<p>Good for you, Sylvan. Did you think your 600 fairly represented your math skill at the time you took the test? Did you find you struggled compared to your classmates in math-based classes?</p>
<p>I was kind of an odd duck Cardinal, in that I didn’t take the SAT in high school, went directly to work instead of college, took the SAT 2 years out, took 10 years, 4 jobs, marriage, divorce, death of mother, 9 apartments, paying my own way, and numerous other hardships just to get to the Bachelors. </p>
<p>But more directly to your question, I was a classic mathphobe in hs, and never took geometry, or really any math beyond grade 9. In community college I took 3 semesters of remedial math (this was after the 600 SAT) with stellar grades. After that, I maintained a 3.83 GPA through undergrad. Once I had the appropriate background, I was tutoring my classmates in math-based classes (pretty much everything ;)).</p>
<p>Great story!</p>
<p>What an inspirational story, Sylvan! I love community colleges; they’re all about second chances. You took your second chance and ran with it.</p>
<p>Interestingly, you are not at all a contradiction to the study’s claim. The authors explicitly do not say that a low math SAT demonstrates an immutable mental limit keeping a student from success in math-heavy fields. Rather, they say their data supports one of these two hypotheses:</p>
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<p><a href=“http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1011/1011.0663v1.pdf[/url]”>http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1011/1011.0663v1.pdf</a> [Note that I’ve been quoting from two different papers about the study, Nonlinear Psychometric Thresholds for Physics and Mathematics and Data Mining the University: College GPA Predictions from SAT Scores. Both URLS were given upthread.]</p>
<p>The authors explicitly do not take a position between those two alternatives. Your experience supports the first hypothesis. You weren’t ready for college math-heavy courses, so you took remedial courses, passed with flying colors, and then you were ready. Brava!</p>
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<p>Since the SAT math includes geometry questions, getting a 600 before taking geometry is actually quite a good performance. Getting a 600 after taking algebra 1, geometry, and algebra 2 is not as good…</p>
<p>I hope you don’t think this is prying, Sylvan, but I keep thinking about your inspirational story. Why do you think you were a mathphobe in high school? Do you think there could have been circumstances in which you took a more direct route to your academic success?</p>
<p>I’m concerned that we in North America have institutional and cultural barriers keeping talented girls from success in STEM fields. Do you have any ideas about what should be changed, to allow girls like you were to get to their bachelors degrees in STEM fields without the hardships you faced?</p>
<p>I keep getting a University of Oregon banner.</p>
<p>Phil Knight (Nike) has redesigned UofO Helmets for the Rose Bowl.
Go Ducks.</p>
<p>Speaking of Oregon and the Rose Bowl, some wacky researchers at U of O have discovered that male GPAs go down when the football team is winning:</p>
<p><a href=“http://pages.uoregon.edu/jlindo/BigtimeSportsAndStudentAchievement.pdf[/url]”>http://pages.uoregon.edu/jlindo/BigtimeSportsAndStudentAchievement.pdf</a></p>
<p>Calmom and I disagreed about how to talk about magnitudes of correlations, but the correlation between the football team’s winning percentage and the gender gap in GPA was -0.73. At least in my book that’s huge.</p>
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CF, my elementary/secondary school experience was messed up by massive dysfunction at home. We were extremely poor, moved around a lot, attended 6 schools in my first 6 years, my abusive alcoholic father died when I was 8, I was sent to live with my grandmother after my mother remarried and the stepfather was even worse. Once she escaped from him and we reunited, we moved across the country for a year and then back to my grandmother’s. This caused me to miss 8th grade geometry due to different practices in the different states. </p>
<p>On top of this, the various new-math fads of the '70’s made it impossible for my mother or grandmother to help with any math problem I might have had, not that anyone cared anyways. 9th grade algebra put me under altogether. All I remember was that we spent a lot of time doing square roots of numbers with some algorithm and she talked alot about infinity. I decided I just wasn’t good at that stuff.</p>
<p>In my high school, I think the teachers just accepted it when I said I “wasn’t good at math” rather than making any attempt to fix anything. Also I think that it often seems to be kind of accepted that poor or severely disadvantaged kids probably aren’t going to college, so no one took me under their wing to advance any such cause. It was accepted that I was on the typing/filing/secretary track even though the humanities teachers at least knew I was pretty smart. No one in my mother’s family had EVER gone past high school, so it wasn’t like anyone expected me to either.</p>
<p>Sorry for rambling.</p>
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<p>That at least sounds like a gender issue. In the 70s, teachers weren’t imagining that boys would become secretaries, but a girl? Of course she’s no good at math. She can be a secretary and she won’t have to worry her pretty little head about those tricky numbers.</p>
<p>Also I’m sure you’re right that people, even teachers, don’t expect disadvantaged kids to go to college. OTOH every student in the wealthy suburb I grew up in was expected to go to college. </p>
<p>I admire you tremendously for getting past those barriers.</p>
