From: hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Subject: Re: Student attitudes
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1992 18:20:29 GMT

In article <1992Dec17.101456.23362@bernina.ethz.ch> tilo@nmr.lpc.ethz.ch (Tilo Levante) writes:
>In article <1992Dec16.151314.17428@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca>, mroussel@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Marc Roussel) writes:
>|> >If the physics department teaches calculus, what are the mathematicians
>|> >going to do?

>|>      If the physics department teaches physics (including calculus) to
>|> its students, the mathematics department can teach mathematics to its
>|> students in the way it sees fit.  It can also offer courses to students
>|> who are just plain interested in the subject.  The current system serves no one
>|> particularly well.  Even when there are separate courses for math
>|> majors, departments such as physics apply considerable pressure to keep
>|> the contents of these courses consistent with those of the "math for
>|> physical scientists" courses.  This is not done maliciously; the physics
>|> department often just thinks that a properly designed (by physics
>|> standards) "math for mathematicians" course is good for their students.
>|> Unfortunately, it's bad for the math students and not that great for the
>|> physics students either.

>I also work as teaching assistant in a physical chemistry lab course and can
>agree with your argument from that view.

>But on the other hand, I think that already now, the connections
>between different departments are very very weak. For students,
>the only contact to "neighbor" sciences and the departments are only
>through these courses.

>I think it is a good training for students to learn things from
>a different view. I myself studied Computer Science and we had to
>take the same courses as the math-students for a bachalor degree.
>This good basic education in mathematics helped me much in physical
>chemistry.

>The courses like "math for chemists" are (at least from my point of
>view) bad, because they assume, that a chemist can not learn the
>therory and tries to give many, many cooking recipe, without conection.
>I belive that most chemists are not able to give a good lecture about
>mathematics.

This last paragraph really gets to the nub of the problem.  Physicists
and chemists and engineers do have to use the recipes, and they do not
consciously use the understanding of the meaning of what goes into 
those formulas and methods.  BC (before computers) more of this was
necessary, but the high school mathematics, universally taken by these
scientists, did not give good grades to those who could not at least
use the concepts; this is very definitely not the case today.

The recipes can, in most cases, be carried out by a clerk or a machine
without understanding what they mean.  But only an understanding of the
underlying concepts can enable the formulation of a new problem in such
a way that the recipes can be carried out.  This is what is lacking in
courses in mathematics, and especially in statistics, for people in 
specified fields.  The concepts do not change, but the importance of
the various types of manipulations change.  But more and more, machines
are capable of the manipulations.

-- 
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@snap.stat.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)  
{purdue,pur-ee}!snap.stat!hrubin(UUCP)
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