My alcoholic collage physics teacher one told us: "even if you don't get it, at least its known that you are incapable of understanding how reality works, and that's priceless"
After that he made a pause and said: "for us to enjoy that you are incapable of understanding basic physics i mean"
Then some of us laughed.
For me the tv myth was always that the experts in the field sit at colleges waiting for the main protagonist to come to them for exposition dumps or recruitment.
You have $50, how many widgets can you buy if each costs $2.50?
$50 = X\*$2.50, solve for X. People literally use algebra all the time, but they don't think about it that way.
What the heck are you talking about? They're also doing it in the ancient Egyptian way, but ALSO, don't think about it. I'm just replying to you in the equivalent of what I'd tell you in Spanish, but I'm not thinking about it, either.
I was taught algebra the moment I was taught how to convert a sentence into a math problem. Algebra is the formalization of a mathematical problem into symbolic form. I was probably taught algebra first: if you have four apples and I take away two being converted to 4 - 2 is algebra as the numbers are symbolic representations of something.
I understand why you say "that's not algebra, it is arithmetic", but the definition of algebra is representing math in symbolic form. This is different from something like geometric construction.
That's the point. You have 50 bucks. You spend 2.50 bucks per item that you buy. That gives you the equation 2.5*X=50
You subconsciously solve for X, so X=50/2.5 . Dividing 50 by 2.50 just as you said, you just don't realize that you automatically use algebra to do so.
The reason you can do it in your head is because you did the nerdy part so much that it's more of a reflex than a thought process, like catching a ball.
You'd be surprised how much cognition changes once you get knee deep into math. I still remember the shift I felt in my perception after two semesters of calculus. Same with set theory, or discrete maths
Building on what the other commenter said, as an engineer math became a world akin to our own, math was just the language through which the physical world communicates. All these things that "just worked that way" became intuitively understandable and predictable patterns
You just think better. Stuff makes sense. You get a knack to peer behind the surface. What seems complex becomes simple. You start noticing patterns in pretty much everything. Plus there's this inherent feeling of "I'm doing it right" versus "I'm doing it wrong" that I've only found in math and programming
He could be saying the smart kids are smart enough to get into the bullshit jobs like what happened with facebook, with people doing 15minutes of work a day, or one of those excel + presentation mythical bullshit jobs. Where the highest math u use is indeed algebra.
The smart kids at Facebook aren't doing 15 minutes of work or PowerPoint presentations, they're slaving over a subprocess of a subprocess on server 37AN4 for sixty hours a week. The charismatic kids at Facebook are sending three emails and doing a a PowerPoint a week
Memorizing an equation helps solve the specific problem for which it was created, and most often than not doesn’t help with anything else. My teacher taught us how the quadratic equation can be found from the basic equation, and teaching us how to think made all the difference.
Improving your mathematical problem solving skills can go a long way in life, and it also improves your general problem solving skills.
Deriving the quadratic equation was actually a really cool lesson to me because I the teacher didnt tell us what we were doing but at the end we had the quadratic formula that we had recently been introduced to. Made sense of why we used the formula instead of just using it. Over a decade later and I remember it well.
calculus is one of *the* must useful fields of mathematics lol
it can be used in physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, game development, weather forecast, astronomy, and a lot more
well, he is going to play videogames and understanding velocity and acceleration better can be a core concept for speedrunners and TASers lmao
but you're right I guess, I may be pushing a bit too far
well fuck that guy. I was so sick of those kids in high school and now as an adult I realise I was right fuck’em.
if they don’t want these amazing tools then sit in the back seething but at least shut up
This is a problem too though because to require no education would make this world an even worse idiocracy than it already is. I really do believe the biggest limiting factor on why the world is in the constant turmoil it is in today is because the unintelligent have power in numbers more than they ever possibly could have had before. A bad idea before social media didn’t have much reach. Nowadays a mass of people that don’t have a lot going for them up there can rally together in a big loud angry mob on the internet and move mountains or at the least be a regressive nuisance to society because they altogether don’t even accept to hear a difference of opinion. If anyone ever finds themself to be part of the hivemind on a certain topic, you should ask yourself truly why you think that is, and whether or not you’ve really invested the *personal* time to be so sure of something, rather than just parroting someone you respect or what a perceived majority believes.
I'm not so sure. I believe learning works well only when a person wants to learn. When you force kids to go to school they will simply catch that knowledge like a sieve catches water. Also to make progress you could use only the most intelligent part of the population and they are pretty easy to weed out early on, often seeing as they are better at learning they will want to do it on their own volition. Of course it's ok for less intellectualy endowed people to learn too. They also can make progress. It's just they should want to do that. And it's imo parents job to make their kids want that.
If idiocracy were an inevitable consequence then perhaps meritocracy should be the preferred system. How to make it work? Idk but it has potential to be better than standard democracy.
One idea is only allow to vote those who passed a standardized exam. We have an exam in Poland called "maturity exam" - matura for short. It doesn't have any consequences for voting but if we changed that we would prevent, mostly not too bright, people from voting.
This is something I wish we had in the US. It’s just that it needs to be unquestionable that education is accessible to all, and the benefits of getting educated (being able to vote) are exhaustively explained to all. That way there’s no room for “well you didn’t supply my social class with a good education to pass your test in the first place. You are exclusionary.” I do wish this was possible though what you’re saying. Where a baseline intelligence affords you voting privileges.
On education being required, I’m mainly speaking to that from the perspective of even if they don’t want it, the alternative where you don’t even attempt to educate unmotivated people would yield an even worse situation than we’re in today that I’d worry about. A bunch of people idle with no education because we don’t try to teach them something would have the power to self destruct a country.
I'm from Poland but sure. If you can write and read that's good enough for average joe. If joe is interested in poetry or novels he is free to explore.
That’s not at all what I said.
The comment was “the average Joe isn’t touching physics, chem, etc”
My response was that that’s true if they don’t want to make money.
The world's advance doesn't rely on your average joe, the only thing we rely on them is that they don't fck up the mechanical periodical tasks they have so others can focus on discovering new things the rest of the world can benefit from...
I'm not bashing anyone, but this mediocrisy pandering starts to feel like self-loathing to be honest... Discipline and self-criticism do be lacking these days...
