They're at it again

[unixronin]

The school just sent a letter home with a booklet of vocabulary words ... from the math program.  It contains things like "number sentence".

You'd immediately recognize what they call a "number sentence".  It looks like, for example, "2 + 3 = 5".

There's a perfectly good word for that already.  We call it an equation.  What asshat thought it was a good idea to go muddying the water by making up inaccurate terms like "number sentence"?  (The previous iteration was "number fact".)

Precision and accuracy are important in mathematics.  There are reasons why we use terms whose meanings are precisely defined.  Equations — or mathematical statements in general — have different structure and obey different rules than sentences, and different sets of operations can be performed upon them.  Calling them sentences confuses the issue to no purpose.

Instead of kludging together some artificial term that vaguely approximates what something is, why not just teach the correct word and its meaning in the first place?  We don't teach children to talk about "milkable dogs" when we mean a cow, so why are we making up crap like "number sentence"?  Talking about a number sentence is like talking about a feathered cat.  If it has feathers, it isn't a cat, it's a bird; and if it's made up of constants, variables, and mathematical operators, it's not a sentence, it's an equation.  (Or an inequality, or an identity, or one of several other kinds of mathematical statement.)

And we wonder why our schools are failing.

Comments

[genuine-snark.livejournal.com]

Number sentences != equations.

For one, they can be inequalities.

3 + 6 < 10

For another, they don't need to be true, though I suppose that can be said of equations as well:

7 + 9 = 17

That's a number sentence.

As said before, it's basically a parsing thing. They're probably starting by explaining to the kids how to form a valid syntactical construct (the sentence) in the first place.

Hard to say, without seeing the curriculum, but you might be getting angry at them teaching more or at a deeper level than they taught you.

[otherbill.livejournal.com]

But 3 + 6 < 10 and 7 + 9 = 17 are equations. The first one happens to be true; the second happens to be false.

[gdmusumeci.livejournal.com]

"3 + 2" is not an equation, obviously....

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

The first one is not an equation. It is an inequation.

By definition, an equation is a relationship between equals.

[genuine-snark.livejournal.com]

To my knowledge, no = means no equation. >, <, >=, and <= are inequalities.

You're probably right about truth not being intrinsic to the definition of an equation (or a sentence). I'm guessing the "number fact" implies truth though.