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Re: Reply to Pragmatic
Posted by Pragmatic on 4/25/08

    On 4/24/08, Howard Rosenbaum wrote:
    > On 4/21/08, Pragmatic wrote:
    >
    >> You got a MASTER'S in math and never had this stuff?
    >
    > 1. When I studied Linear Algebra, I took what seemed like a very theoretical
    > course. There were no pictures in the textbook, and no application to geometry.
    > Perhaps this is the kind of course Lawrence also took.

    What exactly can you do with a determinant? What does it mean?

    > 2. I for one am not qualified to state unequivocally what every Linear Algebra
    > course contains. Perhaps Pragmatic feels he is so qualified.

    I can't tell you the complete syllabus, but it's kinda like saying that "I took
    Geometry and Algebra, but I've never seen the Pythagorean Theorem".

    >> Was it a masters in education with a math specialization that didn't require
    > you to know any advanced math?
    >
    > 3. Here it seems Pragmatic is making an assumption about Lawrence's educational
    > credentials. Based on Lawrence's reply, it is an incorrect assumption. This
    > reminds me of students who assume from the diagram that a particular angle is a
    > right angle, without having adequate proof of this.

    I'm not making an assumption about his credentials. I'm outright questioning them.
    I still find it very very hard to believe that ANYONE with a master's in
    mathematics wouldn't know EVERY topic covered in a middle-school textbook.

    >
    > I think this is a valuable lesson. One of the things we teach in math is the
    > need to clearly state one's assumptions, and to recognize that an argument
    > becomes invalid when it rests on an invalid assumption. Thank you, Pragmatic,
    > for reminding us this.

    I forget things. But I find that when I revisit something in math that I mastered,
    the re-learning process is a couple of minutes at most, since it's refreshing memory
    or quickly re-deriving what needs to be used. But though I've mostly forgotten
    synthetic substitution, I'd never claim that I'd never seen it.

    Pragmatic


 
 
 
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