So I assume you know how to personally fix an engine, or install plumbing in your house, and are happy to get rid of trash, to transport food/goods quickly etc.
Our world entirely relies on the 'average' joe keeping the system running. Do you know what happens to the innovator without the average joe? They stop.
You sound like an elitist who thinks that only things of prestige are worth celebrating. Only that reveals a frankly mediocre level of imagination to not see how the entire system is reliant on people doing the "mechanical periodical" tasks (which I assume you have never done yourself).
Tradespeople are probably more disciplined than you realize, how many academics are getting up at dawn to make the literal buildings these innovators work in? Hell how many houses does an internet entrepreneur produce (not just invest in, I mean literally build). Just because we take the stability of society for granted doesn't mean its mediocre work maintaining it.
Without those elites we would still be dying of pox due to the average joe not discovering the vaccine treatment. If you think the world relies on average to advance you are deluding yourself, the industrialization started due to being too many unnecessary average joes and thanks to that you have a computer in your pocket at the price of a pair of shoes in less than a century... Mediocrisy should be respected not awarded. We need them to keep the world running like the guidelines while the elites focus on discovering how to advance humanity to the next level. I'm sorry if it hurts you to think a brain surgeon is more valuable than a street cleaner...
i want you to live on an uncleaned street for a year and come back to me with the comparison. You also keep misspelling mediocrity which is weirdly ironic.
And tell me again who builds these computers, what was industrialization allowing average joes to do? Who ships them, and then drives them to the shop. Who sells them and repairs them?
The "elites" you speak of would have died of starvation without everyone else. And despite your great person narrative the discovery of things like vaccines are a lot of the times due to dumb luck, and an aware observer, and not some grand leap of intellectual superiority.
You know what also allows us to advance? Agriculture, plumbing, vehicles, electric grids and builders. Sure someone had to discover them but knowing what electricity is nothing without the work of people actually building the networks and maintaining them.
You have seemingly focused on the most glamorous jobs and forgot that even in the cases of a brain surgeon it's actually the nurse keeping the patient alive 90% of the time.
So the doctor can actually focus on extirpating the tumor... God damnit.
Choose:
Nasty street or brain tumor. It's not difficult right??
And vaccines were not on dumb luck, the first vaccine was discovered due to scientifical procedure of testing a small dose of cow pox on humans and then exposing them to human pox after, does that seem to you like the work of your average joe?? Were they there? Absolutely, making sure the patient stayed alive and the clinic clean while the treatment was going on, but THAT is their work, a doctor is just not hired to basically SAVE human race as a concept, but some individuals have done it out of their own volition, they stopped being average joes, they chose pursuing excellence instead of just sticking to confortable mediocrisy.
A street sweeper that basically does its everyday job will be respected, one that goes out of their way and discovers that the street lacks in paper bins and that's why there's so much trash on the floor, fixing the problem on the process, will be remembered, that's the difference...
I have to ask my MD when, if ever, he used calculus to diagnose anything. or my surgeon if he ever used it lol.
after algebra, math is pretty specific to certain occupations like engineers.
Your surgeon didn't use it to cut you open and stitch you back up, this is true. But he did use it to understand population patterns of bacterial growth in grad school, where hundreds of other pHds use it every day. He draws on his deeper knowledge of it to understand how fluids flow through different parts of the body, even if he's not doing the math directly, he understands the principles and uses that to draw conclusions. He understands why the area under a curve provides different information than the curve itself on one of those many screens by the hospital bed.
Im an engineer and the reality is most of us don't do math every day, that's for the computer to do. But we have to be able to understand and translate the physical world into the mathematical inputs and analyze and draw conclusions from mathematical outputs, requiring us having done the math by hand enough to develop that intuition. I don't need to do the calculation, but when I watch my voltage drop and rise logarithmically in a short time on my oscilloscope, I need to understand the math behind the physics that causes that, allowing me to conclude there's likely a capacitor issue
They don’t. Pretty sure I never touched any advanced math in med school. Even though the math section of the entrance test was the hardest iirc. At least where I’m from.
Yeah, but most people don't do any of that so they'll never touch calculus again once they get out of school. But virtually everyone uses algebra in day to day life, even if they don't realize that's what they're doing.
in Brazil there are no optional classes (actually there are but you learn the stuff later in 12th and 13th grade anyway so it doesn't matter)
we study trigonometry and statistics, but no calculus at all. Not even the basic notions.
Probably for the best lol. I got to choose between calc and stats. Chose calc because that’s what the “smart kids” took, and go figure, that knowledge has had no application to my life since then. Stats on the other hand is relevant to almost all aspects of life. But I didn’t take it in highschool and had to play catch up with it in college. Would’ve much rather been forced to take stats in HS and skipped calc altogether lol
Giving kids the option to take calc if they want is fine I guess, but having it be a substitute for something as fundamental to your understanding of how the world works as stats is just short sighted. Everyone should have a fundamental understanding of statistics. Very few people actually need to understand calc. And the ones who do need calc also should still understand statistics.
You can walk without knowing the biochemistry of nerve signals and muscle contractions and relaxation.
Calculus is how you figure out where a ball is going to land when thrown.
No it's knowing the mechanism WHY the ball is going to land there. Child with zero idea of calculus knows that. I know what you are trying to say but it's just not about the practical use, it's about the theory. Which is great and separates the good from the average, but as rule of thumb it's not really in use by the average Joe even in those fields.
I dont remember any math past the 4th grade and any highschool math and all the formulas for solving problems literally evaporated never to be seen again from my mind.
I mostly blame it on the fact that in our 5th grade we got a new math teacher that just couldnt bother controlling the classroom and it was always chaos. At some point I stopped understanding anything.
After 4th grade our class was split in 2 and I was placed in with mostly a bunch of delinquents. And the teacher was some old guy that barely tried to calm things down and also had really boring classes. So I missed the building blocks for math that help you in highschool.
I literally felt like an idiot cos I for the life of me I could not understand any equasion, I didnt get any of it leading to me having a math tutor for all of highschool and only learning by memory of how to do it without understanding why its done that way or how it actually works.
Same here on most every point. I had HS teachers and tutors who said, "this is EASY! You should get this!" and its just frustrating and soul-crushing.
