teaching – Page 3 – neverendingbooks

way too ambitious

Published January 30, 2007 by lieven

Student-evaluation sneak preview : I am friendly and
extremely helpful but have a somewhat chaotic teaching style and am way
too ambitious as regards content… I was about to deny vehemently
all assertions (except for the chaotic bit) but may have to change my
mind after reading this report on
Mark Rowan’s book ‘Symmetry and the monster’ (see also
my post
)

Oxford University Press considers this book
“a must-read for all fans of popular science”. In his blog,
Lieven le Bruyn, professor of algebra and geometry at the University of
Antwerp, suggests that “Mark Ronan has written a beautiful book
intended for the general public”. However, he goes on to say:
“this year I’ve tried to explain to an exceptionally
good second year of undergraduates, but failed miserably Perhaps
I’ll give it another (downkeyed) try using Symmetry and the
Monster as reading material”.

As an erstwhile
mathematician, I found the book more suited to exceptional maths
undergraduates than to the general public and would strongly encourage
authors and/or publishers to pass such works before a few fans of
popular science before going to press.
Peggie Rimmer,
Satigny.

Well, this ‘exceptionally good
year’ has moved on and I had to teach a course ‘Elementary
Algebraic Geometry’ to them last semester. I had the crazy idea to
approach this in a historical perspective : first I did the
Hilbert-Noether period (translating geometry to ideal theory of
polynomial rings), then the Krull-Weil-Zariski period (defining
everything in terms of coordinate rings) to finish off with the
Serre-Grothendieck period (introducing scheme theory)… Not
surprisingly, I lost everyone after 1920. Once again there were
complaints that I was expecting way too much from them etc. etc. and I
was about to apologize and promise I’ll stick to a doable course
next year (something along the lines of Miles Reid’s
‘Undergraduate Algebraic Geometry’) when one of the students
(admittedly, probably the best of this ‘exceptional year’)
decided to do all exercises of the first two chapters of Fulton’s
‘Algebraic Curves’ to become more accustomed to the subject.
Afterwards he told me “You know, I wouldn’t change the
course too much, now that I did all these exercises I realize that your
course notes are not that bad after all…”. Yeah, thanks!

attention-span : one chat line

Published December 26, 2006 by lieven

Never
spend so much time on teaching than this semester and never felt so
depressed afterwards. The final test for the first year course on
grouptheory (60 hrs. going from nothing to Jordan-Holder and the Sylow
theorems) included the following question :

Question :
For a subgroup $H \subset G $ define the normalizer to be the
subgroup $N_G(H) = \{ g \in G~:~gHg^{-1} = H \} $. Complete the
statement of the result for which the proof is given
below.

theorem : Let P be a Sylow subgroup of
a finite group G and suppose that H is a subgroup of G which
contains the normalizer $N_G(P) $. Then …

proof :
Let $u \in N_G(H) $. Now, $P \subset N_G(P) \subset H $
whence $uPu^{-1} \subset uHu^{-1} = H $. Thus, $uPu^{-1} $, being of the
same order as P is also a Sylow subgroup op H. Applying the Sylow
theorems to H we infer that there exists an element $h \in H $ such
that
$h(uPu^{-1})h^{-1} = P $. This means that $hu \in N_G(P) $.
Since, by hypotheses, $N_G(P) \subset H $, it follows that $hu \in H $.
As $h \in H $ it follows that $u \in H $, finishing the proof.

