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Finding the area of a regular pentagon

Aardvark154

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But since I'm not a civil engineer, I've never been asked this question since I left school.

Just curious does anyone else use this in day to day to day life?
 

fuji

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But since I'm not a civil engineer, I've never been asked this question since I left school.

Just curious does anyone else use this in day to day to day life?
I regularly use what I learned in statistics classes, but not any other form of math.
 

explorerzip

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Jul 27, 2006
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The way we teach math and science in school is so dry and boring, which is why fewer girls are choosing to study in those fields. We're too obsessed with having kids get the right answer instead of truly understanding what they are actually doing.

 

shakenbake

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The way we teach math and science in school is so dry and boring, which is why fewer girls are choosing to study in those fields. We're too obsessed with having kids get the right answer instead of truly understanding what they are actually doing.

You are so right. This, along with Rote Learning that,even many years ago, Richard Feynman was severely criticising certain education systems around the world. However, there are rules that need to be understood and memorised in Math, Science and Engineering, as long as the fundamentals behind them are understood.
 

Mazzi

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But since I'm not a civil engineer, I've never been asked this question since I left school.

Just curious does anyone else use this in day to day to day life?
doesn't matter, you have a vague idea of how it can be done, and it introduced you - back then - to another way of thinking about it. It may come to show you your client is innoccent
 

buttercup

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Feb 28, 2005
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The way we teach math and science in school is so dry and boring, which is why fewer girls are choosing to study in those fields.
It's not dry and boring to the kids who like it enough to want to work to understand it, and do well in it.

Math and science and engineering are all about understanding the differential equations that model the world. We must not lie to kids who find no interest in those equations. We must not cajole them into math/ science/ engineering if they have no interest in differential equations.

We don't do kids any favours (whether they're girls or not) if we glamorize math and science, and if we gloss over the "dry and boring" things in order to "get them interested". What if we actually succeed in persuading an 18yo girl to study engineering at university, by pretending that it's not all about equations and calculus? We are condemning her to disappointment and frustration -- not to mention wasting her life.

If you need science and engineering to be glamorous before you can work up an enthusiasm for it, you will never do well at it, and you'll never find fulfilment in it.

Leave it to the kids who were intensely interested in your "dry and boring" subjects .
 

fuji

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My girlfriend in University used to say she hated her math classes and much preferred her business oriented ones.

Funny thing though, she could spend HOURS absorbed in solving math problems and cheerfully lose track of time doing them, and HATED reading business case studies and had to force herself through it, usually grumpily.

But you know, women are supposed to like the more socially oriented subject, so I never was able to convince her to double down on the STEM stuff she was really, really good at and instead she focused on getting through her business program which she claimed to enjoy more, despite the grief studying it really brought her.
 

james t kirk

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I would just calculate the area of the bottom trapezoid and then add the area of the top triangle.
 

explorerzip

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It's not dry and boring to the kids who like it enough to want to work to understand it, and do well in it.

Math and science and engineering are all about understanding the differential equations that model the world. We must not lie to kids who find no interest in those equations. We must not cajole them into math/ science/ engineering if they have no interest in differential equations.

We don't do kids any favours (whether they're girls or not) if we glamorize math and science, and if we gloss over the "dry and boring" things in order to "get them interested". What if we actually succeed in persuading an 18yo girl to study engineering at university, by pretending that it's not all about equations and calculus? We are condemning her to disappointment and frustration -- not to mention wasting her life.

If you need science and engineering to be glamorous before you can work up an enthusiasm for it, you will never do well at it, and you'll never find fulfilment in it.

