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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

> he said: “I cannot answer for them what they are going to do with the quadratic equation. I don’t know why they are learning it.” He added, “And I don’t know why they can’t ask Google for the answer if the answer is right there.”

Wow. Back when I worked for Boeing on the 757 design, there were engineers that were "formula pluggers" who pulled formulas out of manuals and used them. Then there were engineers who understood the formulas - where they came from, what assumptions they were based on, and how to derive them.

The latter used the formulas correctly, the former often blindly misused and misapplied them.

Googling for a formula is not how proper engineering is done.

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It is not in Google's best interest to have people that think independently of Google. The more woven Google is into the daily fabric of our lives the more profitable it becomes. I don't understand why more alarm bells aren't ringing. A for-profit corporation should not be subsidizing public education. They're not a non-profit. Their motives are always going to be at odds with creating a free-thinking populace.

Google and Google products are not commodified and generic tools of thought. In fact they are the exact opposite. They're contextualized and proprietary. We are doing ourselves a disservice in the long run by letting them get a leg up in education.

The best thing that happened to me was learning math in post-soviet Armenia. To this day I still think best with pencil and paper and can put other computational tools in the proper context. Whereas growing up with Google branded products I imagine would have had a much different effect. There was one thing the communists got right and that was science education.

Governments have their agendas in public schools other than free thinking, as well.

This is also correct. I mean you're speaking to someone who has first hand experience with how those agendas play out in the U.S. and abroad. Those agendas are exactly why education must not be coupled to proprietary tools. We should be teaching people how to think instead of giving them government or corporate sanctioned thought gardens and patterns.

I don't see how letting Google take the lead is fixing that fundamental issue. It is not in their best interest to do that no matter how you slice it. By Google I mean the corporate entity and not the people working within it.

What? Google provided a far better solution to our schools that is more efficient in every aspect. They listened and stepped up. Not a good thing?

A narrow focus on efficiency, which does not always equal the best solution overall.

Take a read of the 350+ comments on the NYTimes article to see how thrilled actual parents and teachers are about all of this.

You're talking about engineers. Of course you need to understand some formulas if you're going to be an engineer. But for most of the people who aren't going to do that, they're useless.

Except the quadratic formula, just as an example, has a lot of positive qualities when taught to children:

* The longform is fairly complex, so it is non-trivial to remember or recount. You can't just guess it (at least without knowledge well beyond it). So it looks like "magic".

* It is a great introduction to what formulas are. They are non-trivial proofs of concepts that took research and logic to conclude.

Learning logic and learning patterns, especially the non-obvious ones like the qf, are what promote analytical thinking. We need more of that, not less. Maybe the problem is more that kids are shown a magic formula and made to mechanically repeat it on a couple dozen data sets than to actually learn how to reach conclusions like the qf. Making kids proof it would probably be more valuable than making them repeatedly use it beyond a few times to assure them it is valid magic math.

One of my teachers back in high school made a comment to the effect of: "This class isn't about learning math. It's about practicing critical thinking skills."

At the same time, I think some amount of repetition is important. You don't get a true understanding of something by just studying it, you need to apply it "on a couple dozen data sets" to get a feel for it, at least in my opinion. "Understanding" can initially be a bit transient.

Teaching formula plugging is about as useless as teaching history as dates and names.

Teaching how to derive the formula, why it works, etc., is very useful (even if one never needs to use it in post school life).

Googling for answers is not learning. It's like lifting weights with a forklift is not exercising.

Not sure. Most people won't remember how to derive equations any,nor they need it, if they need to derive equations they could probably use some piece of software(symbolic solver?), and that's just takes time they could use to understand statistics, for example, which seems more useful.

> if they need to derive equations they could probably use some piece of software(symbolic solver?)

The point is to understand. Having some software do it for you does not help with that.

But for most of the people who aren't going to do that, they're useless.

A system that cuts out a whole range of career paths simply because as a kid someone didn't like maths, is a bad one. Kids don't know what they need in life. That's why our culture takes decisions away from them until they are 18.

At the same time you can't prep every kid to be a neurosurgeon. Or a prison guard. Or a helicopter machine gunner (which many would probably sign up to be if presented with the option at a young enough age!).

That's exactly why you need to teach a broad range of subjects, including basic math like simple calculus and arithmetic, so kids can actually make a choice about what they want to do. If they never get taught any of that, then they don't have the option available.

And just to be clear, quadratic equation is basic math, and not anywhere close to 'prepping a kid to be a neurosurgeon'.

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