Announcement from BOSTES/NESA - 2019 Syllabus Changes for Calculus courses (4 Viewers)

[InteGrand]

Re: Announcement from BOSTES - significant change to calculus courses

I think also a lot of high school teachers think an event having 0 probability is equivalent to that event being "impossible".

 

[s-f]

Re: Announcement from BOSTES - significant change to calculus courses

^which is very understandable, as classically high school teachers in NSW did not need to receive training in statistics (or at least would have been only briefly touched in 1st year uni maybe).

But I think it's still not okay for finald rafts to be like this when professors of mathematics are supposed to have reviewed these documents (or am I wrong with this?).

I'm most concerned about how they are goong to train teachers with respect to new topics like this and vectors sufficiently to teach large classrooms before 2018 when the syllabus itself has not been polished yet.

 

[InteGrand]

Re: Announcement from BOSTES - significant change to calculus courses

I apologise for not quite having enough time to provide exhaustive list today, but the mistakes I found are mainly in stats section (I only had close looks of those sections because they are new and most likely to have problems if any, + I'm a stats person myself haha):

- someone definitely needs to review the confusion between e.g. sample and population parameters that are evident in their writings and keep termiologies consistent where capitals are used to refer to random variables, small greek letters refer to population parameters, and small English letters refer to sample estimates.
One such mistake is in ACMMM145 & 149 in MX1, where sample symbol is used for a population measure.
I admit statistics is a whole new area so mistakes are expected but this is supposed to be the final draft, only pending one more consultation before the very final implentation.
Minor-looking mistakes as they may appear to be, but conceptually there are large differences between these different symbols. I also admit there are certain areas of statistics (sampling theory) that use different notations as they were developed somewhat separately from the other topics in a historical context, but majority of statisticians use the symbols as I described.

- Another mistake appears in Advanced Mathematics ACMMM053 where basic definitions with respect to probability are wrong. P(A) = 0 DOES NOT equate to impossibility as the syllabus claims. There are events with zero probability that occurs (for details, one needs knowledge of measure theory).
As advanced as this concept may be for high school students, this is important because they introduce continuous random variables, with a direct contradiction to this definition, later in the syllabus.
For any continuous RV, P(X=a)=0, where a is any real number. But clearly e.g. a normally distributed random variable may take any value in the real field and so this "impossibility" definition is clearly wrong.

I will be interested to see how the final implementation will run, and who will produce the first textbook for this - which I (and many others) predict will be heavily plagierised throughout classrooms all over the state. If this one turjs out crap, the statewide teaching could too...

I took a brief look just now and it says

"with P(A) = 0 if A is an impossibility and P(A) = 1 if A is a certainty (ACMMM053)"

(at least on Page 41 of this document: https://syllabus.bostes.nsw.edu.au/...athematics-standard-stage-6-syllabus-2017.pdf. Also Page 44 of this document: https://syllabus.bostes.nsw.edu.au/...athematics-advanced-stage-6-syllabus-2017.pdf . (Referring to page number as written on the document, not of the PDF.) ).

What that says is indeed correct. (Because they said "if", but didn't say "only if".)

 

[s-f]

Re: Announcement from BOSTES - significant change to calculus courses

Oh sorry my bad, I read it the other way around.
It's correct yeah, sure if A is certainty P(A)=1
Sorry about that; read it as both ways.
Hmm but I think quite a number of students will raise questions when cont. RVs come out - I guess syllabus is fine though with that at the moment.

 

[Paradoxica]

Re: Announcement from BOSTES - significant change to calculus courses

Oh sorry my bad, I read it the other way around.
It's correct yeah, sure if A is certainty P(A)=1
Sorry about that; read it as both ways.
Hmm but I think quite a number of students will raise questions when cont. RVs come out - I guess syllabus is fine though with that at the moment.

But what happens to those events with probability zero that still occur?

e.g. throwing an idealised dart at the real number line.

 

[InteGrand]

Re: Announcement from BOSTES - significant change to calculus courses

But what happens to those events with probability zero that still occur?

e.g. throwing an idealised dart at the real number line.

They weren't referred to by the syllabus in that bullet point.

 

[Paradoxica]

Re: Announcement from BOSTES - significant change to calculus courses

They weren't referred to by the syllabus in that bullet point.

I'm still concerned because students are never taught any basic formal logic, and commit the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent.

At the very least they should teach the difference between if and iff.

 

[s-f]

Re: Announcement from BOSTES - significant change to calculus courses

I'm still concerned because students are never taught any basic formal logic, and commit the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent.

At the very least they should teach the difference between if and iff.

The good news is that they cover this in the new MX2 as the first module, though the bemusing part is why MX2 (why not in 2 unit?).
This probably will be the single most useful concept applicable to all questions that require proofs, and doesn't sound like it would require above average calibre to understand it.