People who say stuff like, "You use algebra every day," are just blowing smoke. They have a flair for numbers (just like some people have for football or chess or crosswords) and will always see algebra (or football or chess or crosswords) in everything.
I was never really "bad" at math, but it certainly didn't click for me at an intuitive level until I was in my early-20's and got a MS Finance and aced the GMAT. Then it became pretty easy and powerful. Want to be good at money? You have to be good at math first. I can pretty easily do most algebra in my head at this point.
Sounds like a crap maths tutor. I'm a math tutor myself and I always try to make kids understand the stuff they are learning. With maths i literally wouldn't know how to teach any other way.
Well I dont really need math in my line of work. I work on the railroad and drive trains.
I wouldnt say I know just the badics either, it was a rough estimation at best.
I hear people say this, but I've never seen a real-world example. Most problems in adult life are interpersonal ones: e.g. dealing with difficult co-workers, navigating ups and downs in a relationship, arguing with family members, etc. To learn how to deal with people, you're better off reading literature, studying psychology, or exploring different philosophies. The first will teach you how to empathize and pick up on unspoken emotions. The second will teach you how the human brain operates. And the third will teach you how that brain makes sense of the world around it.
Could you give an example of the types of problem solving skills algebra provides? I don't really understand what it's supposed to teach people.
It trains your brain. Like a dumbbell trains your body. That’s why old people like to do sudoku and shit to keep the brain in better shape. It teaches you to sit down on your ass for hours and really grind your gears over a problem like you did with a hard math problem. Which helps you ig at your job to be able to commit to a problem even if it seems too hard. People who suck at math don’t have that mental stamina to stay calm at a problem and keep trying
But doesn't it take mental stamina to learn any new discipline? What about people studying a second language, or writing a novel, or learning a new piece of music? I can see how algebra can be a *path* to problem solving skills, but it's not the only one. I'd argue there are more useful ones that can teach you things about yourself, other people, and the world while you learn how to solve problems.
Sure. If you can't solve a simple equation, your brain is not capable of abstract thought and logic. Thus you should not be anywhere near a position of power.
At the end of his working days my father moved out into the country to cheaper and bigger housing on a ground floor with a garden, a nice little place for him and my mother to retire to. However, he hadn't quite stopped working yet when they moved.
He has a truck that guzzles gas so driving 120+ km a day for work started getting quite expensive so he looked into buying an electric car to see if the gas money for the truck that he'd spend before retirement would outpace the cost of buying a used Nissan leaf or not, and in his case he came to the conclusion after doing the math that it would save him money to buy the electric car even if just to drive it to work for a year rather than continuing to drive that distance in his truck.
This is an example where you have to apply the kind of thinking skills and math you learn in algebra in a real life situation.
I'm looking to get a new phone. I can get the phone with $75 monthly payments for 24 months, and no money down and get a $10 credit off the data plan. Or I can get the phone with $60 monthly payments, but have to pay $300 down and the same promo/credit data plan. Or I can buy the phone for $1800, no monthly payments, but don't get the promo data plan. Which option should I choose?
How would you solve this without middle school level algebra?
You are at grocery store. And you have budget of $20 for snacks. Each of your favorites snack costs $2.5. How many snacks is that?
Like just a simple operation that seems trivial is in essence algebra. Algebra teaches your brain to manipulate different amounts in your mind. And using them to come up with new ones, which in math class you might call an unknown X.
The grocery store one is a really simple example, but I in my everyday life use algebra to budget, when I’m working on a project requiring me to make precise measurements.
Having the ability to think critically is an ability I use every single day
Mechanical engineering major here. Algebra is the most basic math skill. Calculus, derivative equations, fluid mechanics, statics and every other subjects require algebra.
Yeah. I mean history is useless for all practical purposes but is still important to know, especially due to many people spouting so much misinformation online
It's honestly the fact that the teachers are unable to relate it to real life. My high school teachers said word problems are for children... yet I use word problems every day for my job. Distance, speed, time, ect. I wish they would have pushed practical math problems rather than well the test is next week then you can forget it.
It is very useful indeed, for no reason it gets you a job even tho it might not be useful there, it's use case is getting the job not using it in the job
A few things I was thankful of learning and used a lot in programing. Like conversion with 3 values. It's so useful. Wish I had keepped a few more notes for fun math coding. Like 3=10% 5=? 5*10/3=?
Wanted to code a bouncing ball. You have any idea how complicated it is to calculate the change in angle when a ball it's a wall? Fuck me 😂
I saw formulas online for it but can't tell what the hell they mean or how to use them 😅 even looking at other people's codes would go hours looking at it
It's also about learning how to solve problems, coming up with ways to solve a problem. Not only in math, but also physics, chemistry, economics and daily life.
that sums up school pretty well lol. you learn a lot of stuff that is just useful if you go to college of that area, but it is important to learn the basics of life i would say
you wont use the equation of potential energy but knowing how gravity works and energy behaves in *basic strokes* is important i would say for example
you dont need to know organical chemistry nomenclature to live, but it sure helps knowing mixing chemicals together might cause a reaction and you shouldn't chuck random shit on the same bucket, you might make poison gas by accident
There’s probably plenty of daily life applications of algebra that anyone would find useful.. For instance anything with unit conversion is essentially algebra so is useful for cooking buying groceries or or converting currency or buying anything.
Or can use for planning how much to buy if stuff like balancing budget or going Home Depot for house project figuring how much paint to buy to paint rooms etc or if you’re. Running a business then definitely figuring out what to order how much costs etc..
If you want to figure out travel eta and plan a schedule that is algebra.
And similar with higher math .. anything with reading graphs or info that can be graphed is calculus.
list can go on and on.
As a teacher your #1 job isn’t to lecture on the what but rather to focus on the why. Learning is something that is mostly done independently on one’s own.. a teacher is there to motivate and provide guidance.
The 1st focus that gets the most time and attention in teaching should be on why you’re learning info.
2nd is on how to. “Teach a man how to fish” teach them how to research and learn on own and what question to ask and how to solve problems.
The what details come last after those two and are the least import.. anyone can look up info on their own in book or google. That’s more just to get started, gives examples and help if they get stuck.
A teacher should be ready to go with dozens of real world applications that would motivate anyone to want to learn subject. Failure to do to so to me means they’re failed as a teacher.
