Re: Arlen's comments

[Karen Kay <karenk -at- NETCOM -dot- COM>]

I tried to respond to Arlen privately, and received an "unknown host"
error message. This response is based on Arlen's private response to
me, which I believe was a little more detailed than the public
version.

Arlen P. Walker said:
> It requires simple math, which is taught in elementary schools first, and
> repeated over and over again.

It also requires memorization of a formula, which is only used for C/F
conversion. So it's not all that generally useful.

> But do you know the conversion factors? If you do, it's not at all hard to
> calculate the point of convergence:

I know the conversion formula, but NOT from using it on a daily basis.
(I did that for maybe a week when I was living in a country that used
C.) I learned it because this question has come up repeatedly on
another mailing list I'm on.

> Where American schools often fail is in teaching the
> simple principles need to get from the question to the formula to the
> answer.

I don't disagree with this generalization, but I think you have chosen
a pretty poor example. Converting from C to F and vice-versa is just
NOT that useful. Well, maybe if you're using a foreign cookbook,
providing you don't have the ballpark number for that food in your
head...

Karen
  karenk -at- netcom -dot- com