<p>I can relate to that: When UO and OSU are winning, I spend less time on CC and more time at the sports bar. </p>
<p>BTW it’s New Year, I should be at the Beach where typically on New Year’s Day is clear, not windy, and smooth oceans. </p>
<p>Go Ducks.</p>
<p>I do want to point out that there is another, very different way, to interpret the data presented in the first report. It could be interpreted simply as evidence that the faculty in the math & physics department at University of Oregon are doing a poor job of teaching their students. The top students coming in tend to do well despite the poor quality of the teaching, but the weaker student do not get the support or quality of instruction that they need, so they are unable to do well. I’d note that the data & graphs showed some under-600 SAT students doing ok in individual, introductory classes – but the strong performance wasn’t sustained over the series of upper level classes required for the major. The authors of the study interpreted that as a weakness among the students… but someone who believes that it is the job of a university to teach might see that as a failing on the part of the faculty. </p>
<p>You would need data from other with a similar statistical array of incoming students to figure out the answer to that question – perhaps a CTCL college or a study that includes [NSSE</a> data](<a href=“http://nsse.iub.edu/]NSSE”>http://nsse.iub.edu/). </p>
<p>I mean, I started out colleges as a STEM major but changed after the first semester. The reason I shifted majors wasn’t because I couldn’t do the work – it was because of the poor quality of teaching (huge class, weak lecturer) and the fact that most of the TA’s, mine included, did not speak English. </p>
<p>Sylvan’s story is a good illustration of the potential that exists in students who with weak entrance scores. There is no way to sort out whether a weak score indicates lack of potential or lack of opportunity unless there is an effort to fill the opportunity gap. A university department that is not able to serve the needs of at least some students entering with weaker scores may be a department that is not only failing to meet the needs of individual students, but one that is perpetuating discrimination among certain classes of students. </p>
<p>I mean - do you remember the movie Stand and Deliver about the high school calculus teacher [Jaime</a> Escalante](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante]Jaime”>Jaime Escalante - Wikipedia) It has already been demonstrated anecdotally that a good teacher can enable poor performing students to succeed in learning higher math – so the real question university faculty should be asking is how they can improve the quality of their own programs and teaching. </p>
<p>Or, to put it another way, the stats from all other department show that while SAT scores have some predictive influence, there are always students who break the pattern and do well despite entering with weak scores. Perhaps the math & physics profs at U of Oregon should be looking at their numbers as a failure to do the job of teaching as well as the profs in all the other departments.</p>
<p>Sylvan, your background sounds very similar to mine. But you ended up teaching physics, right? How did you get your background to where you ended up? Maybe there in lies important ideas that need to be adapted. </p>
<p>Calmom, this is a terrific point. But it seems the teaching of physics is challenging far beyond Oregon. Carl Wieman, the Nobel prize winning physicist, has been devoting this last part of his career to unlocking the code because it’s a fundamentally gigantic issue everywhere. </p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://cwsei.ubc.ca/]CWSEI[/url”>http://cwsei.ubc.ca/]CWSEI[/url</a>]</p>
<p>Well, you may have to look systemically at the way the subject is taught, in general. What teaching techniques and approaches that are used in other disciplines could also be incorporated?</p>
<p>I know enough about education to have ideas about how math/science education can be improved for younger children – of course many of those ideas have already been incorporated at many successful elementary and middle schools. I don’t know enough about the subjects at the university level to know what methods would be best… I just think that the problem is one that should be addressed.</p>
<p>Calmom, you’re saying in essence that the teachers in the Bio, Physics, Chemistry and Math departments at Oregon can’t teach, because only one student in the sciences/math managed to do well despite entering with weak math scores. Not one department in the sciences or in math there is any good? And yet, in non-STEM areas, the teaching isgood? It’s just a coincidence that good teachers are found in every humanities and social science department, and bad teachers in every hard science department, and math?</p>
<p>Should Oregon be setting up a years-long remedial physics/math/bio/chemistry track, for students who come in unready for those majors? Oregon does offer remedial math. Students with SATs lower than 550 have to take remedial math; students with higher SATs can sign up for calculus only if they pass a placement test. So Oregon is trying to remediate math deficiencies, but math remediation is difficult everywhere.</p>
<p>Jaime Escalante, the Stand and Deliver guy, had to revamp the entire math curriculum at his high school, and had to go into the junior highs and change their programs and offer summer schools before 10th grade, in order to create the pipeline of students ready for his calculus class. The movie presents him as taking unprepared seniors and churning out AP calculus students, but the reality is, his program reached into the eighth grade, and only after years was he able to start teaching students calculus.</p>
<p>The best teachers are often the ones who have had challenges themselves with the material!