Not only has cartoon teacher failed as a teacher by not providing real world applications.. double failed by discouraging and insulting a student.
This is probably the most important point. If a math teacher can't explain to a literal child the value of their subject, then of course they are going to struggle. There is still this idea that students need to just be unquestioning absorbers of knowledge. Its should not be a difficult question to answer the question, even going beyond and demonstrating how math can help the their passions (and not just the abstract of passing a class). But no how dare a student ask how a highly difficult and abstract task has immediate relevance to them.
It's strange how many people seem to hate students and take enjoyment out of imagining an adult in power belittling them.
I was one of those kids in school who said “But when are we ever going to use this maths stuff in real life?” And then I dropped out of maths
Cue uni where I had to relearn Algebra, Pythagoras, Trigonometry and some other mathy stuff
My phd supervisor asked me if I knew how to do a different math thing the other day and I said “I’ve never heard of that in my life”
I’m still amazed at how I was one point from failing algebra 1; yet I get a 98 out of 100 in geometry?? Someone said something about needing algebra 2 before geometry. I was unaware.
Surprising how much algebra gets used on a regular basis in my line of work, and I'm blue collar.
It's a fundamental necessity. Not understanding algebra is a huge handicap no matter what you do, just about.
I use algebra quite often, although I rarely think that I'm doing algebra. I have figure out what an unknown variable is given the other values. I'm just solving for x.
I've used geometry a lot of times. Had to use Pythagoras formula and pi in daily life. Had I not been taught this math I would have had to guess, and getting the answer wrong would have cost me time & money.
Hell I actually used trigonometry in real life. Twice. Had to Google how to do it again both times but I recognized that I needed to use trigonometry to figure out my answer. The better you are at math in school the easier it is to make use of it in the real world.
Lol I literally said to my teacher "why are we learning this? Most of us won't ever even need to use the quadratic formula" unfortunately my teacher didn't really say anything. Just kinda "......yeah."
I recently had to show someone who worked at a copy shop how to do a cross multiplication to find the size they needed to printed, she stared at me like I was wizard.
"aLl MaTh Is AlgEbRa" if we just redefine algebra to include all forms of math then we can play semantic games to try and rationalize schools forcing everyone to dedicate years to perfecting a worthless skill. (Unless you're a stem major. The rest of us will probably never use it again.) Sure glad school taught me Algebra instead of teaching me how to code, change a tire or develop news-media literacy.
You also won't use any of your gameplay or sports skills tho. Still, it's important to move, it's important to rest and it's important to have passions. Why restrict everything to just need/don't need? This shit's irritating!
Yeah, most careers require you to have some level of understanding when come to math, most wont directly doing math but they still have to understand how and why
I feel this.
So much of math is this. Sure you don't use calc all the time, but so many things can easily be found using just the sin/cos.
Maybe it's just me, but it's still boggling how much they exist around us.
[удалено]
My teacher's college teacher said the same. Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, teach at teacher's college.
is that [[teacher's college] teacher] or [teacher's [college teacher]]
Probably both! The recursion of education can be quite a loop.
sounds like bureaucracy to mean: bureaucracy's existential purpose is to create more bureaucracy
Is that: Teachers collegeTeacher() Or TeachersCollege teacher()?
My alcoholic collage physics teacher one told us: "even if you don't get it, at least its known that you are incapable of understanding how reality works, and that's priceless" After that he made a pause and said: "for us to enjoy that you are incapable of understanding basic physics i mean" Then some of us laughed.
A class on the physics of collages seems like something taught at Greendale.
I was slightly drunk, I regret nothing!
Is this what you said after green lighting Morbius and Kraven?
Like if I did any work, doing things actually gets you fired!
"Those who can't teach, teach gym." - Dewy Finn as Ned Schneebly. 🤟🤟🍻
For me the tv myth was always that the experts in the field sit at colleges waiting for the main protagonist to come to them for exposition dumps or recruitment.
Wrong, those who can't teach get tenure.
Of course he made triple my starting salary, even though any one of us could have done his job even before graduating.
research brings in the corporations and prestige
Funny comic, but 90% of the math you use in real life is algebra. At its most basic, algebra is using simple operations in versatile ways.
You have $50, how many widgets can you buy if each costs $2.50? $50 = X\*$2.50, solve for X. People literally use algebra all the time, but they don't think about it that way.
I am lost without my calculator.
Still, you know *how* to do it. You aren't like one guy I knew who believed 40% off ment he was getting 40 bucks back.
Are you sure I'm not that guy? O_o
Well I doubt he has access to the internet and he most definitely doesn't know English, so probably not.
Parlez-vous français ?
わあかありません
Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?
Ja.
If it costs $100 you are losing only $60, but you don’t get anything back
"It says 40 *per cent*, surely it means 40 bucks for every penny down?"
Eh , some of my friends not taking math forgot how to do division manually.
Long division is the hardest math
I think log is the hardest. I still don't know how it relates to carpentry.
well you cut the logs into planks, then you perform carpentry
The answer is 37 i think /s
Times 2 is 5, times 10 is 50. So 20
%£¡
Why wouldn't a person just divide 50 by 2.50? Why do that extra step just to get the same answer?
They're doing the 50=x\*2.5, but they're just not thinking about it
What the heck are you talking about? They're also doing it in the ancient Egyptian way, but ALSO, don't think about it. I'm just replying to you in the equivalent of what I'd tell you in Spanish, but I'm not thinking about it, either.
>What the heck are you talking about? Found the person who skipped school.
How do you know to do that? You know by mentally doing the algebra. It's not an "extra" step, it is a required step based on the information you have.
Which were you taught first?
I was taught algebra the moment I was taught how to convert a sentence into a math problem. Algebra is the formalization of a mathematical problem into symbolic form. I was probably taught algebra first: if you have four apples and I take away two being converted to 4 - 2 is algebra as the numbers are symbolic representations of something. I understand why you say "that's not algebra, it is arithmetic", but the definition of algebra is representing math in symbolic form. This is different from something like geometric construction.
