PdotMichael
Banned
I'm not even sure what you mean with better persons.
But at least in Germany engineering and technology degrees follow the same homboltian ideal of higher education as all other degrees.
-
Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
Remember when teachers told u math was important
- Thread starter Ryaaan14
- Start date
- Status
I'm not even sure what you mean with better persons.
But at least in Germany engineering and technology degrees follow the same homboltian ideal of higher education as all other degrees.
Saying you are bad at maths should be treated the same way as saying "I have trouble reading words longer than five letters.". It's not a quirk, it's not a trait, it's either a lack of education or stupidity. So many people pull out a calculator for simple percentages like 10 or 20 it blows my mind.
The complainints about Cursive? There's a reason people use the term "joined up thinking" when talking about due consideration in reference to joined up writing. Writing in block letters is for children...and also any form you fill in for government.
We need to stop having a culture that is accepting of failures in things as basic as maths.
The complainints about Cursive? There's a reason people use the term "joined up thinking" when talking about due consideration in reference to joined up writing. Writing in block letters is for children...and also any form you fill in for government.
We need to stop having a culture that is accepting of failures in things as basic as maths.
KiwiLannister
Member
Personal finance skills are definitely useful but you don't need to have a year long course in it for most people. A basic understanding of compound interest, of inflation, of debt, credit ratings, mortgages, basic investing in index funds/property/bonds does not take an entire school year to get through. You could realistically teach people how to do taxes and save for retirement in a couple of weeks.
Obviously it gets far more complex for businesses or if you're very wealthy but most people don't need to learn about how to run a hedge fund.
Obviously it gets far more complex for businesses or if you're very wealthy but most people don't need to learn about how to run a hedge fund.
Stereogatari
Banned
The teachers were damn right. Having a good knowledge of mathematical concepfs helps your underlying mentality on problem solving.
PdotMichael
Banned
I don't even understand what's the deal with hating cursive. We went through it in the second year of elementary school and it was neother hard nor did anyone complain about it. What's the fucking deal here?
It absolutely is. Knowing math helps a lot, since you don't have to remember/look up a ton of stuff, as you can just derive it yourself.
Math is important, kids!
HP_Wuvcraft
Banned
My friend write ALL his scripts in cursive. He writes comic books.
Edsmells12345
Member
Math is very important. Not just for day-to-day life, but also general problem solving.
Algebra is just a representation of solving an unknown. Very useful.
Algebra is just a representation of solving an unknown. Very useful.
Chaos2Frozen
Member
Shit, I'm in a UK university now and in my Engineering foundation year that's what the professor had to teach more than half the class. I was mindblown at the level of neglect they had in Math education up till that point. (I'm from Singapore)
And trust me, it really does seem to fuck with a person's ability to use logic and reasoning.
To be fair, the A level students coped much better of course.
Antiwhippy
the holder of the trombone
Well, seeing that cursive wasn't mandatory when I was learning to write as well as being more used to writing in block seeing that Chinese is my other language, it's nice to know that people like you will think of people like me as children!
Nice to see such a mature peer I can look up to in order to know what a child I am.
You've gotta pick your battles. I think math/arithmetic is still valuable day to day, but for shit like (physical) dictionaries and handwriting, it's pretty useless nowadays.
You had me with the math, but honestly, who gives a shit how people print?
You had me with the math, but honestly, who gives a shit how people print?
nephilimdj
Member
Its the cycle of life
Kids do well at maths
some become neuro-science experts/sociologists
study why some kids don't do well at maths
Look at posts like this
Make reports
Kids do well at maths
some become neuro-science experts/sociologists
study why some kids don't do well at maths
Look at posts like this
Make reports
Jorok Goldblade
Member
To be fair, most signatures are incomprehensible squiggles attached to a couple of recognizable cursive letters.
Legit question: during regular life, when do you use those?
