It’s funny to see how education standards differ from high school to college. In physics, the professor basically stated that all throughout elementary and high school we were taught math incorrectly. We were taught how to calculate numbers only, when we should have been taught to figure out formulas using only symbols. So, on his tests, if we plug in the values of symbols into the equation before completely working out the problem using symbols we will get a big fat 0 ZERO! ”Math is a language that you must know.” I understand why he is doing this. In the real world we will have many different variables, and a bunch of numbers can become a jumble. Also, if you only figure things out using symbols, you can use the same formulae for more than one situation and just plug in your numbers for they varying situations. I think pre-college educators should get on this and try to teach the stuff so that we are prepared for this “revelation” and not caught off guard by having to change the way we’ve been solving problems since middle school.
A lot of people also come in to college not knowing how to properly write papers. They did a good job prepping us for that at our school, but a lot of people didn't go to schools that did.
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