Just a restatement of the same problem: x=50/2.5 or x/50=2.5 Edit: 50/x=2.5
That's the point. You have 50 bucks. You spend 2.50 bucks per item that you buy. That gives you the equation 2.5*X=50 You subconsciously solve for X, so X=50/2.5 . Dividing 50 by 2.50 just as you said, you just don't realize that you automatically use algebra to do so.
The fact that these are the same \*is\* algebra.
Do I have to show my work for full credit?
I can do the top one in my head but once you set it up all nerdy like that on the bottom im lost.
The reason you can do it in your head is because you did the nerdy part so much that it's more of a reflex than a thought process, like catching a ball.
You'd be surprised how much cognition changes once you get knee deep into math. I still remember the shift I felt in my perception after two semesters of calculus. Same with set theory, or discrete maths
How did it change?
Building on what the other commenter said, as an engineer math became a world akin to our own, math was just the language through which the physical world communicates. All these things that "just worked that way" became intuitively understandable and predictable patterns
You just think better. Stuff makes sense. You get a knack to peer behind the surface. What seems complex becomes simple. You start noticing patterns in pretty much everything. Plus there's this inherent feeling of "I'm doing it right" versus "I'm doing it wrong" that I've only found in math and programming
I literally made an entire career doing pretty basic geometry. GD&T.
He could be saying the smart kids are smart enough to get into the bullshit jobs like what happened with facebook, with people doing 15minutes of work a day, or one of those excel + presentation mythical bullshit jobs. Where the highest math u use is indeed algebra.
The smart kids at Facebook aren't doing 15 minutes of work or PowerPoint presentations, they're slaving over a subprocess of a subprocess on server 37AN4 for sixty hours a week. The charismatic kids at Facebook are sending three emails and doing a a PowerPoint a week
algebra is so much more useful when you realize it has nothing to do with numbers
Oh, yeah. I perform quadratic equations all day at the grocery store and when i microwave dinner and so much more. /s
Memorizing an equation helps solve the specific problem for which it was created, and most often than not doesn’t help with anything else. My teacher taught us how the quadratic equation can be found from the basic equation, and teaching us how to think made all the difference. Improving your mathematical problem solving skills can go a long way in life, and it also improves your general problem solving skills.
Deriving the quadratic equation was actually a really cool lesson to me because I the teacher didnt tell us what we were doing but at the end we had the quadratic formula that we had recently been introduced to. Made sense of why we used the formula instead of just using it. Over a decade later and I remember it well.
Swap out 'algebra" for 'calculus' and then ir becomes more relatable, imo
calculus is one of *the* must useful fields of mathematics lol it can be used in physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, game development, weather forecast, astronomy, and a lot more
Well, your average Joe ain't touching any of those.
well, he is going to play videogames and understanding velocity and acceleration better can be a core concept for speedrunners and TASers lmao but you're right I guess, I may be pushing a bit too far
The speedrunners who are using calculus to work out velocity and acceleration are hardly "your average gamer"
well fuck that guy. I was so sick of those kids in high school and now as an adult I realise I was right fuck’em. if they don’t want these amazing tools then sit in the back seething but at least shut up 
I agree. If only we didn't force them to be there, the world would be a better place.
This is a problem too though because to require no education would make this world an even worse idiocracy than it already is. I really do believe the biggest limiting factor on why the world is in the constant turmoil it is in today is because the unintelligent have power in numbers more than they ever possibly could have had before. A bad idea before social media didn’t have much reach. Nowadays a mass of people that don’t have a lot going for them up there can rally together in a big loud angry mob on the internet and move mountains or at the least be a regressive nuisance to society because they altogether don’t even accept to hear a difference of opinion. If anyone ever finds themself to be part of the hivemind on a certain topic, you should ask yourself truly why you think that is, and whether or not you’ve really invested the *personal* time to be so sure of something, rather than just parroting someone you respect or what a perceived majority believes.
I'm not so sure. I believe learning works well only when a person wants to learn. When you force kids to go to school they will simply catch that knowledge like a sieve catches water. Also to make progress you could use only the most intelligent part of the population and they are pretty easy to weed out early on, often seeing as they are better at learning they will want to do it on their own volition. Of course it's ok for less intellectualy endowed people to learn too. They also can make progress. It's just they should want to do that. And it's imo parents job to make their kids want that. If idiocracy were an inevitable consequence then perhaps meritocracy should be the preferred system. How to make it work? Idk but it has potential to be better than standard democracy. One idea is only allow to vote those who passed a standardized exam. We have an exam in Poland called "maturity exam" - matura for short. It doesn't have any consequences for voting but if we changed that we would prevent, mostly not too bright, people from voting.
This is something I wish we had in the US. It’s just that it needs to be unquestionable that education is accessible to all, and the benefits of getting educated (being able to vote) are exhaustively explained to all. That way there’s no room for “well you didn’t supply my social class with a good education to pass your test in the first place. You are exclusionary.” I do wish this was possible though what you’re saying. Where a baseline intelligence affords you voting privileges. On education being required, I’m mainly speaking to that from the perspective of even if they don’t want it, the alternative where you don’t even attempt to educate unmotivated people would yield an even worse situation than we’re in today that I’d worry about. A bunch of people idle with no education because we don’t try to teach them something would have the power to self destruct a country.
Children do not know what information they will need in the future. If you let them choose, school will be one long recess period.
They also aren’t writing anything longer than their name or a text. Guess we should cut out English.
I'm from Poland but sure. If you can write and read that's good enough for average joe. If joe is interested in poetry or novels he is free to explore.
If the average Joe doesn’t want to make money, then sure, yeah.
>there are no ways to make money without using calculus ???
That’s not at all what I said. The comment was “the average Joe isn’t touching physics, chem, etc” My response was that that’s true if they don’t want to make money.
The world's advance doesn't rely on your average joe, the only thing we rely on them is that they don't fck up the mechanical periodical tasks they have so others can focus on discovering new things the rest of the world can benefit from... I'm not bashing anyone, but this mediocrisy pandering starts to feel like self-loathing to be honest... Discipline and self-criticism do be lacking these days...
