![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Sep. 7th, 2008 08:57 amSomething of a mild technical accomplishment: I got Kerberos and OpenAFS working on my laptop, which means that as long as I have network access I'll be able to mount my GEOG class drives and not scp lab documents all across creation. I'm somewhat absurdly pleased about this.
I can tell that this semester is going to be harder than it needs to be, partially because I tend to forget critical things, but partially because my STATS professor has english as a second language, and her TA doesn't actually know much more than we do.
The last set of instructions started:
Solve the quadratic equation: 2x^2 + 6x + 4 = 0
Which I did automatically, just by looking at it. And then I went through the following instructions, which left me lost:
Now, you probably see it, but I didn't, and I was tired and it was the end of a long day. I called the TA over. What are we doing here? "Just follow the instructions." Look, I did. I solved the equation by hand, but I don't understand what we are doing here. "Sometime she has you do things you don't understand. I mean, you don't have to worry about it much, you won't need this. Just follow the instructions." So, what you're saying is, you can't actually explain the math to me? "No."
It gets better. I sent mail to the prof. Now, about three seconds after I hit "send", the answer hit me like a pile of bricks. Of course. *But it gets better.* Despite explicitly asking about what we are doing mathematically, what I got back was this: "I just want you to know that you can use 'variables' instead of inputting the numbers directly."
ARGH.
Everything would have been much clearer if the instructions had just included the quadratic equation, *not* broken up into pieces.
ETA: for reference, from wikipedia, this is the solution to a quadratic equation:
I can tell that this semester is going to be harder than it needs to be, partially because I tend to forget critical things, but partially because my STATS professor has english as a second language, and her TA doesn't actually know much more than we do.
The last set of instructions started:
Solve the quadratic equation: 2x^2 + 6x + 4 = 0
Which I did automatically, just by looking at it. And then I went through the following instructions, which left me lost:
a <- 2 b <- 6 c <- 4 underroot <- b^2 - 4 * a * c underroot [1] 4 root <- sqrt(underroot) root [1] 2 numplus <- -b + root numplus [1] -4 numminus <- -b - root numminus [1] -8 x1 <- numplus / (2 * a) x1 [1] -1 x2 <- numminus / (2 * a) x2 [1] -2
Now, you probably see it, but I didn't, and I was tired and it was the end of a long day. I called the TA over. What are we doing here? "Just follow the instructions." Look, I did. I solved the equation by hand, but I don't understand what we are doing here. "Sometime she has you do things you don't understand. I mean, you don't have to worry about it much, you won't need this. Just follow the instructions." So, what you're saying is, you can't actually explain the math to me? "No."
It gets better. I sent mail to the prof. Now, about three seconds after I hit "send", the answer hit me like a pile of bricks. Of course. *But it gets better.* Despite explicitly asking about what we are doing mathematically, what I got back was this: "I just want you to know that you can use 'variables' instead of inputting the numbers directly."
ARGH.
Everything would have been much clearer if the instructions had just included the quadratic equation, *not* broken up into pieces.
ETA: for reference, from wikipedia, this is the solution to a quadratic equation:
