[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/sci/ - Science & Math

View post   
File: 1.71 MB, 1923x1347, James_Simons_2007.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
11046478 No.11046478 [Reply] [Original]

> There are no good Math teachers because if you are good at math you either go work for NASA doing research or you go into Finance and make a lot of money. If you stay in Academia you weren't good enough for the Government or Finance

t. Jim Simons (PhD from Berkley) (Net Worth $22 billion)

>> No.11046482

>>11046478
based Jim never said that. but he is based af

>> No.11046494

>>11046478
>Jim Simons
It might be marginally more convincing if you spelled Berkeley correctly.

>> No.11046498

>>11046482
>>11046494
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5Cc_t5QeSw

>> No.11046660

>>11046478
Being good at math does not = being a good teacher of math.

>> No.11046675

>>11046660
ok retard

>> No.11046684

>>11046675
Lrn2teach retard

>> No.11046713

>>11046660
Absolutely this.

But also, it's very easy to imagine that someone driven to study math might also not be driven by money (see Perelman) or want to work with government.

Teaching, especially at a smaller school with minimal politics-bullshit, might be a very attractive position for a lot of people just due to its lack of bullshittery. Your job is primarily to just explain shit that you know. And succeeding at that can be very rewarding in itself.
Note, I'm not talking about (US) highschool and lower. Fuck all that noise, complete circus trainwreck shitshow, nuke it from orbit and start over.

>> No.11046723

>>11046478
one of those guys who actually got LMAO 300k starting any job I want after graduation

>> No.11046734

>>11046684
learn math

>> No.11046748

>>11046498
>Jim Simons
Cool share-thanks.

>> No.11046752

>>11046478
>obese and smelly lesbian
>obese ugly 50 yo spinster
>old alcoholic pervert
>crazy paranoid arab dude
>bipolar woman with crazy eyes who left in the middle of the class to do god know why and yelled at us like a psycho

Those were my maths teachers in middle and high school here in Europe.
I never had one somewhat normal, balanced and likable maths teacher.
Thinking about it, that's probably why I went for med school.

>> No.11046781

>>11046752
Seeing posts like this really gives me perspective on how good my education was (I'm not bragging, im just saying that I often take it for granted). Within my state, my high school was probably in the top 15 public schools, but being from Massachusetts means this is pretty good.
>geometry teacher was a retired vice president of an multinational hotel company, is a millionaire with 3 houses, and was an incredible teacher and role model
>algebra II teacher genuinely enjoyed math and had us "discover" new concepts for ourselves
>AP Calc BC teacher was good but rather average
>AP stats teacher was a funny and personable guy who chose to teach for the vacation time rather than work in the industry (at any time he could get a higher paying job, he has a bunch of rich friends)
>(not math) AP Bio teacher had a PhD and amazing life story, and was definitively the best teacher I've ever had. Out of people outside my family, hes had the greatest impact on my life.

>> No.11046824
File: 2.43 MB, 4303x2022, 4363312C-E7A2-43C1-ADE9-7974DB298DA1.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
11046824

>>11046660
This. Of course it helps. But pedagogy is a legit separate skill.
Also : experience helps a lot, if you actually worked on improving results in that time. And different methods for different students.
All my best teachers had 25+ years of teaching experience and had got the material down to exactly the right amount of info for you to learn, not too much and not too little.

>> No.11046830

>>11046752
Any stories about the pervert?

>> No.11046858

>>11046494
*Burkley

>> No.11046859

>>11046781
You probably live in a pretty well-off district or neighborhood.
I briefly tutored in a very poor neighborhood and it's an absolute shitshow. Really gave me an eye for how much that impacts things. Shitty parents being shitty is mostly the problem imo. Either because they're shitty people, or just so overworked and underpaid that they don't have time/energy to not be shitty.
So their kid comes to school way behind standards, everyone gets dragged down, tons of behavior problems from growing up in front of a phone/tv all day.
And then teachers are given laughable wage for this very demanding, rarely rewarding, unrespected glorified babysitter position.

Yeah, no surprise it doesn't attract the cream of the crop, with so many (most?) schools like this.

>> No.11046863

>>11046660
Had a maths teacher in secondary school, literally one of the named authors on one of the main maths text books, a very good mathematician but was a shitty teacher. The best teacher was actually this retired Navy navigator.