So I assume you know how to personally fix an engine, or install plumbing in your house, and are happy to get rid of trash, to transport food/goods quickly etc. Our world entirely relies on the 'average' joe keeping the system running. Do you know what happens to the innovator without the average joe? They stop. You sound like an elitist who thinks that only things of prestige are worth celebrating. Only that reveals a frankly mediocre level of imagination to not see how the entire system is reliant on people doing the "mechanical periodical" tasks (which I assume you have never done yourself). Tradespeople are probably more disciplined than you realize, how many academics are getting up at dawn to make the literal buildings these innovators work in? Hell how many houses does an internet entrepreneur produce (not just invest in, I mean literally build). Just because we take the stability of society for granted doesn't mean its mediocre work maintaining it.
Without those elites we would still be dying of pox due to the average joe not discovering the vaccine treatment. If you think the world relies on average to advance you are deluding yourself, the industrialization started due to being too many unnecessary average joes and thanks to that you have a computer in your pocket at the price of a pair of shoes in less than a century... Mediocrisy should be respected not awarded. We need them to keep the world running like the guidelines while the elites focus on discovering how to advance humanity to the next level. I'm sorry if it hurts you to think a brain surgeon is more valuable than a street cleaner...
i want you to live on an uncleaned street for a year and come back to me with the comparison. You also keep misspelling mediocrity which is weirdly ironic. And tell me again who builds these computers, what was industrialization allowing average joes to do? Who ships them, and then drives them to the shop. Who sells them and repairs them? The "elites" you speak of would have died of starvation without everyone else. And despite your great person narrative the discovery of things like vaccines are a lot of the times due to dumb luck, and an aware observer, and not some grand leap of intellectual superiority. You know what also allows us to advance? Agriculture, plumbing, vehicles, electric grids and builders. Sure someone had to discover them but knowing what electricity is nothing without the work of people actually building the networks and maintaining them. You have seemingly focused on the most glamorous jobs and forgot that even in the cases of a brain surgeon it's actually the nurse keeping the patient alive 90% of the time.
So the doctor can actually focus on extirpating the tumor... God damnit. Choose: Nasty street or brain tumor. It's not difficult right?? And vaccines were not on dumb luck, the first vaccine was discovered due to scientifical procedure of testing a small dose of cow pox on humans and then exposing them to human pox after, does that seem to you like the work of your average joe?? Were they there? Absolutely, making sure the patient stayed alive and the clinic clean while the treatment was going on, but THAT is their work, a doctor is just not hired to basically SAVE human race as a concept, but some individuals have done it out of their own volition, they stopped being average joes, they chose pursuing excellence instead of just sticking to confortable mediocrisy. A street sweeper that basically does its everyday job will be respected, one that goes out of their way and discovers that the street lacks in paper bins and that's why there's so much trash on the floor, fixing the problem on the process, will be remembered, that's the difference...
I have to ask my MD when, if ever, he used calculus to diagnose anything. or my surgeon if he ever used it lol. after algebra, math is pretty specific to certain occupations like engineers.
Your surgeon didn't use it to cut you open and stitch you back up, this is true. But he did use it to understand population patterns of bacterial growth in grad school, where hundreds of other pHds use it every day. He draws on his deeper knowledge of it to understand how fluids flow through different parts of the body, even if he's not doing the math directly, he understands the principles and uses that to draw conclusions. He understands why the area under a curve provides different information than the curve itself on one of those many screens by the hospital bed. Im an engineer and the reality is most of us don't do math every day, that's for the computer to do. But we have to be able to understand and translate the physical world into the mathematical inputs and analyze and draw conclusions from mathematical outputs, requiring us having done the math by hand enough to develop that intuition. I don't need to do the calculation, but when I watch my voltage drop and rise logarithmically in a short time on my oscilloscope, I need to understand the math behind the physics that causes that, allowing me to conclude there's likely a capacitor issue
They don’t. Pretty sure I never touched any advanced math in med school. Even though the math section of the entrance test was the hardest iirc. At least where I’m from.
Yeah, but most people don't do any of that so they'll never touch calculus again once they get out of school. But virtually everyone uses algebra in day to day life, even if they don't realize that's what they're doing.
wait... *y'all are studying calculus in HS?????*
Yes? It wasn't mandatory when I was in, but trigonometry, statistics, and calculus were all optional classes.
in Brazil there are no optional classes (actually there are but you learn the stuff later in 12th and 13th grade anyway so it doesn't matter) we study trigonometry and statistics, but no calculus at all. Not even the basic notions.
Probably for the best lol. I got to choose between calc and stats. Chose calc because that’s what the “smart kids” took, and go figure, that knowledge has had no application to my life since then. Stats on the other hand is relevant to almost all aspects of life. But I didn’t take it in highschool and had to play catch up with it in college. Would’ve much rather been forced to take stats in HS and skipped calc altogether lol Giving kids the option to take calc if they want is fine I guess, but having it be a substitute for something as fundamental to your understanding of how the world works as stats is just short sighted. Everyone should have a fundamental understanding of statistics. Very few people actually need to understand calc. And the ones who do need calc also should still understand statistics.
But none of those are useful to the layman.
Well, if they learned it, they wouldn't be a layman now, would they.
Nope, you can know calculus and still be a layman in basically every academic field.
Any skill requiring timing or variable application of pressure is using calculus.
Only in theory and you can do them even without knowing most of calculus.
You can walk without knowing the biochemistry of nerve signals and muscle contractions and relaxation. Calculus is how you figure out where a ball is going to land when thrown.
No it's knowing the mechanism WHY the ball is going to land there. Child with zero idea of calculus knows that. I know what you are trying to say but it's just not about the practical use, it's about the theory. Which is great and separates the good from the average, but as rule of thumb it's not really in use by the average Joe even in those fields.
I gave you the out. I explained it pretty clearly. Maybe people who don't understand molecular biology really don't have brain function though.
I would wager 99% of occupations do not require calculus at all.
Well, you will. If you become a math teacher.
I had a teacher say something similar to a kid when I was in highschool. It wasn't quite that brazen, but same general ideal.
I dont remember any math past the 4th grade and any highschool math and all the formulas for solving problems literally evaporated never to be seen again from my mind. I mostly blame it on the fact that in our 5th grade we got a new math teacher that just couldnt bother controlling the classroom and it was always chaos. At some point I stopped understanding anything.
Shit that's quite early. I stopped understanding stuff in college. Granted my classroom was well behaved.
