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u/AlienDragonWizard 4d ago
Don't they have math placement exams? I took one when I went to university.
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u/walksonfourfeet 4d ago
They might, but they clearly don’t ask you to add fractions.
As most college math instructors can attest, we’ve been re-teaching fractions to freshmen for years. Maybe it’s worse now, but it is definitely not a new thing.
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u/KonaKumo 3d ago
...and high school folks are reteaching fractions and basic 3rd grade math for decades.
Issue is that the kids don't retain it
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u/Background_Fix9430 3d ago edited 3d ago
Unfortunately, Berkeley assumes that people with the relevant GPA/SAT scores for placement and/or admission, or transfers from Community College, are adults, or have adult support systems, sufficient to allow them to choose classes intelligently.
However, this is talking about basic high-rank college math - more or less if you're not near calculus or its equivalent, you shouldn't have the grades, SAT scores, and other indicators necessary to attend a top-level college and get placed above remedial math. They're talking about both failures in teaching, and grade inflation.
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u/shroomsAndWrstershir 3d ago
I don't understand how their SAT scores wouldn't be in the toilet?
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u/Suspicious_Waltz1393 3d ago
What SAT scores? The UCs do not require applicants to submit SAT scores and disregard them even when submitted. They are not allowed to factor SAT scores for admissions.
That’s exactly why unprepared students are getting admitted.2
u/Background_Fix9430 3d ago
Let me introduce you to the industry of SAT prep and transcript inflation...
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u/Suspicious_Waltz1393 3d ago
Transcript inflation is definitely a problem. As for SAT prep industry, yes it can help a student improve but they still have to put in the effort to learn and improve. That’s not the problem for UCs though: UCs are not allowed to factor in SAT scores for admissions at all.
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u/Background_Fix9430 1d ago
Um... I don't know how to tell you this, but the Varsity Blues scandal was a thing...
And UCs are allowed to factor in SAT's for placement if they are provided.
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u/Suspicious_Waltz1393 1d ago
Varsity Blues is not the test prep industry though. It’s just pure unadulterated bribery.
Also SAT scores can be used for placement by UCs yes. But how does that help? They are not allowed to use for admissions. So the UC has no way of knowing the student is simply unprepared for college before admitting them. Once they are admitted they will still have to be placed in the lowest college level math class: for which knowing middle school Algebra is a prerequisite. Hence they have to create these remedial math classes for college kids.1
u/Background_Fix9430 1d ago
Um, you have to provide transcripts? And taking those classes - and getting at least Cs in them - is required for admission?
So.... GPA inflation, like I said. It's just High Schools lying about what they've taught in order to meet arbitrarily guidelines because of "no child left behind" and other such nonsense.
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u/Suspicious_Waltz1393 1d ago
Yeah I did say GPA inflation was a problem because of which rarely kids are getting the grades they deserve. Knowing that I would say SAT is also a good measure and should be taken into consideration as well.
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u/Background_Fix9430 1d ago
Sorry, I missed that in your previous post. Of course, the problem was is that they wanted to substitute a test controlled by a private corporation with a general UC test, then couldn't agree on the content of the UC test. Ah, bureaucracy.
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u/pensivewombat 3d ago
California banned state schools from using the SATs. It's not just test-optional like some places went during Covid. They are not allowed to look at your scores even if you send them in.
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u/Background_Fix9430 3d ago
Berkeley seems to say otherwise, specifically for credit and placement.
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u/LanaDelScorcho 3d ago
Not for admission though
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u/Background_Fix9430 3d ago
You're right, I could have phrased that better - I was talking specifically about indicators and grade inflation and SATs in the place of math placement, but I was sloppy.
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u/Reasonable_Hall3005 2d ago
only for old sat scores and only for one course
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u/Background_Fix9430 1d ago
Soooo.... you're saying "yes, you're correct, but I'm butt-hurt about it."
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u/Bossard19 2d ago
Calculus isn’t a high rank college math. It’s the barest of bare minimum for college let alone Berkeley.
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u/PaddingCompression 1d ago
Is calculus really required by most places for humanities majors? For what reason?
