# Should we avoid questions of the style: "Tips on how to explain <concept> to students <without the requisite mathematical maturity>?"?

I wonder if such questions should be avoided at least at this early beta stage, if not "for all time". I do not think this is the kind of question that experts ask each other, as the reasonable things to consider when beginning to deal with such a question are: "why is it important to teach students who do not have the background?" and "why don't the students have the proper background if this is important to them?".

Could we instead shift our focus slightly by instead asking: "What background knowledge is helpful for enabling students to understand <concept>?".

• are you pointing to a particular question? If not, you are doing the same sort of thing that you are asking us to avoid - framing something in the negative. If so, please point to the question at issue.
– Sue VanHattum Mod
Mar 14, 2014 at 13:31
• Why the downvotes? While I don't agree with the proposal of the OP, I do think that this question is somewhat important. Mar 15, 2014 at 8:30
– J W
Apr 15, 2016 at 4:21

I think that this kind of question deserves appreciation on its own, and it should not be avoided.

Sometimes, teachers have a certain curriculum to teach, which they haven't chosen completely on their own. The questions outlined by you (e.g. Any tips in explaining the central limit theorem in statistics?) are valid questions of how to teach math.

The comments you are mentioning ("why is it important to teach students who do not have the background?" and "why don't the students have the proper background if this is important to them?") will help to understand the concrete teaching situation in a better way, and giving specifics will help to provide better answers.

• I agree. This question presupposes that the students that we teach are in math class because it is important to them. We don't all teach classes that students actually choose to take. Apr 25, 2014 at 5:14
• @jbaldus, it is mostly that somebody else decided that <some math> will be important to them in some (indeterminate) future, the students themselves usually have no clue what the matter is all about. Particularly at high school or as beginning undergraduates. Jun 17, 2014 at 13:32

Another reason for allowing and even encouraging such questions is that they are very relevant to another group of math educators: instructors at enrichment programs such as math circles and summer camps. Often in those situations one wants to introduce students to an exciting idea for which they don't have the usually-required background, not with the goal of deeply learning the material but rather with the goal of conveying excitement about mathematics and an appreciation for what is out there beyond what they see in school.

• Exciting somebody with something they can't really understand sounds quite strange... Jun 17, 2014 at 13:33
• @vonbrand Isn't that what popular science writers do for a living? Jun 18, 2014 at 14:33
• Yes, but the good ones are far in between. If I had that talent, I'd better not waste it on textbooks... Jun 18, 2014 at 15:06
• @vonbrand I don't consider good textbooks (or teachers) a waste. Jun 18, 2014 at 15:38
• It's just that you'd probably make more writing a book for wider audiences... Jun 18, 2014 at 15:45
• @vonbrand Well, the topic here is about teaching, not about making money. Jun 19, 2014 at 16:16

I have some small experience in reading of such 'non-standart' courses: I had to read some short basic course in statistics for students in social science (PR). Of course most of these students has no enough mathematical or technical background.

Reading of such courses has some aspects that will not present in classical courses. E.g. some topics should be given using another (possibly simplified) approach, etc.

So such questions are valid questions of how to teach mathematics and increase area of interest for our cite.

Therefor we should not avoid such question. However, may be it will reasonable to mark such questions with some 'special' tag.

• What tag do you propose? "missing-prerequisites" or something like that? Jun 17, 2014 at 13:34

Should these be avoided? Absolutely not. If math has taught me anything, it's to study the edge cases, the situations that push the boundaries of my assumptions :-)

But these types of questions might also need to be tagged with some kind of signifier. I wouldn't turn to the answers of such a question to structure an entire course, but I would certainly turn to them to figure out how to work with a particular audience, or how to tailor material to a particular kind of student.

Might I propose the tag "extremity", or "potential problem", or even "edge case", to flag these kinds of questions?