KiwiLannister
Member
Now cursive is a complete waste of time. Literally all it accomplishes on a practical level is it makes your writing harder to read. Which is terrible, because the entire point of writing is to convey information, if your writing is illegible then it's useless. I knew people who wrote in cursive during high school and their writing was so difficult for teachers to mark that they sometimes would get penalized for it. Nice, easy to read, printed writing should be the goal. Especially since as you write faster when under timed exam conditions and your handwriting gets sloppier, that previously difficult cursive becomes impossible to read.
You can't even make the argument that it helps for hand-written letters or in business, because you literally never do that. You type everything. I use cursive for my signature and that is literally it. Maybe birthday cards?
Saying cursive is an essential skill is like saying using a slide rule is an essential skill for maths. It is to communication what corsets are to fashion.
Basic stats: interpreting data, reading articles. Do you want to open a business? You need to do market research, you need to understand stats. Do you want to play poker or any kind of probability based game (video games, dnd, blackjack, etc.)? Do you want to do university or higher levels of science and write papers? Do you want to research anything? Do you want to improve something in your business? Basic statistics is arguably the most useful thing you can learn in maths, and I say that even though it's not the focus of my field.
Trigonometry is essential if you ever want to design anything. Want to build a chair? Want to move house and have some awkwardly shaped furniture you need to fit through a doorway? Want to landscape your back yard? Build a shed? If you're using a gps and want to figure out the actual distance instead of the as the crow flies distance (if you're playing golf for example). Trigonometry is so useful for so many things.
Algebra is basically the tool that you use to solve any logical, quantity based problem. If you want to predict your sales in a years time, if you want to calculate compound interest, if you want to model anything, if you want to solve very basic equations. Algebra itself isn't always used in a formal sense but if you can't understand how to think logically based on what you learn in it you will struggle.
A job is part of regular life. Asking that question is like asking when will you use history or physics in regular life.
Muskieratboi
Member
Are we just going to stick to math here, or are we going to mention the Elephant in the room, being OP's grammar?
He differentiated life and career, c'mon. Gimme a bone here: In what regular situation would I need, say, trig?
I don't get people complaining about math in school. The stuff you learn before going to college is basic as fuck. And in lost of countries you can skip the harder classes with fewer real-life applications (e.g. calculus) if you don't plan on going for a job that'd make use of them.
30yearsofhurt
Member
You never played pool?
Did you ever read a misleading poll in a newspaper and seen how they've misrepresented something?
Don't get me started on algebra. I use it to figure out my fortnightly budget.
What a doofus I am eh?
Maybe I'm just biased cause I use this silly mathematics shit all day in my regular life as a financial analyst.
KiwiLannister
Member
You've never in your life needed to work out an angle, or work out the lengths of the sides of a triangle? In any context? Maps? Design? DIY?
30yearsofhurt
Member
Are we just going to stick to math here, or are we going to mention the Elephant in the room, being OP's grammar?
u frgt 2 mention he's speling
Some people use their free time to create or hone skills. There are plenty in which trig would play a role in that. If you're asking me in what way is going to make sure you manage basic survival, then of course it isn't going to be helpful.
Yeah.
If school only taught you what you really needed to know they would just teach you how to read and speak and then let you go.
Nooope. Google Maps, and I'm not a creative. I can't draw or build things, my earlier years were dedicated to playing music as an extra-curricular activity.
KiwiLannister
Member
I mean the end point of all of this is that the entire world runs on mathematics, if you aren't going to learn it to a decent level then you are severely limited in what kind of opportunities you have. You can't design things, you can't model things, you can't work in finance, you can't work in engineering, optimization, you can't do a number of jobs that generally all have high pay, high demand, and for a lot of them they are very interesting. The thing with mathematics is it is a skill. You can easily teach someone economics or investment or business processes or engineering design knowledge if that person understands mathematics well, but you can't easily teach an English major advanced math, it's a skill that requires years of learning rather than a bit of rote memorization.
Okay sure maths isn't useful if you do everything you can to avoid needing to use it.