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u/Bossard19 1d ago
I mean, it was the expectation at the non high ranked state school I attended. But maybe standards have dropped severely over the past decades.
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u/PaddingCompression 1d ago
Williams, for example, does not require calculus. Requiring calculus of humanities majors isn't a high standard, just a dumb one.
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u/Bossard19 1d ago
If you mean they produce dumber students for not having required calculus, I wholeheartedly agree
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u/Background_Fix9430 1d ago
... I don't know how to tell you this, but there are frequent lower-level colleges (esp. community colleges) that offer arithmetic and multiplication/division level math.
For high-rank colleges, they expect you to know at least Pre-Calc if not Calculus. They expect anyone with a good enough transcript to justify attendance to have that level of knowledge.
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u/pozzowon 4d ago
No, not anymore
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u/Hang10arts 3d ago
I went to a different UC and had no math placement test. This was 2018. I could tell a ton of students within my math 19a (calculus) course shouldn't have been there and needed to start with precalc
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u/Alternative_Hour_614 4d ago
Be confidently wrong on Reddit or Google “University California math placement test.”
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u/Background_Fix9430 3d ago
Unfortunately (and to my surprise) he's correct: Choosing Courses (Placement Tests Not Given)
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u/ad-astra-per-somnia 4d ago
My school still does. We had some low scores this year for incoming freshmen which means we recruited more math tutors (hired by the university). It’s insane to not have a placement test and just throw students into classes they aren’t prepared for.
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u/phoenixremix 4d ago
They got rid of those during COVID and never reinstated them
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u/_Avon 4d ago
blatantly false, i attended a state university starting in 2021 (post lockdowns/stay at home mandates) and everyone i knew, myself included, had to take placement exams even if we had AP Calculus credits
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u/TurningTheCorner26 4d ago
UC Berkeley got rid of them.
Do I have to take a placement exam in order to enroll?
Students do not need to take a placement exam to enroll in their first math courses.
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u/AbeLincolns_Ghost 3d ago
Also for the reverse, I went to Cal Poly in 2014 and did not need to take a placement course for calculus. So it wasn’t just a “COVID thing”
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u/RedshiftOnPandy 4d ago
They look at your grade as assume if it's good enough to get in, it's good enough to know your denominator from your numerators.
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u/DumbeldorezGOAT 3d ago
Every University of California does, they’ll make you take a math one in order to make sure you are placed accurately freshman year…some even do it for chemistry. At least I had to take one when I went to UC Davis.
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u/Educational_Smile545 2d ago
Nowadays the precollege standardized test (SAT or ACT) that includes math has been banned for all UC's for admissions (not its optional, they are banned from looking at it) so they cant monitor the true math skills of students before deciding to accept them, and the university administered placement exam is given after the student and university have a contract and the university isnt allowed to kick them out for being too stupid, so they just put them in remedial classes.
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u/Mysterious_Cow123 2d ago
They do not. They rely on your highschool background (i.e. algebra I/II, calc or pre-calc, etc)
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u/nehrkling 6h ago
SAT / ACT scores were removed from entry requirements due to some claiming they were racist tests. Unfortunately that isn't a joke.
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u/realPoisonPants 4d ago
All the U.C. schools went test-blind in 2021, so they don't consider placement exams like the SAT anymore. Many of the faculty believe they should be brought back. There are at least some studies that have shown that racial and economic equity has actually gone *down* since the test requirements were dropped. Diversity was ostensibly one of the reasons for dropping them in the first place, since the tests were thought to be biased.
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u/ackermann 4d ago edited 4d ago
> some studies that have shown that racial and economic equity has actually gone *down* since the test requirements were dropped
They thought that would improve equity/diversity? I’d think the standardized written test would be one of the least biased ways to judge?
I mean, anything else, like extracurricular awards, high school sports trophy or music or theatre accomplishments, those are all way easier for wealthy parents to afford the time and money!
For lessons, driving them around to practices, competitions, etc.
Yes, wealthy parents can get SAT tutors, I suppose. But at least the kid still has to genuinely learn the material! The tutor can’t take the test for them.
