On Thu, 2 May 2024 at 20:51, Lee Courtney <leec2...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Too bad because the language itself lends itself to learning by anyone with > an understanding of high school algebra. You remind me -- and _not_ in a good way -- of the first day of my undergrad 1st year statistics course at university. I did biology and we had a mandatory stats course. The lecturer came on stage and said (roughly, this was ~40 years ago) "Now I know many of you don't want to be here, or are nervous or apprehensive. I just want to reassure you. Don't be. This course is easy stuff, and it will be basically revision for anyone with A-level mathematics. You'll be fine." I failed _O_ level mathematics, and to get onto a science degree course, I had to do another 6 months of remedial maths just to get me through the exam. To be told "easy if you did the A level" would have made me angrily walk out in disgust if it wasn't a mandatory course. As it was, I worked out that the only test I needed was a Chi-squared test. I had no idea how to do it and the explanation was, well, all Greek to me. But my friend did get it, and he helped break it down into very small simple steps for me, while I wrote a Sinclair BASIC program to not merely do a chi-squared test _but to print out all the intermediate working as if I had done it by hand_ so I could copy it down longhand and fake being able to do it in my coursework. That worked. It took me a weekend and was no direct use because at the end of about 32-33 hours of work, I could do a chi-squared test by hand. So, indirectly, it achieved its purpose. But the point is: not everyone can do "high school algebra." I do not know what age "high school" means to you but very basic secondary school algebra was _extremely_ hard for me and took years of real work to master. And yet, I have a degree and at the time I got it I scored about 150 on the Mensa IQ test. I am not daft. In real life, for ordinary people, algebra is a byword for "really hard to understand". As Stephen Hawking wrote in _A Brief History of Time_ « Someone told me that each equation I included in the book would halve the sales. I therefore resolved not to have any equations at all. In the end, however, I did put in one equation, Einstein's famous equation, E = mc squared. I hope that this will not scare off half of my potential readers. » I think it did not help. (I found the book very dull, myself. I already knew what he was trying to explain.) "It's as easy as algebra" is reinforcing my point about this stuff _not_ being easy, natural, obvious, helpful, convenient, clear, meaningful or useful for most people. I wrote an article about 3 new BASIC releases for its 60th anniversary: https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/03/basic_60th_birthday/ Do go read the first comment. It shows how BASIC was immediately apprehensible and memorable in a way that APL never would be. Translation for American readers: "O" level -- school exams at about age 16; you normally do about 8 subjects. I did 12. "A" level -- school exams at ~18, necessary to get into university. You normally do 3. I did 5. -- Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven IoM: (+44) 7624 277612: UK: (+44) 7939-087884 Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420) 702-829-053
