Whatever could have gone wrong? Maybe some explicit teaching will fix it?
Whatever. We’ve been here before and I couldn’t give a stuff. I can’t even be stuffed coming up with a clever title. For anyone who does give a stuff, however, the preliminary PISA report and Australia’s report card are now available. Go for it.
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Please allow me to ask a tangential question. Should we write 760 000 or 760,000?
As if anyone could stop you. I like commas.
I too am a comma man. I asked because I noticed that the PISA report uses spaces, and in class this week, we had a good discussion about the matter.
I totally agree – it’s very much clearer – and I’m guessing that spaces may be harder to detect, possibly even more so for those with special needs.
Claude tells me that “The space convention comes from the international SI standard for number formatting, and it’s what Australian teaching resources (including tools like Mathspace) follow and recommend as the taught convention, precisely because a comma has other uses (list separator, and in many countries it’s the decimal marker) and can cause confusion.”
Which is just silly – to prioritise adult international comprehensibility over pedagogical value for students.
Thank you, Terry …
When ChatGPT gets around to killing us all, are you guys gonna debate its uses of commas?
Interesting that Enrichment Mathematics uses spaces (for numbers bigger than 4 digits long). I suppose it’s so that really small numbers are easier to read, and so they use spaces for big numbers as well for consistency, maybe.
I have a vague memory of suggesting commas to David. I think there was an argument against them but I can’t remember what it was.
The argument against using them may have been that most mainland European countries use a comma as the decimal separator instead of a period. (A weak argument in my opinion).
And they use the period to instead of the commas. So 7,213.6 is 7.213,6
I saw a question like this recently.
Your LaTex is garbled. Tell me what you want and I’ll fix it. (And in future, please don’t post LaTeX without checking the output.)
Hello
For those who do not care about international test results, such as PISA (a test about simple word problems), try using “ethnomathematics” as a teaching method, instead of explicit teaching!
It was a method invented by a mathematician in my country. Everybody seems to love it here (except me).
To be happy, you just have turn the list of countries upside down and you will have the “really good” results achieved in my country.
Another possibility, instead of explicit teaching, is to blame the ghosts in your family for the bad results in PISA. This new teaching method is called “family constellation”:
“Family Constellation in schools involves applying the principles of Bert Hellinger’s systemic therapy within the educational setting to understand learning difficulties and behavioral conflicts based on students’ family histories. This practice is part of what is known as Systemic Pedagogy.”
Thanks, Solange. That is all a little too cryptic for me. I do not think PISA is a test of simple word problem: I think it is a test of “problems” with convoluted wording.
A recent Chalk n Talk episode contained a description of a US “Illustrative Mathematics” lesson – it was simply barmy! Like what Solange is describing. All this always reminds me of Dame Slap!
JJ, I’m confused. I will reply, but doesn’t this comment belong on the Conceptual Understanding post?
A recent Chalk n Talk episode contained a description of a US “Illustrative Mathematics” lesson – it was simply barmy! Like what Solange is describing. All this always reminds me of Dame Slap!
Thanks, JJ, but did you reply to the correct post? I’ll respond but I’ll wait until you confirm or move your comment.
Thanks Marty – it was a reply to Solange – I have made a copy as there, but don’t mind however you think it should be placed – moved, edited or whatever. So much of the stuff that is out there is just so silly is my point and it’s no wonder that PISA shows a decline (assuming it’s something of a proxy for learning, even if deeply flawed).
Yeah, OK.