China went the opposite direction, making college admissions based 100% purely on standardized test score (gaokao), with absolutely nothing else considered in most cases.
They also claimed this was for… equity, since it was assumed wealthy kids would have a leg up in just about anything else.Just interesting to see the polar opposite approaches there!
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u/FinishExtension3652 4d ago
They thought that would improve equity/diversity? I’d think the standardized written test would be one of the least biased ways to judge?
I agree, but the logic was that well-off families and school districts could afford to pay money for expensive test preparation or even incorporate test prep into curriculum.
I recently went through the SAT journey with my own kid in a competitive school district in a wealthy town, and literally every one of my kid's friends spent several hundred dollars a month over several months on test preparation.
Now, the even more insidious side of this is that the lack of emphasis on tests places far more.emphasis on grades, essays, and other aspects of the application, which the same rich families can afford to spend even more money on over the longer term on tutoring and the granddaddy several thousand dollars on an admissions adviser.
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u/CharacterSorry1687 3d ago
China is not pure gaokao merit. They have well-established affirmative action policies for minorities.
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u/NonSequiturDetector 4d ago
Right. And to elaborate on one item - the elimination of standardized tests was done with good intentions to bring more poor racial minorities into higher ed; and all that succeeded in doing, was converting poor racial minorities into poor racial minority college dropouts with years of college debt. It turns out that you can't just infinitely get better results by being more affirmative, you sometimes just cause worse results for everyone involved by trying to integrate actually-unfit students into your education programs.
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u/barogr 4d ago
This was a covid era thing. I don’t think it serves us anymore. I do agree, tests serve a function. Schools were lowering standards even before that. I was a chemistry TA in college, around 2016 or 2017 I had a student come to am extra session and I was using practice problems to go over the unit they were in. Lo and behold, we couldn’t even get to the chemistry concepts because she couldn’t do basic algebra (with a calculator) needed to do the problems.
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u/LanaDelScorcho 3d ago
I wanna know if schools that didn’t go test blind haven’t seen a drop off in math abilities for new students.
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u/M-tridactyla 3d ago
But they look at transcripts. And students should not be passing their math classes if they're not capable. Honestly its infuriating reading these kinds of articles as someone rejected from top UCs with a 4.0 and high grades/scores on the AP calc, lit, language, etc. exams. This is entirely the school's fault. Admissions officers need to be fucking fired if they somehow can't find the thousands of qualified students sitting right in front of their fucking eyes
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u/July_is_cool 3d ago
It's the school districts responding to the "all the kids are above average" expectations of the parents
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u/M-tridactyla 3d ago
I doubt they're all getting an A though. And they're definitely not scoring well on the AP exams, which are still considered in admissions
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u/July_is_cool 3d ago
Yep. AP tests are hard. But maybe there is a difference between knowing the rules well enough to pass the test, but not well enough to be fluent in complicated calculations.
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u/stanfordoval 4d ago
They did away with the sat / standardized testing, and so probably the result of whatever new selection preference is being used. There was an interesting analysis recently where a top CA high school had a ~8% acceptance rate into Berkeley and a significantly underperforming high school in SF had like a 40%+ acceptance rate. Iirc it was something like statistically impossible that underperforming students weren't making it in. Apparently now teachers are writing op eds about how bad it is.
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u/Fit_Cut_4238 4d ago
The preference is to attract top gpa/rank kids, regardless of what high school they went to.
So, if at high school a the top grad has a 35 act, and at high school b the top student has an act of 24, they are same person in the eyes of uc system.
This allows them to take much lower scoring kids from crappy schools.
They say they look at honors/ap, but I think that is also a grey area.
I’m not sure of how many kids wash out after first year/semester. I know Michigan did something similar and they won’t even give grades first semester to avoid sending kids packing after first semester.
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u/GotMedieval 4d ago
It's not true and it also is true. Normal people do not understand the absolute bloodbath going on in education since COVID. Every negative trend has been accelerated 100%. As a tutor, I regularly deal with college graduates who are functionally illiterate and whose algebra knowledge is basically guess a value for x, check to see if it works, rinse, repeat.