>> No.11046866

>>11046859
not to mention like maybe johnny is falling asleep in class because the police came to his house last night, or he saw daddy hitting mommy or something, and it's your job as Heroic Blessed Teacher to get him to care about fractions or whatever.

>> No.11046879

>>11046478
He didn't say that, but we know it is true. Which is weird, because this guy has a charity for math teachers where he complements their compensation directly. I think something like 15k/year extra. On one side, it's good because you are using the profits from some mathematicians to fund others. On the other side, if you are the mathematician who has to take his handouts instead of making the money that funds the charity, you know you are inferior. You know finance is hoarding all the actually good mathematicians. I already turned my back to academia. I'm willing to go back in, but only if they match my compensation. This is not likely to happen as universities are too busy hiring 5 mediocre PhDs instead of one actually talented guy.

>> No.11046930

>>11046879
through the whole thread we're being loose with what we're talking about with teachers, highschool and earlier is a completely different story than university.
This guy's organization and what he's talking about is highschool teachers, an even harder sell to a competent mathematician than a university position.

>> No.11046964 [DELETED] 

You can't only be good at math and expect to make a lot of money. You need to know psychology, bargaining, ethics, and not on a specialized academic level. This with imagination plus ambition and general knowledge of worth of any good or service, from a craigslist bartered item to multi million tech service is what you need. Anyone with the internet can make a fuck ton of money without bitcoin or stock crap if they had the right information available and math expertise is not necessary.

>> No.11046965

You can't only be good at math and expect to make a lot of money. You need to know psychology, bargaining, ethics, and not on a specialized academic level. This with imagination plus ambition and general knowledge of worth of any good or service, from a craigslist bartered item to multi million tech service is what you need. Anyone with the internet can make a fuck ton of money without bitcoin or stock crap if they had the right information available.Math expertise is not necessary.

>> No.11046966

>>11046478
same with IT

>> No.11046980

>>11046713
>But also, it's very easy to imagine that someone driven to study math might also not be driven by money
And it's also very easy to imagine that there exists a decently sized subset of that group that has a talent and passion for teaching. These people are out there and we should getting a decently sized subset of them into the public school system ought to be desired by society. At least today.

>> No.11047048

>>11046930
I'd also teach high school if they matched my compensation. I'm already researching elite schools as teaching algebra and banging the daughters of world leaders seems like a comfy retirement.

>> No.11047109

>>11046980
I am a H.S chemistry teacher and I love you.

>> No.11047172

>>11046498
I wish this nibba would just make a bunch of online lectures/books available.
It would be a great supplement for high school students and teachers.
He could lay out what his ideal curriculum would be for high schoolers interested in math/science.

Paying a bunch of mediocre teachers nationwide doesn't seem like it would scale well.
He could do way better by paying a few really good lecturers to put up videos or write books that would be available for free.

>> No.11047182

>>11047172
there are a load of good quality open access high school level textbooks though?

>> No.11047195

Who gives a shit anyway?

Really smart people can teach themselves mathematic, that argument might have been true some decades ago but we have internet nowadays.

Those who aren't smart enough don't need to be that good.
One could argue that we should get ride of education altogether then but that would be wrong.
We still need to put enough knowledge in most people, and condition them to be servile enough, to make them the most useful possible.

>> No.11047228

>>11047195
>Really smart people can teach themselves mathematic
Sure, they have the ability, but the vast majority still aren't going to do it without high quality early intervention and encouragement. Suffering through low quality primary school math classes tends to give even the mathematically talented a distaste for the subject. Some find their way into mathematics in their late teens or even in their twenties, but you've got to wonder how these people would have fared if things were done right from the start.

>> No.11047232

Smart kids these days would rather spend their time on cognitively challenging vidya than math. It's sad.

>> No.11047247

>>11046478
> There are no good Math teachers because if you are good at math you either go work for NASA doing research or you go into Finance and make a lot of money.
applied math cope. people who are good at actual math try to expand it instead of devoting their lives to evading taxes, selling tech to brainlets and generally being a jew

>> No.11047281

>>11047247
>people who are good at actual math try to expand it
Poetic

>> No.11047304
File: 22 KB, 1691x71, Big Dick Simons.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
11047304

>>11047247

>> No.11047326

>>11046478
>If you stay in Academia you weren't good enough for the Government or Finance

Both the MechE and EE departments at my school regularly get 200 faculty candidates. Almost all new faculty have a bunch of research awards and are alumni of Ivy League schools, and my school is by no means Ivy League itself. I'm sure that's more selective than most government or finance jobs.

