Even though I can see the value in what you’re saying and agree completely, I can’t help but feel like my attention span has been ruined by my casual internet usage.
I’ve been reading again, before I go to bed, and after months of picking back up the habbit I still only feel half as able to concentrate on novels as I was as a teenager.
I agree with OP - the language seems to re-represent the languages key words in ways that are natural for Spanish speakers to understand.
I think the value this will bring isn't very high. I personally believe that early programming has less to do with reading the code as natural language and more to do with understanding what the individual constructs achieve. This is purely anecdotal, but I taught programming to a few students in French and the presence of English never came up as a blocker.
Fun story : for the hell of it, I once tried to code an entire project with some friends in French exclusively (that is, mainly variable/method/class names etc). As much as I love my mother tongue, its not always very concise. The whole thing became super bloated. We ended up reverting back to English.
I strongly believe that helping younger students gain strong intuition for these operators pays dividends towards their later success in maths.
I've always run into the following problem: I try to motivate multiplication as repeated addition, which does help with intuition, but then things totally fall apart when we move on from integers into fractional values.
1/2 * 1/2 -> 1/4.
Sure you can teach someone to simply multiple the numerator and denominator, but it doesn't necessarily help them make clear sense of what's going on.
I think it's sort of an illusion (though certainly a useful one) that numbers are all part of the same system. Multiplication of natural numbers is defined to be repeated addition, and I'm not really sure how you could define natural number multiplication in any other way. From the natural numbers you can go on to define the integers, rationals, then reals, and each has its own definition of multiplication, though they each depend on the definition of multiplication from the previous system.
There's a standard way of lifting each type of number to the next type, and this lift is compatible with all the basic operations (the lift is a "homomorphism"), so it's easy to pretend that the real numbers (or complex numbers if you want) are the universal system.
So with your example of going to fractional values, you're right, repeated addition falls apart -- but I'd say that's because it's not the definition for multiplication of rational numbers! Multiplying numerators and denominators is the usual definition, but that gives about as much intuition as does the definition for multiplying natural numbers. Sort of "the point" of multiplication of naturals, I think, is that it represents how many things you have if you arrange them in an n by m grid. Rational numbers show up in geometry with similar shapes (scaling), and for a few reasons you'd want multiplication to represent by how much something scales after a composition of scalings; maybe "the point" of rational number multiplication (at least algebraically) is that you can defer dividing until later, i.e. (a/b) * (c/d) is (a*c)/b / d.
Fractional numbers make sense to me as an extension, but it also requires an intuition of division on the same lines.
Take number n and multiply it by number x/y. To do this, you have to split number n into y parts and take x number of them. So to multiply 8 by 3/4, you split 8 into 4 parts (2 + 2 + 2 + 2) and then take 3 of those parts. This ends up being 2 + 2 + 2 = 6.
For multiplying two fractions, you have to extend it to n/m * x/y. Since you can multiply the top and bottom of a fraction by the same number, you can write n/m as ny/my. Then you can have n/my be your “equal part”, and take x of them. So 1/2 * 1/2, you take 2/4 and split it into 1/4 + 1/4 and 1 of them, so the answer is 1/4.
To me at least, this makes sense as an extension of multiplication is repeated addition. It’s when you get to irrationals that it starts to fall apart, and even then the intuitions the above way of thinking led me to have served me well.
As someone with an almost solely intuitive understanding of mathematics, I still find the "repeated addition" idea useful when it comes to fractions. If 4 * 4 is 4 repeated 4 times (4 + 4 + 4 + 4). Then 1/2 * 1/2 is a half repeated half times, or a half of a half, which is a quarter. The numbers get hard to work with but the intuitive idea is still there.
> Also, I learned that the french in school is nothing like the french they speak in France. Sure, you get by and they'll understand you, but french relies heavy on vernacular, sayings and expressions.
Virtually everyone who learns a language in school as you described will feel this way when they encounter native speakers in the target language's country(s) of origin.
The reality of school teaching is that it enforces prescriptive snapshots of the language. It teaches the grammatical "rules" of a language at a moment in time, but these rules are always changing. Common English has changed a lot since 1800; consider how different an English class in 1800s might be from one now, though they are both valid in being called English classes. The classes continue exist, but they are often lingering behind the real deal.
