My Journey With Mathematics

I do have a tutoring business. On the other hand I rarely get customers even though I offer free GED help. I did tutor.com for a while and didn't like the format.

For my part I enjoy helping others. If I enjoy it so much why does it matter than I am not payed for it?

-Dan

Addendum: This is technically a Math-like question but these sort of comments/questions are probably better answered on Facebook or something.
 
topsquark said:
I do have a tutoring business. On the other hand I rarely get customers even though I offer free GED help. I did tutor.com for a while and didn't like the format.

For my part I enjoy helping others. If I enjoy it so much why does it matter than I am not payed for it?

-Dan

Addendum: This is technically a Math-like question but these sort of comments/questions are probably better answered on Facebook or something.
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I decided to post about tutoring because there are truly gifted tutors here. I just want to understand the free part. In your case, you like helping others. It does not matter if money involved or not.
 
tkhunny said:
tutor.com disagreed with me on the definition of "Educationally Sound". My definition was much more flexible.
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Why are you tutoring for free? I think talented people should be paid for their time and effort.
 
So you'd never consider volunteering to use your abilities to help other people? You've never felt good about being useful without being paid?
 
Dr.Peterson said:
So you'd never consider volunteering to use your abilities to help other people? You've never felt good about being useful without being paid?
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Let me tell you something. All I ever do is help others and get grieve for it . Although I do ask for math help here, I help students with math, YES, I SAID MATH, online for grades 3 to 8. Not ready for high school tutoring just yet. I do not know what you are talking about. If I had your skills, I certainly would not be working as a museum guard.
 
I said nothing about whether you help anyone with math. I'm just a little surprised that you would think people should never do things for free:
harpazo said:
Why are you tutoring for free? I think talented people should be paid for their time and effort.
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In fact, I was using irony: I suspect that you do believe in helping people, and have enjoyed doing so!
 
Dr.Peterson said:
I said nothing about whether you help anyone with math. I'm just a little surprised that you would think people should never do things for free:

In fact, I was using irony: I suspect that you do believe in helping people!
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I help FOR FREE all the time. It depends on financial status. Living CHECK TO CHECK is very difficult. Know what I mean, professor?
 
harpazo said:
I help FOR FREE all the time. It depends on financial status. Living CHECK TO CHECK is very difficult. Know what I mean, professor?
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Oh I don't know. Considering that I have bipolar disorder and PTSD and live "check to check" on disability because I can only hold down a regular job for at most two weeks at a time and I still volunteer here and other sites I think I am qualified to make a comment. I don't believe that Dr. Peterson is berating you in any way and I can't see any circumstance that he would. Otherwise he would probably act as ignorant about me the same way you are accusing him of being with you. There's much more to life than a paycheck and he seems to be telling you that. Nothing he has said negates anything that you have said.

I want to add this: Helping people for free does not depend on financial status, otherwise I would be unable to work on any help site.

-Dan
 
MarkFL said:
I enjoy helping people, but I also enjoy doing on my own time, only when I want, and only those problems/projects I want to do.
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I wish I had your math skills. The main problem that keeps me from tutoring high school students is my struggle to create an equation(s) from applications. If I could somehow "master" this particular skill (it is a skill that separates math tutors and teachers from pretenders), I could then work in my local ghetto community where math tutors for grades 9 to 12 are in great demand. I can use the extra cash. This does not mean that I would not help students for free here. See my point?
 
Do you remember back in the day when adding two digits was so simple? Last year, one of nephews in 5th grade at the time was given the following addition problem.

Here it is:

Common Core Math
Grade 5

Add 4 + 5.

Let 4 = 1 + 1 + 1 + 1

Let 5 = 2.5 + 2.5

Break down 4 as follows:

1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = (1/2) + (1/2) +
(1/2) + (1/2) + (1/2) + (1/2) +
(1/2) + (1/2).

Now break down 2.5.

Let 2.5 ÷ 2 = 1.25 = 1 + (1/4).

[1 + (1/4) + 1 + (1/4) + 1 + (1/4)
+ 1 + (1/4)]

So, 4 + 5 = 9 can be expressed as follows:

[(1/2) + (1/2) +
(1/2) + (1/2) + (1/2) + (1/2) +
(1/2) + (1/2)] + [1 + (1/4) + 1 + (1/4) + 1 + (1/4)
+ 1 + (1/4)]

In what way is this fair to young children? We as adults understand the process but it is ridiculous, to say the least. BTW, I like math. This is not cool in my book. What do you say?
 
Also, I have often replied to unreasonable demands with something like, "If you demand an immediate answer or if you wish to control the nature of the engagement, you should consider hiring a service to meet your needs." Out here, I can take my time, answer what I feel like answering, and, if necessary, tell a questioner that he/she is behaving unreasonably.
 
Er.. well... I mean, it's not wrong to do this, but I'd be seriously alarmed to see this approach seriously being advocated. I can't even see any applicable lessons to be learned from this that could be generalized to other situations.

I went through school years ago, well before the advent of "Common Core," but what I've seen the lesson plans usually consist of teaching numerical literacy, pattern recognition, and just generally encouraging students to become more comfortable working with numbers. Typically, this is accomplished by teaching the student to see when a number is close to 5 or 10 or how to "pull out" a multiple of 5 or 10 (i.e. 13 = 10 + 3 or 27 = 10 + 10 + 5 + 2).

With reference to this specific example, a much more practical method would be to recognize that 4 = 5 - 1, such that 4 + 5 = (5 - 1) + 5 = (5 + 5) - 1 = 10 - 1 = 9.
 
This is not Common Core.

Common Core is a set of standards; nothing in them says to do anything like this. (Common Core means several other things as well, some of which are more political or government or business issues, such as publishers' curricula that claim to be CC compliant but have their own deficiencies.) I've seen a lot of nonsense spread around, trying to make Common Core look bad, much of which involves misunderstandings of the intent of a lesson. I don't have enough contact with the real thing to defend or critique it, but I've seen enough not to take anything written against it at face value.

The Common Core approach emphasizes deeper understanding, and that includes encouraging students to invent their own ways to solve problems. Can you show an image of how this was actually presented? In context, it may make more sense. I would hope this is not presented as a recommended procedure, but maybe just showing that you can still get the right answer by going far off the normal path. Or maybe it's a kid's invention, just for fun.
 
Dr.Peterson said:
This is not Common Core.

Common Core is a set of standards; nothing in them says to do anything like this. (Common Core means several other things as well, some of which are more political or government or business issues, such as publishers' curricula that claim to be CC compliant but have their own deficiencies.) I've seen a lot of nonsense spread around, trying to make Common Core look bad, much of which involves misunderstandings of the intent of a lesson. I don't have enough contact with the real thing to defend or critique it, but I've seen enough not to take anything written against it at face value.

The Common Core approach emphasizes deeper understanding, and that includes encouraging students to invent their own ways to solve problems. Can you show an image of how this was actually presented? In context, it may make more sense. I would hope this is not presented as a recommended procedure, but maybe just showing that you can still get the right answer by going far off the normal path. Or maybe it's a kid's invention, just for fun.
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I have 3 grandsons (ages 8 -10) that are doing these types of exercises. Generally these are associated with questions like "how many different ways can you figure out 4 + 5 = 9, using just addition". I personally these can be very instructive for advanced students.
 
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