Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Yakking About Curriculum Matters

My impression is IB math (EU curriculum) is more likely to feature 3D vectors with rotation matrices i.e. stays geometric longer.

The YouEssIans (USians) go for that "geometry sandwich" with two slices of Algebra for bread. David DiNucci showed me an article about that.

The meat (10th grade geometry it's often called) is very thin, in the sense of planar. Mr. Euclid is milked for his proof of the proof concept, and meanwhile we're not "wasting time" with 3D printing or CAD renderings.

A lot of people are getting nervous about Shop and real tool use. Weren't schools supposed to teach about trades too? That's where a more hands-on geometry with SQL practice, in storing and retrieving the vectors, face topology, might help.

Milo Gardner suggests the big chunk of Euclid traces to political agendas to suppress all things German. Gauss and Number Theory needed less airtime. However along this same "lambda calc" track that'd feature SQL and real tool use, we'd put more about crypto. Number Theory is back on the front burner, along with Fermat's Little Theorem and Carmichael Numbers.