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Warp wrote:
> Seems like Finnish people do not suffer from so many stereotypes. The only
> one Google is giving me is "why are Finnish... kids so smart".
>
> Odd stereotype, I must say.
I've often wondered why *all* the genius programmers are always Finnish
or Sweedish or Polish or... any European nationallity except English.
Maybe because England is such a tiny country?
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Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> > Seems like Finnish people do not suffer from so many stereotypes. The only
> > one Google is giving me is "why are Finnish... kids so smart".
> >
> > Odd stereotype, I must say.
> I've often wondered why *all* the genius programmers are always Finnish
> or Sweedish or Polish or... any European nationallity except English.
I don't think that's true. For instance, surprisingly many game companies
are, in fact, British.
Anyways, one could come up with tons of cum hoc ergo propter hoc reasons
why some countries seem to produce more programmers and software companies
than others. Maybe it's the education system, culture, economic model,
national identity, secularism, work morale (think of Japan, for instance),
or numerous other reasons.
--
- Warp
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>> I've often wondered why *all* the genius programmers are always Finnish
>> or Sweedish or Polish or... any European nationallity except English.
>
> I don't think that's true. For instance, surprisingly many game companies
> are, in fact, British.
Certainly back in the Amiga days, all the really visionary software
seemed to be written by people with names you can't pronounce.
OctaMED lets you play 8 sounds at once even though the hardware only
supports 4. Who wrote that? One Finnish guy, single-handedly.
Somebody replaces the standard system requesters with something much
more ergonomic. Who wrote that? Hungarian guy.
AMOS is a BASIC dialect with comprehensive multimedia support. Who came
up with that? French guy.
(Mind you, it's rival Blitz Basic was designed by a New Zeland company.)
Pegger intercepts OS calls to turn any program that supports IFF ILBM
files into one that supports JPEG files. (Back when JPEG was still
brand-new.) Who did that? A German company.
> Anyways, one could come up with tons of cum hoc ergo propter hoc reasons
> why some countries seem to produce more programmers and software companies
> than others. Maybe it's the education system, culture, economic model,
> national identity, secularism, work morale (think of Japan, for instance),
> or numerous other reasons.
Unfortunately, in the UK it seems to currently be "trendy" to be stupid.
It's decidedly uncool to know stuff, especially about mathematics and
science. I wonder if there are countries where people actually take
pride in mathematical skill?
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Unfortunately, in the UK it seems to currently be "trendy" to be stupid.
> It's decidedly uncool to know stuff, especially about mathematics and
> science. I wonder if there are countries where people actually take
> pride in mathematical skill?
I think that the US is currently growing a generation of people who can't
understand the basic concepts behind programming, and this might bite their
economy in a few decades.
You see, at some parts of the US there's this odd trend that students
should not be taught basic math skills. Instead, they are taught some
"intuitive" hand-waving which might or might not help them solve some
mathematical problems via intuitive "deduction", but without really
understanding the basic mechanics.
I assume you have been taught the classical way of multiplying two
numbers on paper, so-called the "long multiplication" method (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplication_algorithm#Long_multiplication).
It might not be the most efficient way of multiplying things, but it's
easy to learn and gets the job done.
However, for some reason many school books and teachers in the US hate
long multiplication so much that they don't even *mention* it, much less
teach it. Instead, they prefer teaching some "intuitive" rules of thumb
which can be used in a few cases, and the more complicated cases are
dismissed with a "just use a calculator". These rules of thumb are simple
and easy for a few cases, but for other cases they end up being so
complicated that nobody even bothers.
The long multiplication algorithm has one good feature: It allows you to
calculate *any* multiplication using the exact same principles. The
difficulty doesn't raise depending on the input numbers (only the amount
of writing needed).
However, these people are taught to be lazy. They are basically said
"if you can't calculate with some easy rules of thumb, just give up and
use a calculator, nobody *really* needs to know how to multiply any two
numbers".
The same is true for other mathematical operations, such as division
and square root.
They are missing the point. By teaching lazy rules of thumb, they are
failing to teach a higher concept: Algorithmical thinking. You can't
program a computer with just "rules of thumb".
--
- Warp
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>> Unfortunately, in the UK it seems to currently be "trendy" to be stupid.
>> It's decidedly uncool to know stuff, especially about mathematics and
>> science. I wonder if there are countries where people actually take
>> pride in mathematical skill?
>
> I think that the US is currently growing a generation of people who can't
> understand the basic concepts behind programming, and this might bite their
> economy in a few decades.
>
> You see, at some parts of the US there's this odd trend that students
> should not be taught basic math skills. Instead, they are taught some
> "intuitive" hand-waving which might or might not help them solve some
> mathematical problems via intuitive "deduction", but without really
> understanding the basic mechanics.
