When we learn the alphabet, we're presented with a big picture of a letter, in its uppercase and lowercase form, and shown that letter in use in a familiar word.
Nobody ever did the equivalent for me for rho, sigma, lambda, etc. They just showed up on a blackboard in a sophomore physics class, without introduction.
Is that a common experience?
If so, then physics educators are lacking basic techniques known to kindergarten teachers everywhere.
That's pathetic.
It's like hiding physics knowledge behind a secret door so only the most determined students actually reach it.
1 comment:
Worse yet, different contexts give these symbols widely different meanings, and the meanings aren't always explicitly described, even when the contexts are similar enough to be confusing. For example: most folks assume that Theta indicates "angle", but in stats it often indicates "mean"; even more confusingly, Gamma indicates a factorial under some cases, but represents a matrix in others (this is much like a word being both a verb and an unrelated noun). These overridden meanings would not be problem if users indicated which context they were operating under, but most (even textbooks) don't.
Post a Comment