Language is developed naturally by our minds, and its inner workings are still largely unknown to us. The best way to learn it is by actual exposure to it, as it is meant to be used. You are always going to be removed from this reality if you are sitting in a classroom with minimal direct exposure.
I can literally hear La pizza song [1] in my head as I read your comment which is pretty much all I remember from elementary school. It was only in my final year of high school that our teacher who was from Paris really pushed us and it didn't involve us singing awkward songs.
Now I have PTSD everytime I see or eat pizza, the song plays in my head, like some sick Pavlov experiment.
Who are we considering to be google's customers here ? Someone will have to pay union fees and elect representatives, presumably. I can see this being a big hurdle for the idea.
In drawing the distinction between technologies that enable us to act on a decision we’ve already made versus those that try to make the decision for us, its interesting to note that the former is increasingly leading
to the latter.
When I started using platforms like Netflix and Uber Eats, it was because I already knew the things I wanted to watch and eat, and they provided an easy way for me to act on those desires. As they became normalized parts of my day to day, it only seemed natural that I should start following their recommendations as well. Now it feels increasingly like I go to them to give me answers, unlike when I started out.
I rejected Spotify's Discover Weekly suggestions for a really long time, but lately I've been more and more accepting of the fact that wow, I really do like Discover Weekly's suggestions every week, and I don't know how to reconcile that
We're all dealing with the same thing but its not just Spotify...its every algorithm we encounter. Its hard to reconcile that we're not unique, we're extremely predicable.
In the 1970s, a Canadian composer named Mort Garson composed a full electronic album meant to be played to house plants. It's called Mother Earth's Plantasia, because it was primarily distributed at plant boutique in L.A. named "Mother Earth".
My dad had a copy lying about that I used to listen to in high school when I'd be studying. It turns out its become a cult classic online, as a sort of pioneering electronic work [1][2]
Anyways, included with the original album is a wee book suggesting that plants benefit hugely from listening to music. Whether that claim has any basis in reality aside, Garson also names 15 hassle-free plants for the home. I can attest to the fact that they are easy to take care of as a relatively new indoor gardener.
They include:
Chinese Evergreen, Sansevieria, Spathiphyllum, Palm, Nephthytis, Philodendron, Boston Fern, Piggyback, Maranta, Dracaena, Dieffen-bachia, Aspidistra, Pothos, Ficus and Grape Ivy.
Just last week, a song from this album popped on my Spotify discover weekly and I really liked it. Until I read your comment right now, I didn’t understand the context of the album. When I checked the screen to see what I was listening to I first thought it was done in parody or in a mocking fashion or something. I had a mental note to go back and research it a bit more to figure out what it really was, and now I know. And I’m suddenly excited to go back and listen to the entire album. Thanks!
... deleted deleted, or soft deleted ? I guess there are probably many complications preventing hard deleting, other parties investigating abusive material might need or want access.
This can be very hard to acquire, especially for events that we are far removed from. Then again, maybe it isn't necessary. Simply reading about a story twice with a deliberate bias on each side can be extremely revealing.
Would more people be inclined to do this if we taught it in schools? I hope so. These days it feels like the reporting of the news is more real to the general population than the news itself ..
Not only is it hard to acquire, such viewpoints are impossible to acquire: every attempt to put experience and research into words has a point of view and that point of view colors the story being told. Attempts to be impartial are themselves often a persuasive technique intended to make your appear view more plausible.
I would recommend Joshua Foer "Moonwalking with Einstein" for those interested in memory. Spaced repition is effective to an extent, but I find the techniques explored in his book to be much more effective. The tl;dr is that you are much better off constructing "memory palaces" in your head. You pick a place you know extremely well (like your family home), and you imagine yourself navigating that space and "placing" reminders of the things you'd like to remember along the way.
It's like inventing a very surreal dream to help you avoid forgetting things. I use variants of it for things like people's names and ideas I'd like to explore all the time, it's super helpful.
The memory palace technique is not a silver bullet to permanently remember things. Sure it is fun at first. Eventually, you will have to review your memory palace periodically otherwise you will forget it.
I’ve been reading again, before I go to bed, and after months of picking back up the habbit I still only feel half as able to concentrate on novels as I was as a teenager.