A professor at Penn wants to abolish the teaching of fractions in general mathematics classes:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/mathscience/2008-01-23-fractions_N.htm?se=yahoorefer
Now, I take his point that in this day and age we are more accustomed to expressing an amount that is between zero and one moreso in decimal terms than numerator/denominator terms. But you can’t just not teach fractions. Decimals are fractions, fractions are decimals. Fractions are also, I think, an easier concept to understand than decimals. Do you think in terms of 1/2 or 0.5? To say nothing of the fact that fractions are more precise and simpler at the same time. Just think of 2/3; when decimalizing that, how many .6’s do you use before giving up and tossing a 7 on the end?
To say nothing of the fact that, if we get rid of fractions, we can no longer say a 5th of whiskey. It’ll have to be a 0.2 of whiskey.
January 30, 2008 at 9:14 pm |
Actually, in this day in age people are probably more accustomed to expressing an amount between zero and one in floating point terms (ie. what their calculator tells them), which isn’t quite the same as decimal. But that’s neither here nor there. [END Math/CS major mode]