And with a supply of contraceptives.
Every now and then, we run into somebody who wears his (or her) lack of mathematical skill like a badge. Generally this happens when a group of people has gone out to eat, and it comes time to divvy up the check and calculate the tip. “Oh, gosh,” pipes up one guy, chuckling smugly, “don’t give it to me, I don’t have a clue how to do that stuff.”
And he sits there grinning beatifically, thinking he’s established his Rebel Credentials or something, while everybody else at the table stares and thinks, What a dumbass. (And then they silently conspire to stiff that guy with more than his share of the check.)
Don’t be that guy.
That guy is the one who can’t figure out how not to get cheated by the bank’s complicated mortage-calculation gambit, and who falls for the pyramid-style investment scheme, and who is unable to separate the wheat from the chaff when politicians are going on and on about tax revenue amortized across escrow valuations blah blah blah which is why we can’t fix your potholes.
You will probably never need to understand squaring the circle or any of the other abstruse things you’ll come into contact with over the next few years. However, by learning how to think about those things, you’ll learn incalculably valuable skills that will give you an enormous advantage later in life.
Another thing about math:
There are lots of different aspects to it, and you may love some and hate the others. The way my high school was organized, the progression was Algebra -> Geometry -> Advanced Algebra -> Math Analysis (basically advanced trig) -> Calculus. I thought Algebra was boring, loved Geometry, was bored by Adv. Algebra, thought Math Analysis was okay, loved Calc. Then I went to college, loved advanced calculus, loved differential equations, hated linear algebra, thought statistics was so-so, hated partial differential equations, and so on. I would guess that by now you’ve probably really only experienced Algebra in any great detail, and it would be a mistake to write off all math based on your experiences thus far, in the same way it would be a mistake to write off all movies because so far you’ve only been exposed to Pauly Shore.
You may still hate math after taking every class there is to offer. Different strokes, and such. But don’t give up on it before you’ve really experienced it.
Jeff
Math saves lives. It keeps stupid people out of medical school.
I should add a smiley to that 
1. Pick the number of times a week that you would like to sex.
(Try for more than once but less than 10)
2. Multiply this number by 2
3. Add 5.
4. Multiply it by 50.
5. If you have already had your birthday this year add 1752.
If you haven't, add 1751.
6. Now subtract the four digit year that you were born.
You should have a three digit number. The first digit of this was your
original number. The next two numbers are...
YOUR AGE!
I just had this done to me this morning, so I’ll take the opportunity to show how it’s done.
Let x = the number you choose, one through ten.
- 2x (multiply by two)
- 2x + 5 (add five)
- 50(2x + 5) = 100x + 250 (multiply by 50)
- Here’s the funny part. Notice how 2002 (or 2001, if you haven’t had your birthday yet) - 250 = 1752 (or 1751).
- Subtracting the year you were born isolates the addition part to be your age.
- Because it is 100x, x will be the third digit.
Easy.
Math (i.e. calculus and beyond) is useful only when your profession actually requires it. Like jobs of a design engineer, an architect, or a game programmer. Other than that it’s arithmetics, not math that you are using in daily life.
So basically, high school math is more than enough to get you through life without any problem.
For 99% of the population, advanced math is useless, therefore wasting time to study it.
Did you even read the thread, verybdog? It’s not the specific technical knowledge that’s valuable. It’s the thinking tools that mathematics represents that are worthwhile.
That’s a big fat hairy lie! Vegetables aren’t “good for you”, they’re EVIL!
I know this because they taste yucky.
In addition to Cervaise’s reply, which was my first response, I would add this:
Let me assure you 100% that at this stage you have no idea that you won’t want to end up as a design engineer, an architect, a game programmer. Or an actuary or banker. Or a research scientist. Or any of the thousand other jobs out there that do require some detailed knowledge of proper maths.
So for heaven’s sake don’t cut yourself off from this knowledge now.
pan
I started college wanting to be a journalist. Never had any interest in math. Took a Calculus course and became hooked. Thats when math became interesting. In Calc you learn how to take one equation, say for the velocity of an object, and use calculus to manipulate the equation to tell you how fast it is accelerating at a given point in time, or how far it has traveled. It only gets better from there.
BTW, I am an Electrical Engineer now. Arguably one of the hardest degrees to finish for an undergrad.
I once saw a documentary and they were interviewing some primitieve people who herded goats in a desertic place. The kids were sent out with the goats every day. The father was asked why he did not send his kids to school so they could learn to read and write and do math and the father said “that is of no use when you are herding goats”. Of course, that is a self fulfilling prophecy. By not teaching the kids anything he is assuring that the only thing they can do in the future is herd goats.
Knowledge, any knowledge, is useful. It is like a tool. If you have it then you use it. If you do not have it, then you will never know where you could have used it.
