Thesis!

[dvandom]

2.3M PDF of my PhD Thesis. Antithesis not available at this time. Thanks to scavgraphics for the widget that let me splice the chapters together more smoothly.

Comments

[5eh.livejournal.com]

would my head explode if I tried to read it?

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Probably not. It's Physics Education Research, so while it contains a fair amount of technical talk, it's mostly the abuse of real English words rather than dense symbology. :) ISTR my mom the English M.A. was able to follow it.

[5eh.livejournal.com]

okie dokie :-) I'll check it out!

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

You might also like this (http://www.phys.ufl.edu/~det/phy2060/heavyboots.html). Some physics education work that's easy to follow but perhaps hard to understand (because the hard part is understanding how the students could think they way they do).

[5eh.livejournal.com]

ahahaha, heavy boots. nice. I'll have to use that one when I do something stupid :-)

[5eh.livejournal.com]

although our discourse reminds me of something. are there any good math web sites out there that teach the philosophy while you're doing problems? I find that I'm okay at the basics of math, but once things get more complex, I spend a lot of time asking, "Why?", and getting the response, "That's the way it is." I think if I had context, I'd be able to get the semantics down better...I've found the same true in foreign languages for me. I can pick it up much more quickly if I have context and am not just learning vocabulary words.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

None I know off-hand, but I'm not all that plugged into Math Education Research other than the work being done here at K-State, and that's not very philosophy-heavy.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

Because of the aforementioned "Because" that was always the answer to "but WHY?" it was Penny's practice to declare herself a Math Atheist whenever anything more complicated than Algebra was invoked. Not that she could not understand it, she just wasn't interested in it unless it mattered to her direct day-to-day life, and she simply said about such things, 'It's all made up.' The secret code and the unwillingness to share the secret was sufficient to brand it a cult.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Oh, but they're all too willing to share the secret. It's not their fault that it takes years of study to figure it out. ;)

[foomf.livejournal.com]

Actually, it IS their fault when it isn't properly taught. When an alleged math teacher pats a girl on the head and says "You won't need to know this, dear" or "I don't know how to explain this so I'll just say Because I Say So" this is where the math atheism takes hold. AND, it _IS_ just made-up. There were two systems for Calculus, and at least one and maybe more which were invented by people who hadn't been exposed to it, and thus came up with the calculus themselves in post-Newton years. Neither Newton nor Leibniz methods of notation have made enough sense to me for them to stick instinctively, but then, I Don't Need To Use Them.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

But they're willing to share the secret. Just not necessarily able.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

Again, "Don't worry, little girl, you don't need to know this."

YES, some asshat did tell her that. She didn't believe it but the final nail was was the later Geometry teacher who couldn't be bothered to repeat when he went quickly over something that only two students got, and the rest looked confused and didn't get.

[ndgmtlcd.livejournal.com]

Yes, you nailed it: "Just not necessarily able". In years of being in a special Science concentration in high school and junior colege I had one, just one math teacher who was actually able to explain, really explain math to me. His name was Pierre Parent and I'll remember him for the rest of my life even if by now I've forgotten all the calculus he really, truly managed to teach me.

[lord-xiphos.livejournal.com]

Back when I still did computer animations, I needed a way to calculate reasonably realistic movements of objects and their reactions to each other. At that point, I only knew some trig, geom, and of course algebra, and POV-Ray did not have any kind of physics engine in it at that time (I think there's a plugin now, but I haven't really played with it in nearly a decade). Without knowing what I had just done, I recreated calculus, or at least a section of it. Made picking up calc a few years later so much easier.