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Comment by ahoyhere | Hacker News Reader

Is the putative student "bad at math" or "bad at math the way it's taught in high school, perhaps even by a certain teacher"?

I thought I was bad at math and lived under that shadow for a very long time. Then I grew up and realized I'm actually very good at math, I just had terrible teachers/source materials.

All of these generalized statements are questionable by dent of gross simplification.

PS - where is a university education only $50K?

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Is the putative student "bad at math" or "bad at math the way it's taught in high school, perhaps even by a certain teacher"?

Here is one of my favorite quotations about mathematics teaching, used as my signature tagline on the first online forum where I used the screen name "tokenadult":

"The proper thing for a parent to say is, 'I did badly at mathematics, but I had a very bad teacher. I wish I had had a good one.'" W. W. Sawyer, Vision in Elementary Mathematics (1964), page 5.

Yes, the book from which the quotation comes is very good, and very good for learners with a visual learning style.

where is a university education only $50K?

Canada, as an example. Other places, such as many places in Europe, it's "free" (i.e, publicly funded).

America, too. Not everyone goes to $40k a year private schools. A degree from an in-state school can be had for well within $50k.

Are you sure? I thought this, too, but just checked out my home state's University (Minnesota). It's a typical big state school and tuition and fees for 4 years are pushing $45K. I was surprised because I assumed total tuition was closer to $30K.

Texas at least. tuition at the University of Texas is $4600 a semester full time. Pretty much every public university in Texas is about the same or better.

University of Kansas clocks in at $29k for four years; UIC in Chicago is about $25k (plus some fees that might bring it closer to 30). UMN does appear to be pretty expensive relative to other schools for in-state tuition, but it's a quite reputable school so maybe they've earned a premium.

Hm. When I look at UIC's tuition calculator, it's giving me $6757 per semester for undergrad engineering tuition and fees per semester. Over 8 semesters, that's ~54K. Other departments are slightly cheaper but all were over $6K/semester.

http://www.uic.edu/depts/oar/undergrad/tuition_undergrad.htm...

When I revisited UMN, it is $4200/semester... but that seems to be without fees.

http://onestop.umn.edu/finances/costs_and_tuition/tuition_an...

I first saw the UMN tuition on this site, which calculates it for the year:

http://www.getreadyforcollege.org/sPagesGR/TuitionChart.cfm?...

That's more time than I really wanted to spend on this topic, but I do find it interesting that even state schools can cost way more than I would have suspected.

I had people from out of state going to my school, because they said it was cheaper for them to pay out of state tuition there than any of their state schools.

Shepherd University/semester (09 to 10)

  IN-STATE Tuition and Fees	$ 2,617.00	
  OUT-OF-STATE Tuition and Fees	$ 6,787.00
  + (optional)
  Room	1,945.00
  Board  (19 Meal Plan)	1,669.00

So four years instate would be 21k + books (excluding normal living expenses.)

>Is the putative student "bad at math" or "bad at math the way it's taught in high school, perhaps even by a certain teacher"?

It could also be a mismatch between someone's personality and the sort of math kids get taught. I did poorly in most of my math classes in high school and college. After failing a few classes, decided I was hopelessly "bad at math", and left the topic alone. A few years I took an abstract algebra class on a lark and really enjoyed it. In hindsight, I did poorly in my earlier math classes because I was undisciplined and really disliked memorizing disconnected tricks and formulas. Abstract algebra, on the other hand, was more elegant, conceptual and fun to learn. Doing well in one class punctured my myth of inability and gave me the confidence to properly learn linear algebra (and take some other interesting classes).

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