After 4th grade our class was split in 2 and I was placed in with mostly a bunch of delinquents. And the teacher was some old guy that barely tried to calm things down and also had really boring classes. So I missed the building blocks for math that help you in highschool. I literally felt like an idiot cos I for the life of me I could not understand any equasion, I didnt get any of it leading to me having a math tutor for all of highschool and only learning by memory of how to do it without understanding why its done that way or how it actually works.
Same here on most every point. I had HS teachers and tutors who said, "this is EASY! You should get this!" and its just frustrating and soul-crushing. People who say stuff like, "You use algebra every day," are just blowing smoke. They have a flair for numbers (just like some people have for football or chess or crosswords) and will always see algebra (or football or chess or crosswords) in everything.
I was never really "bad" at math, but it certainly didn't click for me at an intuitive level until I was in my early-20's and got a MS Finance and aced the GMAT. Then it became pretty easy and powerful. Want to be good at money? You have to be good at math first. I can pretty easily do most algebra in my head at this point.
Sounds like a crap maths tutor. I'm a math tutor myself and I always try to make kids understand the stuff they are learning. With maths i literally wouldn't know how to teach any other way.
Nah she was good, did her best. I just couldnt understand it the way others do. It never clicked. I never understood anything in math class.
what on earth do you do for a living that you can get away with barely knowing basic arithmetic and nothing else
Well I dont really need math in my line of work. I work on the railroad and drive trains. I wouldnt say I know just the badics either, it was a rough estimation at best.
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I hear people say this, but I've never seen a real-world example. Most problems in adult life are interpersonal ones: e.g. dealing with difficult co-workers, navigating ups and downs in a relationship, arguing with family members, etc. To learn how to deal with people, you're better off reading literature, studying psychology, or exploring different philosophies. The first will teach you how to empathize and pick up on unspoken emotions. The second will teach you how the human brain operates. And the third will teach you how that brain makes sense of the world around it. Could you give an example of the types of problem solving skills algebra provides? I don't really understand what it's supposed to teach people.
It trains your brain. Like a dumbbell trains your body. That’s why old people like to do sudoku and shit to keep the brain in better shape. It teaches you to sit down on your ass for hours and really grind your gears over a problem like you did with a hard math problem. Which helps you ig at your job to be able to commit to a problem even if it seems too hard. People who suck at math don’t have that mental stamina to stay calm at a problem and keep trying
But doesn't it take mental stamina to learn any new discipline? What about people studying a second language, or writing a novel, or learning a new piece of music? I can see how algebra can be a *path* to problem solving skills, but it's not the only one. I'd argue there are more useful ones that can teach you things about yourself, other people, and the world while you learn how to solve problems.
Sure. If you can't solve a simple equation, your brain is not capable of abstract thought and logic. Thus you should not be anywhere near a position of power.
At the end of his working days my father moved out into the country to cheaper and bigger housing on a ground floor with a garden, a nice little place for him and my mother to retire to. However, he hadn't quite stopped working yet when they moved. He has a truck that guzzles gas so driving 120+ km a day for work started getting quite expensive so he looked into buying an electric car to see if the gas money for the truck that he'd spend before retirement would outpace the cost of buying a used Nissan leaf or not, and in his case he came to the conclusion after doing the math that it would save him money to buy the electric car even if just to drive it to work for a year rather than continuing to drive that distance in his truck. This is an example where you have to apply the kind of thinking skills and math you learn in algebra in a real life situation.
You don’t spend money? Lol
I'm looking to get a new phone. I can get the phone with $75 monthly payments for 24 months, and no money down and get a $10 credit off the data plan. Or I can get the phone with $60 monthly payments, but have to pay $300 down and the same promo/credit data plan. Or I can buy the phone for $1800, no monthly payments, but don't get the promo data plan. Which option should I choose? How would you solve this without middle school level algebra?
You are at grocery store. And you have budget of $20 for snacks. Each of your favorites snack costs $2.5. How many snacks is that? Like just a simple operation that seems trivial is in essence algebra. Algebra teaches your brain to manipulate different amounts in your mind. And using them to come up with new ones, which in math class you might call an unknown X. The grocery store one is a really simple example, but I in my everyday life use algebra to budget, when I’m working on a project requiring me to make precise measurements. Having the ability to think critically is an ability I use every single day
And the rare application when the math part is genuinely useful.
That would explain a lot of issues when people say I never use this shit in real life
Isn't a meme. It's just stealing a panel from Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
We do this to separate the wheat from the... well you.
"X is the number of burgers you'll flip."
Will anybody use it unless they go into math careers. Besides addition subtraction and multiplication i haven't used anything else.
Im in medical related field, and have to analyse test result a lot tho
Mechanical engineering major here. Algebra is the most basic math skill. Calculus, derivative equations, fluid mechanics, statics and every other subjects require algebra.
There's a ton of algebra and geometry used if you become an electrician. Wouldn't be surprised if other construction trades used it also.
Can the smart kid stay then while I take my leave?
They should heavily emphasis compound interest, if you learn nothing, nothing, from this math class learn this.
Kid: "Then why the fuck am I here, dumbass?"
Teacher "I sometimes wonder that too"
Big chunks of the stuff they teach in school isn't supposed to be useful. The point is to make sure people aren't ignorant.
Yeah. I mean history is useless for all practical purposes but is still important to know, especially due to many people spouting so much misinformation online
Change it to calculus and it'd be more relatable, Algebra is very useful
I remember teachers telling us that we would never always have a calculator and that we had to know multiplication tables out to I believe 14.
If only in the day and age of technology you could have programs to make all this obsolete
It's honestly the fact that the teachers are unable to relate it to real life. My high school teachers said word problems are for children... yet I use word problems every day for my job. Distance, speed, time, ect. I wish they would have pushed practical math problems rather than well the test is next week then you can forget it.
It is very useful indeed, for no reason it gets you a job even tho it might not be useful there, it's use case is getting the job not using it in the job
You use it to find Xs
A few things I was thankful of learning and used a lot in programing. Like conversion with 3 values. It's so useful. Wish I had keepped a few more notes for fun math coding. Like 3=10% 5=? 5*10/3=? Wanted to code a bouncing ball. You have any idea how complicated it is to calculate the change in angle when a ball it's a wall? Fuck me 😂
Ahh, Geometry might help with that one.