Leave it to the kids who were intensely interested in your "dry and boring" subjects .
I didn't say that we should try to make math, science or engineering glamorous or sexy. The video also did not say anything to that effect. But I do believe that having students memorize arbitrary rules is counterproductive and is likely the cause of students being disengaged. Fields in science, engineering, software, etc. are a whole lot more than memorizing a bunch of equations or rules. Besides, the benefit of studying mathematics, science and technology is to develop critical, abstract and creative thinking and we desperately need more of those people in this day and age since the pace of change is so quick. I also believe that people need to be taught to think out of the box and break and bend rules.
 

canada-man

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Jun 16, 2007
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I didn't say that we should try to make math, science or engineering glamorous or sexy. The video also did not say anything to that effect. But I do believe that having students memorize arbitrary rules is counterproductive and is likely the cause of students being disengaged. Fields in science, engineering, software, etc. are a whole lot more than memorizing a bunch of equations or rules. Besides, the benefit of studying mathematics, science and technology is to develop critical, abstract and creative thinking and we desperately need more of those people in this day and age since the pace of change is so quick. I also believe that people need to be taught to think out of the box and break and bend rules.
in High Sschool i failed physics because teachers want kids to memorize formulas to to calculations. here in Canada they allow to write formulas on "cheat sheets"
 

explorerzip

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in High Sschool i failed physics because teachers want kids to memorize formulas to to calculations. here in Canada they allow to write formulas on "cheat sheets"
Exactly. There is little to no value in memorizing formulas because that's what computers are for. There is much more value in teaching kids to think critically about how they come up with a particular answer and if it makes sense.
 

rhuarc29

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Apr 15, 2009
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in High Sschool i failed physics because teachers want kids to memorize formulas to to calculations. here in Canada they allow to write formulas on "cheat sheets"
Yes, because understanding the formula is more important. That said, if you don't memorize the formula, you'll rarely use it outside of school. Most people say math is useless outside school simply because they can't grasp where it'd be useful and when it would be an effective time to use it.
 

Aardvark154

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Yes, because understanding the formula is more important. That said, if you don't memorize the formula, you'll rarely use it outside of school. Most people say math is useless outside school simply because they can't grasp where it'd be useful and when it would be an effective time to use it.
As alluded to above, many careers simply don't use anything above arithmetic.
 

radagast

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But I do believe that having students memorize arbitrary rules is counterproductive and is likely the cause of students being disengaged.
What they need to learn is anything but arbitrary. The relationship of the sides of right triangle is a universal truth. The kinetic energy of an object is always half the mass times the square of the velocity. Etc etc etc.

Ideally what we want our kids to do is what Cap'n Kirk did upthread -- be able to look at any shape, say "hey, this is just a collection of smaller shapes that I know how to calculate the area of". But they need to have some of the fundamentals in their brain in order to do that.
 

oldjones

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Aug 18, 2001
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What they need to learn is anything but arbitrary. The relationship of the sides of right triangle is a universal truth. The kinetic energy of an object is always half the mass times the square of the velocity. Etc etc etc.

Ideally what we want our kids to do is what Cap'n Kirk did upthread -- be able to look at any shape, say "hey, this is just a collection of smaller shapes that I know how to calculate the area of". But they need to have some of the fundamentals in their brain in order to do that.
Exactly, these 'rules' are anything but arbitrary; they are the descriptions of unchanging, fundamental truths of the universe.

However it is a huge mistake of educational purpose to simply have kids memorize them as abstract formulae. Teachers should be creating situations where kids need and want to know these things about their world. It's all well and good to say they can always look it up, but they have to know it's out there to be found, and where to go looking. Most of all they have to understand, it's always knowable, and knowing's vastly better than ignorance.

Best of all is if you are the first who comes to that knowledge. That's talking 'genius', but every child should finish school with that hope for themselves, and it needs a foundation of stuff they know, because they tucked it away in memory.
 

frankcastle

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Feb 4, 2003
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if you want to improve math scores in kids heres how to do it.

1.....get qualified people to teach it. in high school teachers usually have a degree in math, science or engineering. but not the case in elementary school.

2..... make it okay to fail students. you keep push a kid along eventually this catches up with them.

james suggestion of the trapezoid works too but it will take more work than the area of one triangle x 5. nothing wrong with that.

i have used angles and triangles in the placement of speskers in a home theater.
 
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