A
majority of the students was unable to do this… Sure, the result was
not contained in their course-notes (if it were I\’m certain all of them
would be able to give the correct statement as well as the full proof
by heart. It makes me wonder how much they understood
of the proof of the Sylow-theorems.) They (and others) blame it on the
fact that not every triviality is spelled out in my notes or on my
\’chaotic\’ teaching-style. I fear the real reason is contained in the
post-title…

But, I\’m still lucky to be working with students
who are interested in mathematics. I assume it can get a lot worse (but
also a lot funnier)

and what about this one :

If you are (like me) in urgent need for a smile, try out
this newsvine article for more
bloopers.

mathematics & unhappiness

Published October 23, 2006 by lieven

Sociologists are a constant source of enlightenment as CNN keeps reminding

Kids who are turned
off by math often say they don’t enjoy it, they aren’t good
at it and they see little point in it. Who knew that could be a formula
for success?
The nations with the best scores have the
least happy, least confident math students, says a study by the
Brookings Institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy.
Countries reporting higher levels of enjoyment and confidence
among math students don’t do as well in the subject, the study
suggests.
The eighth-grade results reflected a common
pattern: The 10 nations whose students enjoyed math the most all scored
below average. The bottom 10 nations on the enjoyment scale all
excelled.

As this study is based on the 2003 Trends in International
Mathematics and Science Studies and as “we” scored best
of all western countries
this
probably explains all the unhappy faces in my first-year class on group
theory. However, they seemed quite happy the first few weeks.
Fortunately, this is proof, at least according to the mountain of wisdom, that I’m on the right track

If too many students are too happy in the math
classes, be sure that it is simply because not much is expected from
them. It can’t be otherwise. If teaching of mathematics is
efficient, it is almost guaranteed that a large group or a majority must
dislike the math classes. Mathematics is hard and if it is not hard, it
is not mathematics.

Right on! But then, why is
it that people willing to study maths enter university in a happy mood?
Oh, I get it, yes, it must be because in secondary school not much was
expected of them! Ouf! my entire world is consistent once again.
But then, hey wait, the next big thing that’s inevitably going to
happen is that in 2007 “we” will be tumbling down this world
ranking! And, believe it or not, that is precisely what
all my colleagues are eagerly awaiting to happen. Most of us are willing
to bet our annual income on it. Belgium was among the first countries to
embrace in the sixties-early seventies what was then called
“modern mathematics’ (you know: Venn-diagrams, sets,
topology, categories (mind you, just categories not the n-stuff ) etc.) Whole
generations of promising Belgian math students were able in the late
70ties, 80ties and early 90ties to do what they did mainly because of
this (in spite of graduating from ‘just’ a Belgian
university, only some of which make it barely in the times top 100 ). But
then, in the ’90ties politicians decided that mathematics had to
be sexed-up, only the kind of mathematics that one might recognize in
everyday life was allowed to be taught. For once, I have to
agree with motl.

Also, the attempts to connect mathematics with
the daily life are nothing else than a form of lowering of the
standards. They are a method to make mathematics more attractive for
those who like to talk even if they don’t know what they’re
talking about. They are a method to include mathematics between the
social and subjective sciences. They give a wiggle room to transform
happiness, confidence, common sense, and a charming personality into
good grades.

Indeed, the major problem we are
facing today in first year classes is that most students have no formal
training at all! An example : last week I did a test after three weeks
of working with groups. One of the more silly questions was to ask them
for precise definitions of very basic concepts (groups, subgroups,
cyclic groups, cosets, order of an element) : just 5 out of 44 were able
to do this! Most of them haven’t heard of sets at all. It seems
that some time ago it was decided that sets no longer had a place in
secondary school, so just some of them had at least a few lessons on
sets in primary school (you know the kind (probably you won’t but
anyway) : put all the green large triangles in the correct place in the
Venn diagram and that sort of things). Now, it seems that politicians
have decided that there is no longer a place for sets in primary schools
either! (And if we complain about this drastic lowering of
math-standards in schools, we are thrown back at us this excellent 2003
international result, so the only hope left for us is that we will fall
down dramatically in the 2007 test.) Mind you, they still give
you an excellent math-education in Belgian primary and secondary schools
provided you want to end up as an applied mathematician or (even worse)
a statistician. But I think that we, pure mathematicians, should
seriously consider recruiting students straight from Kindergarten!

Tag: teaching

way too ambitious

attention-span : one chat line

mathematics & unhappiness