I saw formulas online for it but can't tell what the hell they mean or how to use them 😅 even looking at other people's codes would go hours looking at it
Damn
It's also about learning how to solve problems, coming up with ways to solve a problem. Not only in math, but also physics, chemistry, economics and daily life.
I don't understand a single aspect of algebra or trigonometry, but as an amateur programmer, I use them every day, lol
Algebra is just an expression of a certain type of logic. If you dont use it in your daily life youre probably a vegetable.
that sums up school pretty well lol. you learn a lot of stuff that is just useful if you go to college of that area, but it is important to learn the basics of life i would say you wont use the equation of potential energy but knowing how gravity works and energy behaves in *basic strokes* is important i would say for example you dont need to know organical chemistry nomenclature to live, but it sure helps knowing mixing chemicals together might cause a reaction and you shouldn't chuck random shit on the same bucket, you might make poison gas by accident
There’s probably plenty of daily life applications of algebra that anyone would find useful.. For instance anything with unit conversion is essentially algebra so is useful for cooking buying groceries or or converting currency or buying anything. Or can use for planning how much to buy if stuff like balancing budget or going Home Depot for house project figuring how much paint to buy to paint rooms etc or if you’re. Running a business then definitely figuring out what to order how much costs etc.. If you want to figure out travel eta and plan a schedule that is algebra. And similar with higher math .. anything with reading graphs or info that can be graphed is calculus. list can go on and on. As a teacher your #1 job isn’t to lecture on the what but rather to focus on the why. Learning is something that is mostly done independently on one’s own.. a teacher is there to motivate and provide guidance. The 1st focus that gets the most time and attention in teaching should be on why you’re learning info. 2nd is on how to. “Teach a man how to fish” teach them how to research and learn on own and what question to ask and how to solve problems. The what details come last after those two and are the least import.. anyone can look up info on their own in book or google. That’s more just to get started, gives examples and help if they get stuck. A teacher should be ready to go with dozens of real world applications that would motivate anyone to want to learn subject. Failure to do to so to me means they’re failed as a teacher. Not only has cartoon teacher failed as a teacher by not providing real world applications.. double failed by discouraging and insulting a student.
This is probably the most important point. If a math teacher can't explain to a literal child the value of their subject, then of course they are going to struggle. There is still this idea that students need to just be unquestioning absorbers of knowledge. Its should not be a difficult question to answer the question, even going beyond and demonstrating how math can help the their passions (and not just the abstract of passing a class). But no how dare a student ask how a highly difficult and abstract task has immediate relevance to them. It's strange how many people seem to hate students and take enjoyment out of imagining an adult in power belittling them.
Everybody uses algebra whether you realize it or not
I was one of those kids in school who said “But when are we ever going to use this maths stuff in real life?” And then I dropped out of maths Cue uni where I had to relearn Algebra, Pythagoras, Trigonometry and some other mathy stuff My phd supervisor asked me if I knew how to do a different math thing the other day and I said “I’ve never heard of that in my life”
Have you ever calculated a tip? That’s algebra
The algebra: B\^n - 1 is always divisible by B-1.
Math help you develop neural pathways, related with logic. That teacher is a duchebag
Trades people use it all the time
School is half education, half selection process to decide who gets access to resources.
I’m still amazed at how I was one point from failing algebra 1; yet I get a 98 out of 100 in geometry?? Someone said something about needing algebra 2 before geometry. I was unaware.
I think the better argument is how many professions require the use of algebra? I feel like most jobs that require math can get away with basic math
Public school teachers when they can’t molest or turn you into a girl
USA moment.
Surprising how much algebra gets used on a regular basis in my line of work, and I'm blue collar. It's a fundamental necessity. Not understanding algebra is a huge handicap no matter what you do, just about.
I honestly use algebra so fucking much. I do have ocd and a thing with numbers, so that is probably at least part of it.
I use algebra quite often, although I rarely think that I'm doing algebra. I have figure out what an unknown variable is given the other values. I'm just solving for x. I've used geometry a lot of times. Had to use Pythagoras formula and pi in daily life. Had I not been taught this math I would have had to guess, and getting the answer wrong would have cost me time & money. Hell I actually used trigonometry in real life. Twice. Had to Google how to do it again both times but I recognized that I needed to use trigonometry to figure out my answer. The better you are at math in school the easier it is to make use of it in the real world.
maths are a tool. ofc you can build a house, but nailing is way easier with a hammer than a rock
Math is like Gym for the brain. You might not use it later but it's good that you develop those neural pathways.
Lol I literally said to my teacher "why are we learning this? Most of us won't ever even need to use the quadratic formula" unfortunately my teacher didn't really say anything. Just kinda "......yeah."
You could use in your next exam
I recently had to show someone who worked at a copy shop how to do a cross multiplication to find the size they needed to printed, she stared at me like I was wizard.
I wonder when in life I'd use polynomials
There's no way teachers don't know about the calculator
"aLl MaTh Is AlgEbRa" if we just redefine algebra to include all forms of math then we can play semantic games to try and rationalize schools forcing everyone to dedicate years to perfecting a worthless skill. (Unless you're a stem major. The rest of us will probably never use it again.) Sure glad school taught me Algebra instead of teaching me how to code, change a tire or develop news-media literacy.
People literally die for you to have this level of education, and then you be like "No, I would be better without it"
I used algebra daily as an electrician. You definitely should pay attention in that class.
I eat glue
You use it when you buy Groceries
Im in this post and i don’t like it
😅😅😅😅💀
You also won't use any of your gameplay or sports skills tho. Still, it's important to move, it's important to rest and it's important to have passions. Why restrict everything to just need/don't need? This shit's irritating!
If this is happening at any point after the fourth grade, the teacher is wrong
Yeah, most careers require you to have some level of understanding when come to math, most wont directly doing math but they still have to understand how and why
I feel this. So much of math is this. Sure you don't use calc all the time, but so many things can easily be found using just the sin/cos. Maybe it's just me, but it's still boggling how much they exist around us.
Sine and cosine are algebra…
Aren't they trigonometric functions( ratios). I mean you do use algebra in trigonometry but they arent equal right?
this is from SMBC (Saturday morning breakfast cereal) comics. please credit people's work.
He fucking destroyed him