Everything you learn widens your understanding of the world around you and allows you to better cope with it. History, languages, math, everything. Yes you can get by with very little but it narrows your options considerably. A well balanced person needs to have, besides some deeper knowledge in his particular area of expertise, a wide knowledge about many other fields. Math will affect your life, whether you want it or not. If you have that tool then you will use it to your advantage. If you don’t have it then you will be dependent on others for things which require it.
Yes, you can live your life without knowing math, or history or a second language or many other things but you live a poorer life intellectually and probably materially too. Yes you can herd goats in the desert all your life and be happy. But I would say you’d be happier if you had other choices.
BTW, we have had threads talking about outright scams like free energy, pyramid schemes and the like and also about legal offers which are only advantageous for the offerer and come close to being a scam. The victims are always people who are bad at math. People who are good at math and feel comfortable with numbers can identify those things for what they are.
Whether you like it or not, money is going to be a major consideration in your life and money is about math. Wheat interest rates you pay when you borrow, what interest rates you get when you invest, what effect taxes have on what you do, etc. If you do not understand these things you will work harder and get less for it than the guy who does understand them.
Look around you. People who have knowledge, the more the better, generally fare better than people who don’t.
I’m a civil engineer and have had the adult dose of calculus in college. You’d be surprised how often trig comes in handy in life. If you’re doing any kind of carpentry, and you want to make a frame square for example, knowing the Pythagorean theorem lets you measure arbitrary distances along two legs, compute what the hypotenuse should be, and then you know how to adjust the frame to ensure that it is square. Or if you’re doing like stairs and have to make a bunch of odd cuts I find that easier with trig too.
I agree with others, at this point in your life, why limit your options?
But the best reason for learning trig is that it allows you to learn calculus, and women find that incredibly sexy!
IMHO, the study of math, especially math beyond arithmetic, changes the structure of the brain, strengthening the brain, allowing the student to think in new, more complex ways.
Whereas liberal arts, such as English, are more likely to require adding new facts to a preexisting brain structure.
That’s why many people find math more difficult - it requires “rewiring” the brain in varying degrees. Some people’s brains are already “wired” in a way that’s conducive to math, so they have an easier time. Although sooner or later most students will reach a point where their natural “wiring” is insufficient and they’ll have to work really hard to master the material.
Preparation and repetition are the key elements to mastering math. As with the study of musical instruments and foreign languages, an hour a day every day is worth way more than 8 hours on the weekend. Since mathematical knowledge is cumulative, catching up once you fall behind is tough. Until you master concept A, you won’t fully understand concept B, and you’ll be totally lost on concepts C and D.
The best time to acquire mathematical knowledge is when you’re young - as you get older, your brain “wiring” hardens, becoming more difficult to rearrange. On the other hand, if you study math when you’re young, you can apply your math sharpened wit to any task that strikes your fancy - writing the great American novel, telling the best jokes, crafting the best pop songs. (Huey Lewis was a math major at Cornell, and David Spade was an advanced math whiz in high school. Okay, so you have no idea who these guys are. Trust an old guy, at one time they were hip.)
A surprising number of major literary figures have a math/science background. Norman Mailer graduated from Harvard in Engineering, Thomas Pynchon studied Engineering at Cornell, Kurt Vonnegut flunked out of Chemistry at the same school (okay, maybe not the best example, but he at least passed Calc.) Of course, sci fi writers are expected to have science/math backgrounds - Gene Wolfe graduated in either ChemE or MechE, and worked as an engineer for years while he built his writing career.
So don’t write off math yet. Try a different approach. Break it down into pieces that are small enough to digest easily. Get the teacher to slow down and explain things clearly. Repeat the problem solving routines til you’ve got them down cold. Do some every day.
Here’s another real life application for trig: Say you’re in the Navy and you’re on a damage control team. One of the spaces (rooms) your team’s responsible for repairing happens to be below the water line and there’s a major hole in the bulkhead (wall) which just so happens to be the only thing between you and the ocean. Your only way to fix this problem is to make a K shoring. Knowing how to compute the hypotenuse of that right angle will save the ship.
I’m with the others who say “why limit your options?” For my major and minor, I don’t have to take any more math; however, I’m really interested in Calculus. Problem is I don’t have all the prereqs for it. That means that I have to gamble on course availability and nonconflict with the courses I must take.
Smiley, I can’t help noticing that you haven’t responded to this thread since the 13th, at about 07:30 GMT or 01:30 Chicago time. More than a little has been said since then. Do you have any comment on our comment? Have we convinced you that you don’t wish to remain a goat-herder? Or do you remain entrenched in the belief that learning anything other than that which your job requires is superfluous?
pan