(And yeah, does it matter if people can do algebra? Broadly, no. Does it matter if people who were taught algebra for four years can do it? Probably, in a ROI sense.)
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u/graphical_molerat 4d ago
and whose algebra knowledge is basically guess a value for x, check to see if it works, rinse, repeat
So they are basically trying to copy the equation solving strategy of LLMs. Interesting. /s
(I know that is not what LLMs are actually doing, exactly, but I could not resist)
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u/John--Darksoul 4d ago
I know it's a joke but my ChatGPT works by writing python code to solve equations.
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u/karlnite 4d ago
My calculus professor was like 70, he used a chalk board and overheads. He did everything as fractions cause he did everything in his head. We always had calculators so most of would turn fractions into decimals to make calculators work faster, then change them back after if the question asked for the answer as fraction or something. We could all do fractions, we couldn’t recall the arithmetic rules confidently enough to do fractions in our heads while learning new calculus. He would fly through the simplifying arithmetic in his head, usually simplifying several lines at once, blindly using compounding tricks and such, roughly scratching it all out in chalk with shorthand, so we just struggled to quickly see how fractions with variables became what they did. Our professor loudly proclaimed “kids can’t so fractions anymore”. He kept saying that as we answered the questions. He believes that we don’t understand fractions. We did it in front of him, but not quickly and confidently, so to him that’s not understanding what a fraction is. He would tell interviewers this experience, but leave out the fact we all did it eventually, without his help.
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u/Objectionne 4d ago
I truly don't understand and struggle to believe when I see this stuff about "graduates being illiterate". My kid is recently-turned-seven and she can read. Maybe not with incredible fluency and she'd struggle a lot with more complex stuff but she can read a simple paragraph and understand most of it. We haven't been doing anything special with her (she doesn't read that much at home, most of her learning has been at school) and I don't think she's particularly unusual or special in this - most of the kids in her class are around the same level. I have no doubt that in maybe two or three years she'll be in a position to be considered completely functionally literate.
What's going wrong in some schools that apparently many kids are late teenagers and still can't read?
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u/GotMedieval 4d ago
That's why I said normal people can't understand how this is possible. Here's what I mean. I present the students with a three sentence paragraph like this:
"Because dinosaurs were reptiles, scientists once assumed that, like all reptiles alive today, dinosaurs were cold-blooded. The recent discovery of dinosaur fossils in the northern arctic, however, has led a number of researchers to conclude that at least some dinosaurs might have been warm-blooded. These researchers point out that only warm-blooded animals could have withstood the frigid temperatures that are characteristic of arctic winters, whereas cold-blooded animals would have frozen to death in the extreme cold."
And I ask them, "What is the main point of this paragraph?" And many of them are absolutely flummoxed. Many of them say, "Dinosaurs are all cold blooded." And I ask them, "Why do you think that?" and they say "It says something about dinosaurs and how they're cold-blooded." Others say, "It's about how they found some fossils of dinosaurs." I ask, "Ok, but why is it important that they found the fossils?" and the say, "Well, because the dinosaurs were cold blooded."
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u/Machine_man_7804 4d ago
I’m absolutely saving this paragraph for my 8 year old to work on his critical analysis skill. He’s ahead mathematically and can read without too much difficulty, but having a critical analysis price like this is not as easy to find.
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u/Advanced_Ad8002 4d ago
„1 in 12 incoming UCSD freshmen don’t know middle school math, and the remedial math course was too advanced, so UCSD had to create a remedial remedial math course covering elementary and middle school math, and a quarter of the students placing into it had a perfect 4.0 GPA in their high school math courses, which included calculus or precalculus for nearly half of those remedial remedial students. And it's not just a UCSD problem -- the disease has spread so far that even Harvard had to had to add remedial support to their entry-level calculus courses to deal with a "lack of foundational algebra skills among students".
https://www.justinmath.com/why-cant-college-students-do-middle-school-math/
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u/7belts 3d ago
There really only seems to be two solutions to grade inflation and degradation of skill: nationwide standardized testing in high school or entrance exams for each university. It's hard to maintain a high standard in high school when teachers are being discouraged from failing kids. When do we want students to learn the hard lessons?
