Getting really tired of the Humanities Vs. STEM stuff..

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Why? You keep acting like this is somehow bad without ever giving a reason.

I could understand if you were upset that math was frequently taught badly, or that the only math that's usually taught is just tricks for calculations, rather than concepts.


Many of them didn't. Why does this surprise you?


The "somehow" seems to imply that you think forgetting it would be difficult. If they have no reason to expect that they'll ever use it, and if their teachers made it seem like a bizzarre, arbitrary game played with symbols that have no meaning, I'd be more surprised that any of them remembered it than that some of them forgot it.

Well for one I took the bare minimum number of math classes in Highschool because.. gasp.. I still sucked at math just as much when I was 17 as I do now.. and then.. gasp again.. I had 10 years to forget the 70% of the material I'd managed to learn to pass the class 10 years before! So that basically meant.. All of it.

Amazing really.. since I never ONCE in 10 years.. used ANY of that stuff... I didn't do a job that needed it, I didn't just bust out some binomials for kicks.. I passed the test.. and then once I had passed the test and gotten out of highschool.. I saw no reason to bother trying to remember any of that..

Only thing I really remember is pi r2 which I think is the circumference of a circle.

If students aren't actually learning the material, then why are they being given passing grades. Something is obviously wrong with a system that does that.

They do learn it, for the period they need it. Once they don't need it, they don't remember it.

Please do go on though and tell me that I'm not capable of college work considering I have A's in EVERY SINGLE class

Clearly it is needed, which is why they are forced to take the material in college again. You even said you wish you could pass "College Algebra", but this material you should have learned in high school, you shouldn't even need to take this class, you should already know the material when you graduated high school.

WHY do I need to know it?


You've YET to answer that. What Possible reason do I need to know how to find imaginary points on a grid? Or find out what a missing variable is?

Yes, I wish I could have passed it because it's the only F mark I have in a sea of A's. At the end of this semester I will have completed 48 hours of college classes, 51 if you count the F. So that means that I've gotten 18 A's to my 1 F. I'm still not using any of the stuff from that algebra class. I will NEVER EVER EVER need any of that stuff. If I need to make a graph, Excel will do it for me, so teach me how to use Excel!

You're just a troll, trolling and trying to cause trouble. You won't answer anyone's questions as to why "College Algebra" is "Highschool level" when clearly it isn't. It's a 1000 level Class. Just like English Composition 1 and 2 are. If these classes were all 'Highschool Classes" they would all be taught in Highschool and wouldn't be being taught in College.

You get a mark for every 3 hours of class? Wtf is that?
Also, I have around 18-24 hours of lecture per week... 48 a semester?
It sounds like you're complaining about an extremely small work load, to be honest..

and I know the high school curriculum inside and out from tutoring the courses, if "College Algebra" involves such simple mathematics as "solving for unknowns" and "plotting graphs", that's like Grade 9 or 10.
Grade 12 was full-on calculus here (Canada) - everything up to anti-derivatives essentially.

When I was in high school I had this same attitude towards English "I speak English why do I need to read shakespeare blah blah blah" .. just get it over with

Because when they take the test, they do know the material, at least well enough to pass the test, although given how things are taught and tested, that's just memorizing formulas and some symbol manipulation. And yes, I do think the system is messed up, although handing out passing grades is not the problem.

3 credit hours of class. As in 3 hours per week for a semester. 48 credit hours is about 3 semesters worth.

I have no idea what that means.
You get marks for showing up?
I go to lectures 3 hours a week per class, 3 to 5 classes, have a weekly assignment and 2 exams, for most courses.. sometimes there's an optional tutorial.

By your logic though, it sounds like he's saying he only has 3 hours of class a week? Maybe I'm just misunderstanding.

No.


If you have 3 hours of lecture per week in 3 classes for one semester, that's 3*3 = 9 credit hours for the semester.
If you have 3 hours of lecture per week in 5 classes for one semester, that's 3*5 = 15 credit hours for the semester.

If you took 5 classes with 3 hours of lecture per week for 3 semesters, you'd have 3*15 = 45 credit hours.

He's got 48 credit hours completed, with 51 total credit hours attempted, which means that he's taken 51/3 = 17 classes, and passed all but one of them. (That's assuming he hasn't taken any classes that aren't 3 credit hours, if he'd taken 3 different 4 credit hour classes, his total would be 16 classes, but 3 of them would have taken more time than an ordinary class. Since most classes are 3 credit hours and the number of credits he has is divisible by 3, this is a reasonable assumption.) If we take the heavier of the 2 loads you mentioned (5 classes a week), that's a little more than 3 semesters worth, if we take the lighter of them (3 classes a week), then it's nearly 6 semesters worth. A full load around here is considered 12 to 18 credit hours, or 4 to 6 classes.

Seems like an arbitrarily complicated way to keep track of credits, but I'm not surprised from a country that won't use the metric system..

Pass a course = 0.50 or 0.25 credit depending on the course, 40 to graduate (with specific courses needed obviously)
Pretty simple.

I am not trolling, College Algebra is a high school level course, when the majority of people take it in high school. English Composition is nothing like College Algebra, and the vast majority of Universities do NOT offer credit "College Algebra", like they do for English Composition. You are totally clueless, not to realize the material in "College Algebra" is taught to most by the Junior year of high school, many even learn it by their freshman year of HIGH SCHOOL, and a few bright learn it in MIDDLE SCHOOL.

EVERY SINGLE school allows you to test out of College Algebra, because it is HIGH SCHOOL material, no school allows you to test out of English Composition. Stop being so dense, and use your brain.

Last edited by DVCal on 12 Mar 2013, 10:31 am, edited 2 times in total.

Here credits are based 50 minute hours per week, so a 3 credit class has 150 minutes of class time per week. Fairly simple.

Yes. You are trolling. He asks you a question, and you completely ignore it and very rudely take a soapbox. Why does he need to know it? If he's not going to use it, why indeed? Who cares if most high schoolers test out of it? He didn't, and he's not trying to become a mathematician, is he?

Except you're getting more credit based on time rather than difficulty or commitment