They “get” what can stump and confuse their students. They have tried things a variety of ways. And can show clearly how to get through challenges and difficulties. And are empathic with students in difficulty.
I am in awe of those here and elsewhere who overcome challenges and then reach out to help others in these areas. You inspire me, and I am grateful you do what you do!</p>
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I don’t know what the standards are at the Univ. or Oregon – but at the university I attended (California), introductory STEM courses were taught in a large lecture format, supplemented by discussion groups and labs led by TA’s. At the time (early 70’s), the TA’s seemed to be generally fluent in Chinese, but not English. (*This might have improved since then, I don’t know).</p>
<p>Introductory courses in other areas tended to have much smaller classes, from seminars of 15 or less-- to a maximum lecture size of about 150 students. </p>
<p>So to start with, I’d say, small classes + English-speaking teachers would have been a good way for my alma mater to have improved my learning experience. </p>
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If the goal is to increase the number of students who are successful in pursuing studies in the discipline, then revamping of the curriculum makes sense, especially for a public university, which at least in theory should be able to work cooperatively with the entire state-wide educational system. If the goal is to weed out all but a select few – then they can continue what they are doing. </p>
<p>I guess the question is: do they want to have more math & physics majors, or fewer? They are doing a good job of their goal is to have fewer.</p>
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<p>I am firmly in this camp. If it is simply a case of good teaching and effort, my first degree would have been mathematics. Nothing I did could have prevented my math grades from declining through high school and college, from an A+ to a C. It is what it is. We dont live in Lake Wobegon.</p>
<p>I suspect one of the reasons for America obsession with elite schools is an attempt to bypass this direct evaluation, much like many folks prefer backgammon to chess; when luck plays a bigger role, we think our chances are enhanced.</p>
<p>But consider these two hypothetical students:</p>
<p>Student A. Scores 580 on SAT math at one sitting, doesn’t bother to retake because GPA is high enough to guarantee admission at state. U. </p>
<p>Student B. Scores 540 on SAT math, enrolls in prep course, studies and retakes SAT 2 more time, scoring 680 math on third try. </p>
<p>What is the difference between innate ability of student A and student B? You know that student B exists – it happens all the time and it is how the test prep companies make their money. The difference in test score is simply a question of motivation an effort; the difference in long-term results has not been studied.</p>
<p>As to the “Lake Wobegon” analogy … my d. has a WISC-tested IQ in the “highly gifted” range. She scored 590 on the math SAT, 580 on retake. She didn’t study. Her current job includes managing a budget of about $2 million. The skills needed for that task are addition and subtraction. She took one math course in college – statistics – griped about how difficult it was and earned an A. I think her problem is that she doesn’t like math-- I’m pretty sure that she could learn just about anything she wanted, if she set her mind to it. I’d note that I have a son who happens to be very good in math, but has not taken any math in high school – like his sister, he did take one stats class in college, but while my d. took stats at an Ivy, my son took stats online from a community college, so I’m guessing that my d’s course was more demanding. My son just sat for the new GRE and got a perfect math score (170, 99th percentile). Like his sister, however, my son does not like math, though his reasons are different – he finds math to be boring and doesn’t like the repetition involved in working out math problems for homework assignment, she finds it difficult. </p>
<p>I’m not saying that all students who score poorly in math on the SAT can be taught to become strong math students; I’m saying that some students who score poorly have the potential to do much better, an the task for educators should be how to better identify and engage those students.</p>
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<p>We have no idea. The most we know is that if right now, Student A walked into the kind of math or math-intensive science class that is appropriate for majors, he or she would probably struggle. Students in such classes are expected to have SAT-type math at their fingertips.</p>
<p>Non-calculus-based Statistics at college is a class appropriate for people who aren’t good at math. It doesn’t involve any math, just some rather dull recipes, and it’s pitched at a lower level than a math class for physics majors or math majors. So success in such a class doesn’t say much about mathematical ability.</p>