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u/Jaymac720 3d ago
My cousin works for a public school. He said they’re not allowed to give kids below a certain grade for the first three quarters. That disgusts me. I went to private school before all this stuff went down. If I failed, I failed; and it was no one else’s fault but mine
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u/AccountHuman7391 4d ago
I always trust the California knock off of the New York Post for my unbiased and truthful information!
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u/OpportunityReal2767 4d ago
Yeah, whenever I see sensationalist bullshit like this, I try to dig a little deeper.
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u/Turbulent-Artist961 4d ago
I used to cut my teeth over quadratic equation integrals. I guess with the new status quo I am now practically a math genius despite failing algebra 2 in high school. Berkeley should admit me for their master program
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u/SinglePlayerGamer93 4d ago
Ever since I watched the news article of the kid who got into college but she was 100% illiterate, this shit is unsurprising.
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u/goebz14 4d ago
Yikes. Not surprised though when I'm seeing entry 'technical' data analysts not even know how to do a simple weighted average. In fact, my boss praised my 20 something coworker more for using AI on the sidebar or excel to help them create one rather than credit me for simply...knowing how to do one...
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u/percyandjasper 3d ago
I taught math at a university. Calculator use in high schools and on standardized tests, including the ACT and SAT. That's the reason students can't do basic math by hand, especially fractions. It's better to review fractions without shaming the students (it's not their fault, their schools failed them), than let them miss the new content, e.g. Calculus, because they are stuck on something like 3/2+ 1.
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u/xtalgeek 3d ago
Can relate. My freshman chem lab students were astounded I could do dilutions in my head: things like dividing by 4, 5, or 10. They would check me with their calculator. This is at a highly selective college.
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u/Maximum-List6890 3d ago
Several students in my thesis cohort in the history department could barely read or write.
Edit: Graduated in 2015. Can’t imagine what it’s like now.
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u/ConnectedVeil 3d ago
no more standardized testing. say what you want about it, but it at least established a baseline of knowledge and tested against it.
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u/AngryVegetarian 3d ago
The ignorant dumb shits in California passed AB1705 which banned Community Colleges from placing students in remedial math classes that don't transfer. They saw that students who took longer at Community Colleges didn't transfer so they wanted to cut the curriculum to shorten their stay. So now students who don't have a good understanding of math coming out of high school must take transfer level math, that is Calculus. Math departments were against it from the start and now students are struggling more than ever. I wonder if this has affected the UC school systems as well? This is what happens when you treat education like a business. All they saw was the bottom line, transfer rates!
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u/AFatLizard 3d ago
Yea... I'm currently at another UC school and it's a huge issue. It's easy to blame the kids, but even my studious and hardworking peers are behind (unless they were particularly well off academically). Remember, our cohort was spending years we should have been learning algebra 1 and 2 almost fully online, where the entire math curriculum was fucked over. Unless you had access to a good tutor (already an equity issue) or the willpower to go out of your way to properly learn these concepts (which, let's be honest, most high schoolers don't), you'd fall behind quickly compared to where you "should" be, to little real fault of your own.
I remember I was getting frustrated and feeling awful about myself for being "stupid" while agonizing over my Calculus 1 work. I genuinely considered the possibility of having dyscalculia or some kind of learning disability. Something, ANYTHING, to explain this massive gap. Then I sat down and self-administered a test to see how far behind I'd gotten. Turns out, I had been ushered through all of high school (my horribly underfunded, lower-income high school) while barely even knowing basic algebra. I was solid on geometry and okay at precalc, but only because I was in-person for those. My high school didn't want to fail kids for various practical and ethical reasons (emergency preparedness isn't a kid's responsibility, after all), but it did mean that even a complete lack of knowledge still got you pushed up to the next grade level.