Okay sure maths isn't useful if you do everything you can to avoid needing to use it.
ZackieChan
Member
You have no idea what you're talking about. You really think historians just learn and memorize facts?
For clarification, most of what I did as a history major involved that top level of your hierarchy.
30yearsofhurt
Member
Trig rarely comes up. But like I was saying earlier, you encounter situations where statistics and algebra are relevant all the time. To the extent that this isn't apparent to someone I'd suggest that either they've so thoroughly learned the basic concepts that it doesn't seem like they're doing anything at all or that they're often making lots of very avoidable mistakes.
I mean, the basic sort of problem that high school algebra is about solving - an unknown quantity is defined implicitly by a relationship to some known quantities using basic mathematical operations - comes up constantly. It's going to come up almost any time someone is thinking about budgeting, for example. Yeah, few people actually write down an equation and solve for X, but that's because they've learned how to solve this sort of problem by inspection for simple cases. Think the sorts of word problems that you use to teach kids algebra. This isn't stuff that's immediately obvious to many of them; it becomes easy only once they've learned algebra. I know a couple adults who really don't get algebra, and they genuinely struggle to figure out very simple exchange rate -type problems. Or something like "if it takes one person three hours to paint one fence how long does it take three people to paint nine fences?" But this sort of taking a unit rate and applying it to an actual task is something that most of us do all the time.
Probability and statistics are vital for understanding information we get about the world. Here it's probably true that lots of people don't use statistics (well), but that results in them making poor decisions. People also often lack even a conceptual understanding of probability and make terrible inferences because of it. This is most obviously relevant to individuals when we're talking about health care, but in general these are probably the areas of math which are most important for being an informed voter.
I don't avoid it, but I didn't really end up needing any of the the more advanced maths techniques I was taught in high school. It doesn't really seem as essential as some are making out out to be. It seems like it's essential if you have certain interests, that's all.
Math isn't a survival skill, yes. Nobody here, and I mean nobody, is trying to put math forward as something that you literally cannot get by without knowing at a high level.
buy teh haloz
Banned
I barely understood most of my math lessons in high school to be honest. A lot of it felt very arbitrary.
EekumBokum
Member
I remember taking a certification exam and they had me rewrite the whole no cheating agreement in cursive. That shit took me so damn long lol, and it was only like 2 sentences.
And wtf at thinking math is not important, how dumb do you have to be to think that the one subject learned in school which is used daily is unimportant.
And wtf at thinking math is not important, how dumb do you have to be to think that the one subject learned in school which is used daily is unimportant.
KiwiLannister
Member
My experience with history is we learned about a particular area of history (in my case the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Cold War) and then we looked at different situations and wrote arguments explaining different viewpoints etc. It almost functioned as a precursor to law or debating. Certainly a useful subject.
I think the key difference between a subject like history/psychology/english etc. is that the skills required in the subjects - writing, arguing a case etc. are generally secondary to the knowledge. I spent more time learning different language techniques, learning different texts and quotes etc. when studying english literature than I did learning the skills, the skills were always secondary. Maths is a bit of a unique subject because literally all of what you're learning is the skill. I never spent ages being taught the history of mathematics, the focus of 99% of the learning is on the skill and problem solving aspects. It is a bit unique because of that singular focus.
Someone that has learned argument skills from studying English literature can easily apply them to a given historical context if they fill themselves in on the required knowledge. Maths lives in a bit of a vacuum where there isn't anything that can replace the learning of it besides simply doing more mathematics.
neogaffer1
Banned
during the SAT they make you do the same, and generally it takes so long they tell you that you can start the test and come back and finish it after you're done.
ZackieChan
Member
Definitely. But his point was that there is no creativity or synthesis in the study if history, which is patently false. Spoken like a true STEM person who never actually took a real history course.
Edit: also, taking one or two undergrad courses in history does not equal studying history. I could take a college algebra course and derive the same dismissive conclusion about lack of synthesis and creativity - would I be correct?
