RE: [seul-edu] Math teachers...

[Ray Olszewski <ray@comarre.com>]

At 08:17 AM 7/21/00 -0400, Chris Hedemark wrote:
>Individual skills run through simulators can be a lot of fun.  Back in high
>school we did a stock market simulation.  Everyone started out with some
>funny money and was allowed to use it to participate in any of the
>securities covered in the Wall Street Journal and/or NYT.  Since real life
>daytraders do most of their work through a PC, it can be a reasonable
>facsimile of real life.
>...

No doubt these things are "a lot of fun" and sometimes "a reasonable
facsimile of real life". The question Doug raised, though (at least by
implication), is what *math* skills they teach. Your example, and the
simulations Chris mentioned, seem mostly to teach 4-function arithmetic,
percentages, weighted averages, and other grade-school-level math content,
not what I think of as high-school math (algebra, geometry, trig, calculus
... or am I out of date?).

I had originally started to reply to Chris' first posting with a response
about availability of spreadsheet software, Mathematica, and other serious
tools for doing mathematics. His listing of what the math department
actually used stopped me (as well as prompting me to verify that he really
was at a high school, not a junior high). 


--
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski                                        -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, CA           	 	         ray@comarre.com        
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