Hate Mail from Third Graders | Hacker News Reader

Hate Mail from Third Graders

pbs.org

96 pointsjamesbritt33 comments

The one that says not to write back in cursive because she can't read cursive yet is cute. Though the one with the six-year-old 'polling' people and such seems more like the entire thing was orchestrated by the mother.

I want to know what a Double Planet is. Is it twice as good as a regular planet?

"Double planet" is an informal term used to describe a planet with a moon that may be large enough to be considered a planet in its own right; one definition requires that the objects orbit a centre of gravity that is above their surfaces. The formal term is "binary system".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_planet

Charon, technically a moon of Pluto, is over half as large. Instead of Charon orbiting Pluto, they sort of orbit each other. Pic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pluto_system_2006.jpg

Actually there are plenty of astronomers that consider the Earth - Moon system to be a double planet.

A double planet is basically any planetary system that contains moons that are relatively massive compared to the primary mass in the system.

Our moon is also quite large (1/4 the diameter of the planet).

The most widely accepted recognition is when the systems centre of mass (barycentre) is outside of the primary planet's surface. With Pluto and Charon the centre of gravity is outside of Pluto's surface.

However Asimov made a very interesting point, and a definitely more future-sighted point. He said that the measure of a double planet is of the tug-of-war between planet, satellite and star. With the Earth-Moon system, the Sun is winning the tug of war, eventually the barycentre will exit the Earth's surface and eventually the Moon will break free of Earth's orbit. This would make the Earth-Moon system a double planet. However Pluto is winning the fight in the Pluto-Charon system, and eventually Charon will impact Pluto's surface.

I personally prefer Asimov's definition. It's only a matter of time (maybe longer than the sun even) until the barycentre leaves the Earth's surface. IIRC ~600 million years the day lengthens by ~2 hours. This means that likely by the end of Earth's habitability (roughly 2 billion years from now) the day will be ~30 hours long at the present rate (it's considerably speeding up).

The vast majority of planet-satellite systems are arranged in a way that the satellite will eventually collide with its host planet. Those that don't will eventually hit their own classification as a planet or dwarf planet along the way, especially the Moon.

Thank you, that's a very detailed explanation.

It also gives me hope that in the long run I'll be able to catch up on all the stuff I should have been doing, 30 hour days sound just fine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_planet

Polls and bar graphs are part of the current curriculum standards for first grade mathematics, so I don't actually find that suspicious. I do suspect that letter had an adult proofreader / editor, though.

I'm all for using something like this to teach a child, but I hope that the mother isn't also teaching the child that polling for results is a good way to come to a scientific consensus on something like that subject matter though.

I think my point was that most of the 'work' was probably not without parental help, and I think that a lot of the subject matter ('double planet', etc) may be over the head of a six-year-old. Though I may be under-estimating six-year-olds.

I find it curious that you assume it's the child's mother giving him poor guidance in how science works.

The mother was mentioned in the letter as taking the child to the museum. Somehow I latched onto that and created the idea that the child was being raised by a single mother (don't know why). It could equally be both parents or just a father 'leading the child astray.' The point I was trying to make was geared towards how the child is getting guidance and what kind as opposed to who was actually giving it.

[edit] Upon further reflection, I may have been projecting my own mother a bit but, the gist of what I was saying doesn't depend on who the parent is (mother/father/both) -- at least I didn't intend it that way, if that's how it comes across.

> I hope that the mother isn't also teaching the child that polling for results is a good way to come to a scientific consensus on something like that subject matter though.

A word means what people to use it to mean, so in this particular case, polling is an entirely reasonable method of deciding whether pluto is (or should be called) a planet.

Of course, if the kid was claiming that "evul-ution is wrong because all my friends at Oral Roberts Primary School say so"...

A word means what people to use it to mean

Generally, what your saying is probably correct. However, in scientific discourse, there are different definitions of words. E.g. the word "work" in science is force * distance (or the appropriate calculus version) but in regular discourse it means something else.

> The one that says not to write back in cursive because she can't read cursive yet is cute.

That's the best one. Some pretty deep stuff: "Do poeple (sic) live on Pluto? If there are poeple (sic) who live there they won't exist". Bet they didn't think of that :)

Reminds me of that girl who wrote in and kept telling the car talk guys that they stink. It was hilarious when they flew her in to appear on the show. What was her name again?

Do all third graders have weird line justification issues?

Yes. In fact, it is not limited to third-graders. I once sat in a class of intelligent undergraduates taking first-year Chinese. These were people who could format APA citations on hand-written exams. When asked to write a paragraph in Chinese, they often started at the edge of the paper, went all the way to the other edge, leaving no margins.

The issue seems to be: are you comfortable enough with a language that some portion of your brain can focus on whether what you're writing looks nice, or are you straining so thoroughly just to control the micro motor movements that these is no attention left for macro aesthetics?

haha. i took "justification" to mean inability to accept things outside their control and wanting keep the science books right and not take away a "being"'s favorite planet, home or friend.

I don't understand the title. There isn't a hate mail to be found. Some of the justifications are better than those of your average crackpot: at least most of these kids realize they want Pluto to be a planet, instead of arguing that it is a planet by some non-existing absolute standard.

"at least most of these kids realize they want Pluto to be a planet, instead of arguing that it is a planet by some non-existing absolute standard"

That's called "honesty". Or, more realistically, "not yet having learned how to lie effectively".

Actually, I'd say its that they haven't learned how to lie ineffectively. Crackpots are usually deemed to be cracked-pots when they no longer make enough sense to pay attention to. They argue by a self-standard of usefulness instead of adapting.

Well let me break down what I meant. The average adult who argues that Pluto is a planet honestly just wants Pluto to be a planet, but he knows that's not a good argument and knows to manufacture another, more convincing argument in its place. He even convinces himself that his rationalization is really the reason why he thinks Pluto should be considered a planet. He lies to himself, in other words.

Kids aren't necessarily clever or knowledgeable enough to think that far. But kids can and do lie, and they're not always effective about it.

I think the title was very well chosen.

The one thing that really surprised me was how polite the disagreement in opinion was voiced by the 6 to 7 year old. That is, as evidenced daily in abundance at work, the internet, etc ..., something that seems completely lost with a significant proportion of the grown up population. Makes one think why that is so? Your friend Erik

When John Glidden grows up I want to employ him. Anyone who polls 11 of their friends at age six and has a concept of what a Kuiper Belt Object is is welcome in my company.

(Yes I accept that his mum may have driven the data collection but it comes to the same thing. She's going to make sure he turns into a winner)

She going to make sure that he's exposed to a world that lies behind that of Playstations and 24h cartoon TV, and that's good.

But I also see the making of self-righteous, arrogant know-it-all. The kind of person that will complain over all non-A grades because his mum told him he's smarter than the teacher. Seriously, he's telling scientists how to do their job. Blind obedience to seniority is a bad idea, but so is that "sigh you got it all wrong, here, now, let me show you"-attitude.

"Know your place in the world and evaluate yourself fairly, not in terms of the naïve ideals of your own youth, nor in terms of what you erroneously imagine your teacher's ideals are" - Richard Feynman

I doubt Feynman's reaction to the boy's letter would have been: "I also see the making of self-righteous, arrogant know-it-all....Seriously, he's telling scientists how to do their job".

There's not a single thing in the boy's letter that is factually incorrect. It's merely a statement of opinion accompanied by some supporting data.

The child's name is in my comment. If you don't like something someone says then critique their opinion but try not to be personal and rude, it only makes you sound bitter.

I'm not trying to emulate Feynman, and what I wrote wasn't a reaction to the kids letter, but to your comment.

I'm not criticizing the child, I'm presenting an alternative scenario. I'm not saying he going to end up like that, but I am saying that it's premature to conclude he's going to be a particularly employable based on that letter.

Thankfully no death threats, that would have been really disturbing.

Semantically, Pluto is still a "planet" (as far as the definition of the word goes linguistically), but is specifically classified as a dwarf planet by the International Astronomical Union.

It strikes me as disingenuous, then, for anyone to authoritatively state that Pluto is "not a planet" without clarifying their use of the word "planet" - it leads to a lot of confusion amongst the public who suddenly believe something has physically changed, as we see here.

I'm not feeling the hate. Certainly, they've identified Public Enemy #1 (anti-Pluto-as-a-planet-ers), but they're quite civilized with it.

I particularly liked the sad Pluto & Uranus (Urectum?) / Saturn. I can't decide if I think it's cute or funny, but it certainly made me laugh.

Sometimes the most esoteric truths are the hardest to settle on.

Sometimes the questions are just malformed to begin with: http://lesswrong.com/lw/no/how_an_algorithm_feels_from_insid...

It's cute when third graders do it, but the phenomenon is not limited to kids...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com