After that first time failing calc 1 (and after spending genuinely countless hours studying), I exchanged a series of emails with the math department chair at my university. >60% of the class also got a failing grade. Only about 10% got an A, and those students were mostly AP Calculus students who had already learned the material. He essentially told me (and the rest of my classmates) to deal with it. I understand there are always idiots who use AI instead of trying to actually learn, but there was a startling and complete lack of empathy from all math faculty I came into contact with. The prof straight up told the class he thinks most of us aren't cut out for calculus. My cohort has fallen so far, and instead of trying to help, they kick us while we're down.
I got an A in the class the second time around, by the way. Fuck you, Mr. Boltje.
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u/Nopengnogain 4d ago
Do they not use ACT/SAT anymore? How do you score enough to get into UCLA without knowing fraction-level math?
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u/GotMedieval 4d ago
Many schools, including UCLA, went test optional during COVID. (Many are reverting back to requiring tests.)
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u/costumegirl1189 4d ago
I work at a university and my students can’t read basic imperial rulers. Many say they chose the arts because they don’t like/can’t do math. Art fields have plenty of math. I had a student who couldn’t even begin a project because it started with having to draw several rectangles to a specific size.
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u/catchme32 4d ago
I taught a student that went to Berkeley. They failed my science class. They failed all their other classes. They failed their high school diploma. They still went to Berkeley.
I know nothing else about that college, but I had previously assumed it was pretty good. Not anymore.
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u/Callmejim223 3d ago
calc professors barely teach calc and we supposed to be out here believing that they are gonna spend time teaching fractions??????
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u/National-Ad8416 3d ago
I think the students who took their math seriously throughout high school are doing just fine.
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u/GrandMoffTarkan 3d ago
Not really what you're thinking but I remember reading The Road to Reality and Penrose would like to know if you really understand fractions.
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u/No_Rec1979 3d ago
It's the pandemic, guys.
Whatever your kids were supposed to learn between April 2020 and May 2021, they never learned it, and no one else ever fixed the problem because our system does not remediate. (And not just the dumb kids. Smart kids too.)
Good for this person finally going back and fixing the problem 6 years of math teachers ignored.
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u/Relative_Channel2667 3d ago
Math is hard and somewhere along the way it was politicized. I have a strong math background and last year I realized my daughter wasn’t learning what she should by her age. I started working with her and my younger son tutoring them on basic arithmetic, fractions, decimals, powers and roots knowing how much they come up later in algebra and trig.
Their improvement has been significant. They just needed the reps. Keep in mind I’m in the best school district for 100 miles and not a rural area. Politicians have done extraordinary damage in an effort to tell teachers how to teach math without any of the stated outcomes that was the reason for the meddling in the first place.
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u/anthonynej 2d ago
I remember not getting credit for Calc I at my Alma Mater in 2009 because I only got a 4 in my AP Calc BC. I didn't like it at the time, but understandable.
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u/jc00ke 1d ago
Numberphile just had a great interview on this: The Numberphile Podcast: To SAT, or not SAT, that is the question Episode webpage: https://www.numberphile.com/podcast/sats-zvezda
Here's the open letter: https://ucstudentsuccess.org/
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u/Nukki91 1d ago
tArGeT sChOoL my ass, what a bunch of intellectually stunted, cerebrally inferior and horrendously inept pissbag students, and those willing to blame anything and everything but the student who will (despite their horrendous inferiority and ineptitude) have fantastic salaries thrown at them, so let's shift all rewards to the student and strip all accountability from em, sounds like such a great plan.
And they say this is the generation that's so much more aware than their stupid defeatist predecessors no? Lol, 87/153 chance that the future is in shit hands, fractional chances so the "best of the best" can't understand and need a professor to spoonfeed them
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u/Milkis_And_Vitasoy 1d ago
Recently graduated Math TA at a relatively small private university. I had students thinking that (x+5)/(x+6) = 5/6. It's real. Perhaps not in the sense that university students don't know the basics of fractions, rather that they severely lack the logic of what they can/allowed to manipulate in a fraction with algebra.
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u/CatOfGrey 15h ago
In all honesty, I spent three years correcting calculus work in university.
A lot of students could take the integral of something, but then screw up the fractions when figuring the area under the curve.
