Math is hard

[Gary_Robson]

I really wasn’t trying to be a quizmaster here – I was just pointing out real problems that I’ve had to solve using the math I learned in high school.

@eleanorigby

It drove me nuts. First they would tell me that a whole number isn’t a fraction and then (when it was convenient for them) they’d say it really WAS a fraction afterall, but then they wouldn’t use it AS A FRACTION ever again.

Math is just a series of lies.

First, they tell you that you can’t take a bigger number from a smaller number. Then they introduce negative numbers.

They tell you you can’t divide a smaller number by a bigger one. Then they give you fractions.

They tell you that you can’t take the square root of a negative number; and then come imaginary numbers.

[ministryman]

Math is not hard. Your teachers sucked.

Yes, math teachers of the world, I said it.

MATH IS NOT HARD.

The reason you are having trouble is because your teachers did not show you how to transition from one type to another.

Math is like Taco Bell (a faux-mexican fast food restaurant that has used the same 6 or 7 ingredients for the last 40 years to re-invent itself and make billions of dollars).

If you undersand how to do basic addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication, you can do the hishger forms of math, like trig, calculus and ring theory.

I leave you with one example, and then you can slap your teachers.

If I ask you to dig a hole 3m x 3m x 3m, how much dirt did you remove?

Answer: 27 m3 (cubic meters). Simple, right?

Your answer assumes that the top of the surface was level (that is you removed a “perfect” cube of dirt.

But what if the top of the surface slopes at an irregular angle? You can’t dig 27m3. It might be more, it might be less. What do you do?

You take out small areas that you can measure. Add all of them up and you will have an approximation of the total volume you would remove.

This is a part of calculus. How high, how far, how much when the lines aren’t perfectly straight.

[ministryman]

@InvisibleWombat

I really wasn’t trying to be a quizmaster here – I was just pointing out real problems that I’ve had to solve using the math I learned in high school.

Math is just a series of lies.

First, they tell you that you can’t take a bigger number from a smaller number. Then they introduce negative numbers.

They tell you you can’t divide a smaller number by a bigger one. Then they give you fractions.

They tell you that you can’t take the square root of a negative number; and then come imaginary numbers.

But they all have their place and time, which is why I maintain the teacher is the problem.

Until you understand the mechanics in addition, you shouldn’t learn subtraction.

Teaching a child negative numbers until they have mastered A&S would just muddle their thinking.

The same with fractions and imaginary numbers.

[eleanorigby]

@InvisibleWombat

Math is just a series of lies.

First, they tell you that you can’t take a bigger number from a smaller number. Then they introduce negative numbers.

They tell you you can’t divide a smaller number by a bigger one. Then they give you fractions.

They tell you that you can’t take the square root of a negative number; and then come imaginary numbers.

Yes it is. It would be nice if when a precocious kid in elementary school (not me in math) says to the teacher, “but what about negative one?” for him or her to inform the class that yes, negative numbers DO exist, but they are for another lesson. Is that so hard? Is it so hard to say, “for our purposes, we are concentrating on blahblahblah right now”? Apparently it was for my educators, circa 1967-1980.

Not that I’m bitter…

And I do find math hard. It is hard for me. Even with better teachers, I would have struggled some. I cannot tell you the amount of tears and sheer dread math aroused in me, which led to math anxiety, so little of the good teaching got through. I always wanted to do better in it and felt I should be able to. But enough maundering about the past.

Good luck, OP, on the GRE (now it’s not so much of a hijack).

[rowrrbazzle]

@InvisibleWombat

Math is just a series of lies.

Well, no. But from your perspective, you might say your math education was “a series of lies”.

I posted these in a recent thread. I think they’re appropriate here, too.

James M. Barrie, Quality Street, act II:

Susan: What is algebra exactly; is it those three-cornered things?

Phoebe: It is x minus y equals z plus y and things like that. And all the time you are saying they are equal, you feel in your heart, why should they be.

Bertrand Russell, Mathematics and the Metaphysicians, collected in Mysticism and Logic:

Pure mathematics consists entirely of such assertions as that, if such and such a proposition is true of anything, then such and such another proposition is true of that thing.

It is essential not to discuss whether the proposition is really true, and not to mention what the anything is of which it is supposed to be true. Both these points would belong to applied mathematics.

We start, in pure mathematics, from certain rules of inference, by which we can infer that if one proposition is true, then so is some other proposition. These rules constitute the major part of the principles of formal logic. We then take any hypothesis that seems amusing, and deduce its consequences. If our hypothesis is about anything and not about some one or more particular things, then our deductions constitute mathematics.

**Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.
**
People who have been puzzled by the beginnings of mathematics will, I hope, find comfort in this definition, and will probably agree that it is accurate.

[Gary_Robson]

@rowrrbazzle

Well, no. But from your perspective, you might say your math education was “a series of lies”.

Excellent point. That’s how I should have phrased it.

@ministryman

But they all have their place and time, which is why I maintain the teacher is the problem.

Until you understand the mechanics in addition, you shouldn’t learn subtraction.

I agree with you in principle, but as eleanorigby said, I don’t like the way it was done. I specifically remember both teachers and textbooks saying in so many words, “you can’t take a bigger number from a smaller one.” I don’t like that approach. I would have preferred, “Another day, we shall learn how to take a bigger number from a smaller one, but it involves a special type of number we haven’t talked about yet.”

There’s no need to lie about it.