 

[leehuan]

Re: Announcement from BOSTES - significant change to calculus courses

The good news is that they cover this in the new MX2 as the first module, though the bemusing part is why MX2 (why not in 2 unit?).
This probably will be the single most useful concept applicable to all questions that require proofs, and doesn't sound like it would require above average calibre to understand it.

I have a feeling 2U would get confused by logic. But the proofs in 2U tend to not really feature problems with logic

Also it was a bit hard for me to grasp at the start as well. Discrete maths saved me.

 

[Paradoxica]

Re: Announcement from BOSTES - significant change to calculus courses

I have a feeling 2U would get confused by logic. But the proofs in 2U tend to not really feature problems with logic

Also it was a bit hard for me to grasp at the start as well. Discrete maths saved me.

just casually ignoring the fact that logic is one of the essential foundations of proofs.....

 

[leehuan]

Re: Announcement from BOSTES - significant change to calculus courses

just casually ignoring the fact that logic is one of the essential foundations of proofs.....

Sure, but it doesn't even mean much in 2U anyway. Rarely (I don't recall of any instance myself) do 2U questions require you to be worried about the order in which things are implied. The questions are designed so that there's only really one or two proper ways of going about it.

It's 2U. We could put stuff like Taylor series into 2U if we wanted to focus on the details, but we don't because it doesn't matter too much at that level. Same with logic.

 

[tywebb]

Possible scenario going forward with the new syllabuses.

Support materials are supposed to be released along with the new syllabuses. Such material has not yet been released. There was a ministerial statement in 2011 which specifies that syllabus materials be in schools 1 year prior to implementation:

http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.a...edia-release-110809-australian-curriculum.pdf

Although we now have a new minister of Education, he has not rescinded the 2011 ministerial statement and hence it remains valid.

So NESA aren’t just running out of time. They already HAVE run out of time to get all the syllabus materials to schools in a manner compliant with the ministerial statement.

Hence it has been proposed to delay implementation another year for the calculus courses:

https://www.mansw.nsw.edu.au/documents/item/218.pdf

Hence under this scenario we might see Mathematics Standard being implemented in year 11 in 2018 and the calculus courses in 2019 instead.

It is possible that NESA won’t accept this proposal - but that would then not be compliant with the 2011 ministerial statement.

 

[tywebb]

NESA have decided to delay Mathematics Advanced, Extension 1 and Extension 2 another year: http://educationstandards.nsw.edu.a...ths-advanced-extension-1-extension-syllabuses

The standard course however has not been delayed.

 

[tywebb]

There is an online article about the delayed syllabus implementation in the Sydney Morning Herald at http://www.smh.com.au/national/educ...to-be-delayed-until-2019-20170421-gvpkn0.html

But unfortunately their title is wrong. The title of the article is "Release of the new advanced HSC maths syllabuses to be delayed until 2019".

But if you refer to the official statement from NESA they clearly state that the syllabuses will be released later this year. That's 2017, not 2019.

So although it is correct to say the implementation is delayed till 2019, it is not correct to say that they will be released in 2019. The author was informed of this error but they have not corrected it. So I am correcting it here in case teachers might see the SMH article and think they won't get the syllabuses till 2019. According to NESA (who are the authority in this matter, not the SMH) they should get them this year.

(Although there is a print version of this article in the SMH April 22-23, 2017, page 9 - called "Revamped HSC maths syllabuses to be delayed" - a much more acceptable version of the title)

 

[tywebb]

On April 27 NESA released more information about the timeframe for release of the calculus courses at http://educationstandards.nsw.edu.a...-support-materials-for-new-stage-6-syllabuses , namely that they will be released by the middle of the year.

However today I have learned that the standard syllabus will also be re-released at the same time with information about common content (and this aspect of it is NOT on the NESA website).

 

[tywebb]

Another thing which I found out today (also not published on the NESA website) is that NESA has decided to review and possibly change the syllabuses every 5 years.

 

[pikachu975]

Another thing which I found out today (also not published on the NESA website) is that NESA has decided to review and possibly change the syllabuses every 5 years.

Hopefully they'll realise soon that 40 minutes to write an essay and 3 essays in 2 hours is ridiculous

 

[tywebb]

I have been asked to verify the source of the information I am giving out here today.

So I should give a proper reference to the information which I am giving out here because it isn't available anywhere else on the internet (including the NESA website).

All day today I was at the Head Office of the Association of Independent Schools at 99 York St, Sydney and a NESA representative was there to give out a lot of information which is not yet publicly available.

So that is where I am getting this information.

 

[tywebb]

Bill Pender's submissions (reproduced with permission).

http://4unitmaths.com/Pender-Submission-2016.pdf

http://4unitmaths.com/Pender-Submission-2017.pdf

http://4unitmaths.com/pender-comment-may-2017.pdf

What do you think of the comment in the third document "It will be an act of vandalism if they persist."?

 

[jodongo]

Did they remove conics from 4U Maths????????!