People are math challenged

Quote: DJTeddyBear

Quote: samspruce

Did you know that seven fifths of children nowadays don't understand fractions!

That's hilarious.

It reminds me of the time I got a phishing spam email regarding the Fifth Third Bank. My immediate reaction was, "Can't they come up with a better fictitious name?"

It was months later when traveling in Ohio that I saw a branch and realized that it's a real bank!


https://www.53.com/

Reminds me of an old "Dilbert" where the Boss got upset when he found out 40% of sick days were taken on either a monday or a friday.

Quote: AZDuffman

Reminds me of an old "Dilbert" where the Boss got upset when he found out 40% of sick days were taken on either a monday or a friday.

:)

In a very old Dilbert the Boss informs the engineers the company wil no longer pay for PDAs, but till still pay for travel to professional conferences. In the last frame the Boss is looking at requests for travel to "Palm Pilot, California."

i remember when i was little in math class, the teacher would ask everyone a question, 2seconds later id give an answer while all the other students were still plugging numbers into their calculator. i always thought long division was the stupidest thing ever. wtf is a remainder? or carrying digits while doing multiplication. the way they teach you to do multiplication is so slow and tedious.

for example like 18 x 28, they teach you to do 8x8, you get 64 so write down 4 and carry a 6, then make a zero on the next line, and do 8 x 2 for 16 plus the 6 you carried, then you write 22 in front of the zero you wrote down and add those two lines together to get 224, then you put another zero down, and multiply 1 x 8 to get an 8 and put that in front of the zero, then put two more zeros down, and do 1 x 2 to get 2 and put 2 in front of the two zeros, then add those two lines together, plus the result of the other lines together, and you get a number.

seriously who came up with such a slow and tedious process?

when all you gotta do is (20 x 28) - (2 x 28).

two calculations that should be instanteneous for anyone with half a brain.

Quote:

when all you gotta do is (20 x 28) - (2 x 28)

Or (30 x 18) - (2 x 18) = 504.

All multiplication is (28 x 8) + (28 x 10) = 224 + 280 = 504.

my point being (20x28) - (2x28) is faster to compute in your head than (28x8) + (28x10).

Quote: rudeboyoi

two calculations that should be instantaneous for anyone with half a brain.

I guess then I don't have even that half-brain! I couldn't do it with pencil and paper!

Well I disagree with your premise. When in real life (non-work related) are you going to have to know more than 12x12? I work statistics at pretty much all sporting events and it's all computer-based now. With computers and calculators so easily accessible, I believe these kids should have the theoretical knowledge of long division and long multiplication but it's utterly not important anymore in today's society. I spent 3-4 years learning this ridiculous math when in fact I could now be learning advanced quantum mechanics (I'm taking only a 3rd year class right now) if we had skipped it. Honestly, if we cut out all that bullshit in our educational system we could easily skip at least 2 years of elementary school.

Also, I think you are vastly overestimating the average intelligence of a human being. I would say one-third of the population couldn't be taught basic kinematics by Richard Feynman himself. Lastly, I think if you didn't learn it the "long" and "harder" way you wouldn't be able to think in terms of how you are now. The way they teach us is a good, basic, and logical way to do it. The way you (and I) do it is just as logical, but as straight-forward and basic. In other words, our way changes for every problem whereas this way does not.

A father told me this: he tells his son he needs to learn multiplication tables because he might not always have a calculator. The kid says, "oh come on we will always have calculators now."

He couldnt come up with a response. The kid was right.

I do have a pocket calculator with me most of the time these days.

I think being able to do math in your head is fairly important. When you go to a store to buy things for example, boxes of the same things come in different sizes and quantities for different prices and it's good to know what kind of deal you are getting. When at the auto dealership, it's good to know how to do a quick calculation of taxes, freight, etc. so that you can know what you are going to pay. When you drive every day, it's good to be able to make a basic calculation of when you're going to get there based on distance.

Certainly quantum mechanics has much, much, less practical implications then basic mathematics. The only time you would quote Heisenberg's uncertainty principle or Schrodinger's equation is to unimpress a girl or within the confines of a University. I took those classes, and today, I have no idea what a Hamiltonian is... I can express to people the meaning of Quantum Mechanics and that you can't observe with complete accuracy the location of an object at any given time, that particles have different states and that each state has a probability, etc, but it has no meaning in my daily life.

Where would Feynman be if he didn't know his basic math?

Just because you have access to a calculator or a computer doesn't mean that you have to use it. You're going to forget the long division and multiplication principles if you don't use it in your daily life. Even at the casino last weekend, when someone was dealt a straight flush in Caribbean Stud, he was impressed that I was able to calculate the odds were about 72,000:1. That wasn't because I had the odds memorized, it was because I could calculate 48 x 49 x 50 x 51 x 52 / (36 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2) = 49 x 10 x 17 x 26 / 3 = (490 x 442) / 3 = 72,193.333 : 1. I needed a napkin to do it, but it was fairly easy to do so.

Quote: boymimbo

I think being able to do math in your head is fairly important. When you go to a store to buy things for example, boxes of the same things come in different sizes and quantities for different prices and it's good to know what kind of deal you are getting.

It is fairly important as one means of excersicing the mind. But there are other mental excercises yuo can do.

I usually carry two cellphones with me (mine and the company's), both of which have a calculator. I use that at the store if I want to figure out something. My backup is a pen and a small sheet of paper.

Oh, the one area where mental math is very, very useful is card counting in BJ.