> However, these people are taught to be lazy. They are basically said
> "if you can't calculate with some easy rules of thumb, just give up and
> use a calculator, nobody *really* needs to know how to multiply any two
> numbers".
Well, I suppose you could argue that, in the real world, if you want to
do a nontrivial calculation and you actually need an exact answer,
you'll use some sort of computation device.
Then again, how many people grow up to be carpenters? But they still
teach woodwork??
> The same is true for other mathematical operations, such as division
> and square root.
Out of curiosity... how the hell *do* you actually calculate the square
root of something? I've always wondered.
[Of course, usually the number you're looking at will be a square
number, and it's just a matter of guessing what it's the square of. But
if you for some reason needed to approximate, say, the square root of
500, where the hell do you start?]
> They are missing the point. By teaching lazy rules of thumb, they are
> failing to teach a higher concept: Algorithmical thinking. You can't
> program a computer with just "rules of thumb".
Well, most people won't ever need to be computer programmers. It _is_ a
minority occupation. Indeed, most professions don't really involve
higher mathematics in any way.
But for those few that do... hmm, this could be a problem.
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Well, I suppose you could argue that, in the real world, if you want to
> do a nontrivial calculation and you actually need an exact answer,
> you'll use some sort of computation device.
But that's not the point. "Just use a calculator" is not didactic, it
doesn't teach anything, and will only make people lazy. This will bite
back in the future, when people won't become programmers because they
lack the proper education and way of thinking.
> > The same is true for other mathematical operations, such as division
> > and square root.
> Out of curiosity... how the hell *do* you actually calculate the square
> root of something? I've always wondered.
Your lack of google skills don't surprise me. Slightly more surprising is
that someone of your age hasn't been taught that at school.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_computing_square_roots#Digit_by_digit_calculation
> > They are missing the point. By teaching lazy rules of thumb, they are
> > failing to teach a higher concept: Algorithmical thinking. You can't
> > program a computer with just "rules of thumb".
> Well, most people won't ever need to be computer programmers. It _is_ a
> minority occupation. Indeed, most professions don't really involve
> higher mathematics in any way.
Then you wonder why some countries are more proficient than others.
It's probably a common trait in the more proficient countries that the
schooling system is *not* driven by a "only very few people will ever
need these skills, thus we'll just skip teaching them" ideology.
--
- Warp
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>> Well, I suppose you could argue that, in the real world, if you want to
>> do a nontrivial calculation and you actually need an exact answer,
>> you'll use some sort of computation device.
>
> But that's not the point. "Just use a calculator" is not didactic, it
> doesn't teach anything, and will only make people lazy. This will bite
> back in the future, when people won't become programmers because they
> lack the proper education and way of thinking.
Which is why schools are supposed to teach people this stuff. Indeed,
schools teach a whole bunch of stuff like woodwork, chemistry, and a
bunch of other things that only a tiny handful of people will ever use.
I think you could successfully argue that even if nobody in the class
ever needs to use algebra for anything, learning to do algebra teaches
you logical thinking, which is probably quite relevant to daily life.
>> Out of curiosity... how the hell *do* you actually calculate the square
>> root of something? I've always wondered.
>
> Your lack of google skills don't surprise me. Slightly more surprising is
> that someone of your age hasn't been taught that at school.
Remember that I went to a school for mentally retarded people. They
didn't even teach us what a square root *is*, never mind how to compute
one. (For that matter, they didn't teach us what a square is in the
first place - other than that it's like a rectangle, but with equal
sides.) The only "mathematics" we did was filling out page after page
after page of long division problems. Because, after all, mathematics is
all *about* long division, right?
>> Well, most people won't ever need to be computer programmers. It _is_ a
>> minority occupation. Indeed, most professions don't really involve
>> higher mathematics in any way.
>
> Then you wonder why some countries are more proficient than others.
Heh, point taken...
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On Thu, 24 Sep 2009 10:01:24 +0200, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Seems like Finnish people do not suffer from so many stereotypes. The
> only one Google is giving me is "why are Finnish... kids so smart".
>
> Odd stereotype, I must say.
http://fe79.myftp.org/misc/google_se.png
Too bad our kids are so stupid...
--
FE
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On 09/24/09 05:17, Invisible wrote:
> Well, I suppose you could argue that, in the real world, if you want to
> do a nontrivial calculation and you actually need an exact answer,
> you'll use some sort of computation device.
And who'll build that computation device?
--
If you think nobody cares, try missing a couple of payments.
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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> http://imgur.com/jVNQH.gif
>
> Yeah, that's about right. :-)
That's pretty funny. Here's one of my favorites:
http://google.com/trends?q=sex%2C+news&ctab=0&geo=all&date=mtd&sort=0
I guess there are just some things you don't google at work.
- Ricky
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