There are a ton of people who aren't too keen on a 9-5 and would rather just do research the rest of their lives, and there are even more foreigners who do not have the same job opportunities that natives have. Both of these people fight over the few available university positions.

>> No.11047450

>>11047326
>the people going for academia are lazy fucks and uneducated immigrants
Adds up.

>> No.11047501

>>11047450
>>the people going for academia are lazy fucks
Well he didn't really say that, and it actually less and less the case as academia continues to be taken over by glorified bureaucrats, both in administration and staff. Believe it or not, working in academia is increasingly a 9 to 5 job. There are many reasons for this, some of which are unavoidable and condonable. Others are not.

>> No.11047509

>>11046859
The funny thing is, my town (recently became a city) has a lot of poor people and a lot of well off people. The farther north you go the more well off people are, but the south side is pretty run down in some parts and has a huge Hispanic/Brazilian population. Almost 30% of the school are minorities.
My school was practically two schools in one by how students self aggravated by ability. So the people taking Honors/AP classes with all the good teachers never really interact with the normies taking normie classes with normie teachers. I also noticed that there were very few blue collar working class students in these classes, and pretty much everyone was white (a decent numbers of joos) or asian/indian with a disproportionately low number of other minorities. My family is lower middle class and my parents have no retirement prospects, but all my friends are upper middle class and I give off the vibe that I'm upper middle class as a result.

>> No.11047581

>>11047501
Great, so academia is not even fulfilling its one purpose. What's the point where we just send like some swat team to gun down all university departments so we can repurpose the facilities?

>> No.11047678

>>11047048
Okay Epstein

>> No.11047902

>>11047678
Funny enough Epstein started his career as an elite high school teacher. You know that it was by fucking those tight white girls that he realized he could make billions by starting an international underage sex slave brokerage for billionaires. That's some true entrepreneurship right there, but of course the government has to step on the little guy.

>> No.11047928

>>11047109
you sir are based!

>> No.11047943

>>11046863
Sounds like Mr. Hake.

>> No.11047964

>>11047902
don't forget mossad and trading secrets

>> No.11047972

>>11047581
Yes, there clearly are fishy things going on with academia in the west and it seems I have been successful in conveying to you that laziness and immigrants are not the core of it.

>> No.11047994

>>11047109
<3

>> No.11047995

>>11047964
Okay this thread was all good until you brought anti-semitism into it.

>> No.11047998

>>11046781
Which school? My parents sent me to a good Mass public school but it ended up being shit.

>> No.11048014

>>11046879
Do you work in finance now? Were you recruited, or did you have to apply/position yourself?

>> No.11048063

>>11047995
I'm stating facs about who Epstein worked for how is that antisemitic?

>> No.11048096

>>11048014
Yeah. Recruiters do call me, but I applied for my current position.

>>11048063
Just don't mention Mossad if you know what's good for you.

>> No.11048114

>>11047195
>Really smart people can teach themselves mathematic
absolutely stupid
There's no way that self-study will ever come close to guided instruction from a qualified person

>> No.11048175

>>11047195
>ignoring the importance of parents pushing their kids into it
Usually better result when the parents push the kid into something they are very proficient at themselves. Parents are in the position to instill systems of heuristics which will set the child up for accelerated development in that particular field. Couple that with an inherited propensity for the field and you get people like Terence Tao. At some point Tao was literally begging his parents for more problems to work through. And he got them. Can you imagine a situation like this without the parental invention? Both the initiation of the interest and the continued support. Even a slight increase in the difficulty of getting material could have hampered his development by years.

>> No.11048190

>>11048175
this is a big point that gets undervalued, I'm not exactly sure why.

But pick 10-15 of your favorite mathematicians, and check out their background. Hint: bet on them having educators for parents, early tutoring, etc. There's rare exceptions but mostly it's a whole lot of early support.

>> No.11048198

>>11048114
This is the most brainlet thing I've read on /sci/ this week. Congratulations.

