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Todays Geometry Project .. A Regular Heptadecagon

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one_rod:

--- Quote from: mklotz on June 24, 2010, 01:29:23 PM ---CAD is great if all you want is a quick solution to a problem but I have yet to meet anyone who learned anything about mathematics from a CAD program.  Sadly, these days everyone seems intent on actively avoiding learning anything about math.  It doesn't bode well for our collective future.

--- End quote ---

Got to say that I agree with you.
I'm sure the only reason we were taught those constructions was to drum into us the mathematical and geometric relationship between lines, angles and shapes. It can be hard stuff to learn, but once you have got it you have it forever and it comes in useful time after time.

However, in "real world" technical drawing you would hardly ever use it. If you want a nineteen-a-gon, it's much easier to make one by angle division or by using simple trig.

So I don't mind using computers to make my life easier, because I know that in a pinch I could do it without one.

As for the standard of maths teaching these days, I can't quite believe it.
My youngest son left school last year with a pretty good pass in his maths exam.
He started training as an apprentice electrician at the same place that I work. But it turns out that even the fairly simple maths required by a sparky were pretty much beyond him. I've ended up teaching him basic algebra almost from scratch, just so that he can do the job.

There's whole generations growing up now who wouldn't know where start, without machines to do their thinking for them.  As you say, makes you wonder about the future.




one_rod.

mklotz:
The machine shop instructor at the junior college where we hold our metalworking club meetings laments the fact that he has to teach his incoming students how to read a ruler before he can begin teaching about measuring in the machine shop.

The schools don't teach math and they don't teach history.  Many of our youth think the (American) Civil War was the civil rights unrest of the 1960s.  The Vietnam war happened before WWII, a war we fought against the Russians.

They don't teach geography.  Switzerland is a Scandinavian country, there are kangaroos running wild in Austria and schoolkids in Brownsville, Texas can't name the country south of the United States.  (Brownsville, at the southern tip of Texas, is virtually surrounded by Mexico.)

And they don't teach English.  One only has to look at the quality of the writing on the Internet to appreciate the truth of that.

Bernd:

--- Quote from: mklotz on June 25, 2010, 07:33:07 PM ---And they don't teach English.  One only has to look at the quality of the writing on the Internet to appreciate the truth of that.
--- End quote ---

Boy Marv, I have to agree with you 100 percent on that one. Might want to add spelling too. :thumbup:

Really scary. Makes you wonder what the future holds. I don't even want to speculate. :(

Bernd

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