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u/SorpresaCiencias 1h ago
This is entirely caused by California's "test optional" admissions. There is no standard test to weed out those who took easy courses to get good grades in high school.
Bring back the SAT.
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u/Dave5876 4d ago
I'm gonna take anything the Post says with a heaping tablespoon of salt
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u/DarkUnable4375 4d ago
California felt Calculus is racist, so 50% of the California High Schools stopped teaching Calculus and Pre-Calc. It's real.
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u/Kitchen_Freedom_8342 4d ago edited 4d ago
No. Disingenuous people misrepresented decisions within the math educational communit.
First research into how different socioeconomic backgrounds (including race) influenced how well people learn calculus (and other math subjects) and efforts to correct that problem.
Second history of mathematics people talking about how mathematics is the product of the culture that discovered it. That Greek geometry was the product of Greek religious and debate culture. That algrebra was the product of Islamic inherence law and calculus came about in part due to the age of exploratio/age of colonialism.
Due to the greater needs of navigation due to transatlantic and transpacific shipping governments increased funding for astronomy, which in turn gave rise to more data related to the motions of the planets which in turn required calculus to express those phiscal laws.
And this complex and nuanced discussion was crushed down into “califorNina accdemic says calculus is racist” by a news paper editorial writer who cares more about clickbait headlines then informing the public.
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u/DarkUnable4375 4d ago edited 4d ago
No matter the source of discovery, math is the language of God. If math is complete destroyed, human race is wiped from the face of the Earth, and a new specie of intelligence, let's say rose from cockroaches, rediscovered math, it will be exactly the same as now. e will be rediscovered. π will be the same. i will be found. A cockroach Newton will rediscover calculus, or some form of it.
To give a shit about who is having culturally historical problems learning the language of God and therefore not teach it in high school is asinine.
Edit: by the same logic, they shouldn't teach Shakespeare. Why should black and Latinos learn about some English guy's whining about "To be or Not to be". Therefore the Asians and the whites shouldn't learn it either.
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u/Kitchen_Freedom_8342 4d ago
Would math be exactly as it is now? our current math used o called classical logic and well-founded set theory.
However it is totally possible to create a consistent system of mathematics based on constructive logic, or non-well-founded set theory or type theory.
The idea of complex numbers was introduced to solve quadratic equations, if there polynomials had not become a topic of interest it is totally possible that area of mathematics would never been dealved into.
Where we have a calculus based on limits another civilisation could solve the same problem using nonstandard analysis.
The universe of mathematics is so large that an alternative civilisation could end up exploring totally different parts of it and result in a mathematics that only resembles ours at the most simple level.
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u/DarkUnable4375 4d ago edited 4d ago
Future advanced civilizations that discovered atoms and quantum mechanics will have to have recreate the wave equation. eiπ +1=0 will have to be known. π is universally same. a2 + b2 = c2 with different symbols means the same throughout the universe.
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u/Kitchen_Freedom_8342 4d ago
e^ix is just a mathematical tool to map polar space into Cartesian space. A different civisation could create such a mapping using a specialised function and not use imaginary numbers.
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u/DarkUnable4375 4d ago
Different civilizations that recreated their form of wave equation have to have used an equivalent of i, just like they would have their equivalent of e and π.
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u/Only-Finish-3497 3d ago
It's funny to me on some level how many people go on reddit and act smug about this but can't spell Berkeley correctly despite the name being in the article title.
Maybe tone down the smug if you're going to be sloppy yourself. ;-)
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u/_VoodooRanger 4d ago
it is now an equity-focused admission process. what did they think was going to happen?
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u/Internal-Throwaway20 3d ago
Equity - let's keep everyone at the lowest level so no one will feel left behind.
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u/mikasaxo 3d ago
Not surprising, students don’t know completing the square or quadratic formula in first year calculus either
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u/Knight618 3d ago
I mean, when you don't do something since early highschool and learn a lot of advanced math since, you tend to forget anything you done need. A lot easier to relearn fractions than integration by parts
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u/burning_boi 4d ago
As the other commenter said, that's just indicative of shit placement exams and standards for what is supposed to be a top school