[TruePath]

While I agree that the most important thing is convincing the 1 person out of 1,000 to be a math major (or physics or whatever) I'm afraid the university isn't ok with handing everyone else As without mastering a certain minimum skill set.

Besides, the math department isn't a free agent in this. Other departments expect students who have passed math 1A to have certain skills. If the math department was free to teach math 1A as an advertisement for mathematics (the way other departments get to teach their base courses) it would be a much different class. Hell, it wouldn't even be about calculus.

So long as the physicists, economists, chemists etc.. etc.. say "we need students with skills X, Y and Z" there has to be a class whose content (and hence a decent grade in) is X, Y and Z. The name of that class is 1A and it helps no one to just teach a different class under that name without reforming the system.

The math department ALREADY OFFERS OTHER CLASSES DESIGNED TO DO EXPOSE STUDENTS TO MATH IN EXACTLY THE WAY YOU MENTION. These are courses that deliberately avoid the equations and rote memorization that generated so much fear in high school and are designed to be low stress while showing off the wonder and creativity of mathematics.

Unfortunately, few people ever take these courses because students don't want any more math than they have to take and the guidance counselors and university won't push or require them.

As you said about the final (which I wholeheartedly agree with) if you give students the choice how is it the department's fault you take it. Students have a choice to approach math in a more exploratory, more encouraging fashion but they choose to do the minimum needed to take whatever other class they need. It's ironic because that's also what makes calculus so hard for them...they want to apply a rule and confidently move on...not think hard about a math problem in ways that might be dead ends.

That is what's so sad about math education. Understanding comes from trying to fit the concepts together and even (especially) professional mathematicians fail 90% of the time. Students, especially those who haven't done well in math find that very distressing. Hell, pick any subject you aren't good at (which has clear success/failure conditions) and really try to do it well. It makes you feel dumb and you give up. Add to that years of pre-college math (often taught by teachers who themselves seek the reassurance of rote procedure) which brain washes the curious kids into believing that doing math is just applying procedures and it's an uphill battle.

Ultimately, I think the problem is that we try and force kids who aren't really interested to know math they don't need. Just like other subjects let the students who want to learn come to you. With the advent of modern computer algebra system no one benefits making kids memorize rote procedures beyond basic arithmetic since without understanding they will never apply it in the real world.

[argonaut]

There is no evidence to indicate he deviated from the actual required content of the course, only that his lecturing style deviated from what the department wanted. (This is indicated by the department having reviewed and approved his final, among other things).

Also, I'll repost what I said earlier: there is no evidence he gave out A's more freely than other professors.

The grade distribution for one of Coward's classes (16B) is available online for you to check: https://schedulebuilder.berkeley.edu/explore/courses/SP/2016.... It shows his class average was a B-, whereas most other professors around the year he taught had a B or B+ average.

[caskance]

And that by itself is inconclusive, as all the lazy students looking for easy A's know to sign up for Coward's class.

[argonaut]

I wasn't claiming he was harder on the students. I was claiming that there is absolutely no evidence he was popular because he gave out easy As. So you're agreeing with me.

[caskance]

I studied there, and during that time, spoke to and tutored many such students. Anecdotal evidence is better than no evidence.

[argonaut]

And I brought to you a non-anecdotal, total-population statistic. Again, justifying the null hypothesis (that there is no evidence he was any harder or easier on students in the grade distribution).

[caskance]

No, you repeated Coward's own assertion, stripped of its original context.

[chris_wot]

"Anecdotal evidence is better than no evidence".

Goodness! You mean the anti-vaxxers might have been onto something?

[caskance]

Sure, why not? It's hardly justified to deny the validity of every single step in someone's reasoning just because their conclusion was incorrect.

[moron4hire]

This would make sense as a counter argument if his students who took Math 1A from him didn't also do better on other math courses than students who took Math 1A from other professors.

[fluidcruft]

There are often very big challenges in the freshman courses. The case I'm most familiar with is the calculus courses (in undergrad I was an engineering and mathematics dual major so I had to figure out how to splice in the coursework and petition to get some courses substituted for others etc).

There is a lot of pressure on the non-majors course to deemphasize the mechanics of calculation and move toward theory and reliance on Mathematica for mechanics (I think this battle has been lost, it was raging in the mid-to-late 90's)--this suits the sciences well and students are happy because they don't have to grind hard. The majors course is more rigorous but needs to be focused on the Mathematics curriculum arc and emphasizes more abstract applications and theorems. This is great except it's challenging and honestly distracting to many freshman engineers who need calculus as a tool quickly for their other courses.

Anyway, the college of engineering was always trying to figure out how to get their freshmen through a rigorous enough calculus so that they weren't having to shadow teach calculus in their other courses. One big option that was always in the air was for engineering to give up and teach it's own mathematics. Of course, the mathematics department fights like crazy to prevent (obviously because mathematics revenue is very teaching dependent, whereas engineering is well funded by grants and industry). Anyway, it's not easy to get the balance correct (nobody was ever happy with the results).

I very much doubt any single professor has enough experience to understand all the compromises these freshman courses must satisfy. It's great to make students happy, but it really puts a drag in upper level teaching if the foundations aren't right.

[retbull]

You still didn't refute that his students are doing better in their later classes. If your complaint is lack of foundation what is causing his students to do better?

[selimthegrim]

_Which_ later classes though? If you disaggregate an engineering set of them might they be doing worse masked by the softballs the majority are taking?

[argonaut]

The next math class in the calculus sequence. That's about as direct of a measurement of how well they did in Math 1A than anything I can think of.

[fluidcruft]

The forest is composed of students with a variety of majors and a diverse set of "later classes".

[retbull]

The referenced class was the next in the calculus series.