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

[cipherpunk.livejournal.com]

Statement, declaration — I'm not picky between the two. :)

However, it's very important to me that "number" be dropped as an adjective. "x + y = z" is not a number declaration. There's no requirement that the letters be numbers at all; only that they support an additive property and can be tested for equality. Admittedly, you'd have to get into some very advanced math before "x + y = z" could be viewed as no longer about numbers, but...

I much prefer if kids are taught math starting from logic and patterns. I don't care if a fourth grader can multiply together three-digit numbers or do simple algebra. I care a lot if a fourth grader can listen to a statement I make and point out "you know, I don't think it quite works that way."

"If it's raining, the sidewalk is wet. The sidewalk is wet, so it's raining." That's the sort of fourth-grade math skills I think are very important, and very under-studied in schools today. I think a fourth grader ought to be able to say "no, I don't think that's sound," and ought be able to say "... but it might be raining anyway."