmaths website? It;s supposed to have lots of good resources.

PasturesNew

zagubov wrote: »

You need to watch "My Name is Earl" where his brother talks about that superhero TV series that's on every now and then about people of all different colours that can throw things or swim faster than everybody else.

I like My Name is Earl

Good programme.

PasturesNew

I'm watching "I Was There: The Great War Interviews" on Yesterday (freeview/19).

The interviews with Katie Morter really make you cry

The first time I saw it, I had to Google to find out what happened to her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYWiAr2JKeM
In the programme her interview was broken up into about 8 bits spread throughout the programme.

Here's an update, from her great-granddaughter
http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/nostalgia/real-lives-wish-could-go-6745689

zagubov

There was a weird article in the New Scientist years ago (actualy probably the early 80s) about a better way of doing arithmetic. Much simplified and easier to set out and calculate. It was a base ten system but it used bar numbers which come of us might remember from the days of logarithms. The digits were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 then bar 4, bar 3, bar 2, and bar 1.

The only problem was that we already had a functioning number system that was totally entrenched and it would be as hard to introduce as the various reformed alphabets that have been developed. In other words we missed the boat and we're stuck with using the unimproved version 1.0 of arithmetic.

PasturesNew

Yesterday programme: Find My Past. Shot at Dawn.

Where they take an event in the past and trace down to living people, then take each of those through the event and how their ancestor played a part in it. Then they chuck them into a room together and they tell each other who their ancestor was.

This event is a soldier in WW1 who was shot at dawn for something (desertion, or similar probably).

Ah, Herbert Laking. His great-great-uncle. Chap on the telly had never heard of his GG-uncle before.

Full details if anybody's bored: http://www.genesreunited.co.uk/blog/genes-reunited-blog/archive/2011/12/5/find-my-past-shot-at-dawn-1st-december-2011

michaels

SingleSue wrote: »

Somehow my niece thinks I am the font of all knowledge when it comes to maths, really hurts the ego when you have to admit that you are not the oh wise one she thinks you are.

She's 15 and failing maths, she is amazing in English but hopeless in maths, so now I have been tasked with helping her alongside her having extra tuition at school. So far I have shown her BBC bitesize, given her old papers to go through, access to flash cards with easy descriptions of terms, revision notes etc and advised her of a schedule of revision but was completely floored when she asked about multiplication grids...you what? They didn't even exist as a term or method (at least not at my school) when I did my 'O' level!

She got directed back to the flash cards and bitesize....

Edit - I have also directed myself back to bitesize to try to keep ahead of her and all the new methods.

What worries me is that often the teachers with their super new methods in maths do not have the know how to see that their new wonder method is equivalent to the old method just a different way of writing it down.

I was doing dd's grid multiplication on the homework website and really struggled because it requires adding some quite large numbers but entering the digits in the wrong order - ie most significant first.

GDB2222

Aside from the issues with us oldies learning a new way of doing things, grid multiplication seems quite logical. There's a nice explanation by example here. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_method_multiplication

It seems quite straightforward, just different from what we are used to.

I like explanation by example. It's nice to see a simple case worked through before trying to generalise. I have no idea why the traditional teaching method is to work out the generalised version and then give examples?

GDB2222

Anybody interested in the truly bizarre should enjoy this.

http://loweringthebar.net/2016/09/frozen-guru-update-iii.html

Essentially, the guru's followers claim he's not dead, just in very, very deep meditation. So deep that they have put him in a freezer so as to make him more comfortable until he wakes.

In the meantime, there's a squabble about who controls his vast fortune.