At least in history we learn to gather facts and study a subject before presenting our conclusion
If you want to do anything of true, lasting significance in your life, then yeah... math is important.
Unless you want to be an artist (painter, dancer, singer, writer etc.)
Otherwise you have to be prepared to live an insignificant, non-impactful life.
Unless you're really good at human relations, diplomacy, and negotiation tactics...
What was I saying?
Unless you want to be an artist (painter, dancer, singer, writer etc.)
Otherwise you have to be prepared to live an insignificant, non-impactful life.
Unless you're really good at human relations, diplomacy, and negotiation tactics...
What was I saying?
What the fuck is trigonometry.
I'm going into the air force to be mechanic for 20 years what the fuck am I gonna do with algebra? Measurements sure but that shit no way dude.
KiwiLannister
Member
I think most people would understand mathematics much better if the way school was structured changed. It is stupid to learn 6 or so subjects concurrently. It means that you need to constantly revise things because you will forget what you learned in your first few math lessons at the start of the year by the end of it if you don't.
If instead you focused on one subject at a time, did the exam, then moved onto the next subject, it would really help people. Especially for stuff like mathematics. If you did all of your years worth of mathematics by doing maths all day each day for 6 weeks then you could more easily remember concepts as they build on each other and students wouldn't have as much requirement to revise over and over.
Obviously this set-up is less practical for the school's end but I really think it would be more efficient. It's what they do in med school here.
2edgy4me.
You will use algebra almost your entire life as a mechanic, even if you don't realize you're doing it. And likely you will use trig at some point if you ever need to make something to specific dimensions.
If instead you focused on one subject at a time, did the exam, then moved onto the next subject, it would really help people. Especially for stuff like mathematics. If you did all of your years worth of mathematics by doing maths all day each day for 6 weeks then you could more easily remember concepts as they build on each other and students wouldn't have as much requirement to revise over and over.
Obviously this set-up is less practical for the school's end but I really think it would be more efficient. It's what they do in med school here.
2edgy4me.
You will use algebra almost your entire life as a mechanic, even if you don't realize you're doing it. And likely you will use trig at some point if you ever need to make something to specific dimensions.
Yeah but most of those things you're talking about was down pat and dusted by the earlier years of high school (at least here in Australia anyway, in regards to probability, percentages, and probability).
But algebra... I mean, I've never needed to do said "solve for x" yet because financial companies seem very good at properly laying out information for me - or they provide a calculator custom tailored for rates on loans and fees. And other things, like "how many apples can I fit in 2 containers" or other examples they'd give in high school for algebra just come up as pointless these days because it's like "who cares, I can cut up those apples and sprinkle lemon juice on them" and they're never of an absolutely uniform size anyway.
As a side thought I'd reckon a reason I've come to distrust mathematics is because regular old life is unpredictable. Too much planning can be stressful (like, for a party) since things never work out perfectly anyway when not dealing with absolutes.
KiwiLannister
Member
Proper application of mathematics makes planning for those eventualities much easier. As an engineer most of my work is designing around imperfections. Maths is perfect for that.
Yeah. There are also entire areas of science/maths dedicated to dealing with uncertainties. To take an example related to what I'm researching, it's possible to design fault-tolerant flight controllers for drones that are capable of landing a drone safely after a motor failure (i.e. the thing just stops spinning) or deteriorating (e.g. one motor will start spinning slower than the others due to wear and tear). This can be achieved by having a set of mathematical equations describing the flight dynamics of the drones, something which is called a mathematical model. Then you can use measurements from your sensors and some really smart mathematics to estimate in real time the parameters in that model and adjust the drone's control system in consequence. All of that is made possible because of maths. You can design something that will work even when shit hits the fan.
That's a pretty advanced example, but even when planning your finances you can account for unforeseen events using maths (e.g. adding X% contingency, making sure you would have enough money to last Y months based on your current living costs if you lost your job, etc).
Maths are not just a + b = c.
- Status