>> No.11048234

>>11048198
>he thinks he’s reading

>> No.11048265

>>11048096
well it's not really mossad since he was affiliaed with a different department but mossad is the closest quick and easy name that's most similar to the organisation that he was part of.

>> No.11048272

>>11048114
who was the guy that taught himself maths and then won a medal for solving something major?

>> No.11048321

>>11048198
Guys, don't try to convince him otherwise and let him waste his time and potential. There is a certain value in brute forcing your way through and doing ALL the mistakes, but for the profile most people dare to yearn for, it isn't needed and yields unnecessary clampage. It might be a partial clue to why child prodigies like Erdos, Tao, von Neumann etc. often are such huge breezers compared those who on their own initiative jumped in the water a bit later. Examples are the son of an owner of a textile factory, Kurt Gödel, and the son of farmers, Isaac Newton.

>> No.11048326

>>11048321
>jumped in the water
often without a floating device

>> No.11048335

van Gogh which started manically painting at 28 yrs comes to mind as well

>> No.11048359

>>11048265
Don't say I didn't warn you.

>> No.11048384

>>11048321
Was Newton really the son of farmers? Would that be yeoman farmers or a lower social status group?
Some long distant ancestor of mine was a yeoman farmer and one of his sons somehow became one of the leaders of the east india company, I think there there is even some indian mountain ridge named after him.

>>11048359
Outlining the shady connections of a major topically relevant media figure is not some form of racism.

>> No.11048396

>>11047998
I'd rather not disclose the specific school on a korean basket weaving forum

>> No.11048442

>>11048384
>Was Newton really the son of farmers?
As far as I can tell. I read a short bio while writing the post. It was not explicitly stated, but there was mention of a "family farm" which his mother had full responsibility of after his father died (two months before he was born). She even pulled him out of school to help out on the farm at some point, and I remember reading somewhere else that Newton later considered retreating from university and work on the farm.
https://www.notablebiographies.com/Mo-Ni/Newton-Issac.html

>> No.11048547

>>11047509
>huge Brazilian population

Florida? Most brazilians here in Brazil are dumb as fuck.

>> No.11048562

>>11046478
I wonder why all the best math teachers are males. Women suck at teaching and instructing. One of my math profs was good at her job bandwidth and seti and whatever math was involved. Did her classes suck. Her classes were like something out of a nirvanas smells like teen spirit deleted takes.

>> No.11048563

>>11048442
You guys realize like 95% of the population at the time was farmers

>> No.11048589

>>11048563
Not of those who went to university :p

>> No.11048598

>>11047182
There's a thing on youtube called Khan Academy. More people should use it.

>> No.11048622

>>11047304
so he's being dishonest and shilling ideas to normies? ok

>> No.11048753
File: 149 KB, 1440x1440, ABA6E651-F924-4589-A70D-1A63482C31A1.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
11048753

>>11046478
You’re looking to another mathematician for an opinion? There are many paths to take as an academic - Simon’s opinion is one from a person who stopped wanting to write papers early on, which is totally fine since he did valuable work in other fields. But if you’re telling me doesn’t believe in the power / results from within academia, then why does he fund theoretical CS and other pure mathematical endeavors within universities? The simons institute is huge in academia - he’s gone on record as a huge supporter for pure research

Jim is based because he funds the work you’re criticizing

>> No.11048907

>>11048753
/thread

Jim seems to have a good understanding of how it all fits together, and he has carved himself a pretty nice life utilizing that understanding.

>> No.11049414

>>11046830
He was always calling girls at the blackboard and then stared at their asses while licking his lips.
He fell from a scale while trying to cut a tree with a chainsaw, almost killed himself in the process (sadly didn't) and told us the story about 10 times over a single year like he fought in Vietnam or some shit.
The average grade was 5/20 despite being a scientific class, even the guys who went in the top engineering colleges here were struggling to get more than a 12.

>>11046781
To be honest I wasn't in a shit school, since Macron went there (and met his wife there who happened to be his teacher kek).
It's more that my parents didn't have the connection (or in fact didn't give a fuck/had not time for it) inside the school to put me in the "good classes", as such I was always packed with the most turbulent kids and the shittiest teachers.

Have some regrets about it though because it disgusted me from maths during more than a decade and legit gave me a complex about it.
I just recently began to self study again with all the literature and all the ressources online even though I will probably never use them, it's a self esteem thing I guess.