That’s not vocabulary, that’s memorizing the conjugation of the verb, “amo” which, in Latin is “I love”. In other words, the verb forms for I love, you love, he/she/it loves, we love, you love, they love.
I was given tests when I was accepted in college, and I tested right out of having to take any English course, so I had some credits to play with in terms of choosing an elective. I made the mistake of choosing a course named, “Humanities”, because it looked easy. Oh, Lord, I was bored to death.
Uh, wow. In the first place, the idea of mathematics “as a methodology for grounding abstract concepts and turning them to practical use” IS very much “one of the topics taught in school and higher-ed math courses”. I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that identifying math with the content of mathematics education, at all levels, is somehow “demeaning” to mathematics.
In the second place, when non-mathematicians are discussing what it means to be “good at math” or “bad at math”, ISTM that the place to center that discussion is on their own experiences of what math is.
Well, if the schools are driving students into coursework that they are not cognitively ready for, I’d have to say that any math past arithmetic was a “useless” skill for me, and my junior and senior years (for that matter, all four years) would have been better spent if I had some sort of number-crunching practical “business math” type course. But I was a college-prep student, and of course I needed higher math. At least my school was smart enough to not put in me pre-calc, where would have only dragged the rest of the class down.
Incidentally, I scored well enough on my college entrance exams that I tested right out the math requirement for the academically excellent college I ended up attending. This suggests that the most valuable skill I learned in skill was how to recognize the closest answer on multiple choice tests.
Numbers themselves are abstract concepts. I learned that much in basic arithmetic. And the infiniite and infinitesimal are as much philosophical concepts as they are scientific.
In French Canada, when I was a kid, the imperial system was still in place. In French, we used:
1 once liquide = 1 liquid ounce
1 tasse = 1 cup or 10 ounces
1 demiard = 1 pint or 20 ounces
1 pinte = 1 quart or 2 pints (you read that right: 1 pinte = 2 pints)
1 gallon = 1 gallon
But all these were Imperial ounces, cups, pints, quarts and gallons. None of these were the same size as in the U.S. Which means miles per gallon didn’t mean the same thing in Canada vs the U.S.
If you went to the store in Canada in 1975 and bought a measuring cup, which set of units was it in? If you buy one today, and there are ounce and cup markings, are those U.S. ounces and cups, because the Imperial system is mostly gone? Or because the designers (in China) don’t even know there are different sizes of ounces and cups?
If you have a recipe that calls for 5 ounces of milk, what country and decade did the recipe come from?
Even today, if you buy a Ninja air fryer with “10-pint capacity”, what are you getting exactly?
I found some Fortnum & Mason coffee, and the brewing instructions are in tablespoons, not metric.
60 tablespoons is 3 3/4 cups.
I agree that science and yes engineering is best with metric, but my point is that metric has no advantages for everyday common use.
Not everyone who is bad at something has some sort of disability, though.
As a side note I worked with someone who had some sort of dyscalculia; any time she wrote a room number down (she was in PBX), she would have to have someone double check that the room number was correct. The room number was 3 digits long and she could not guarantee that she wrote it down correctly.
Maybe not in every situation, but for cooking and baking? I’m glad to have my recipes in metric measures, and it’s also convenient that you can easily transpose volume to weight and vice versa for liquids in SI units.
Just a reminder: One person’s useless can certainly be another person’s useful, and I would like to get back to things learned in school, please
I can’t think of a single useful thing I learned in physical education, except to hate physical activity.
I learned some excellent skills for avoiding doing things while looking keen and busy in PE. I’m pretty sure that’s not what they were trying to teach though.
Yeah, sorry, I had intended to be drawing a distinction between people who simply have no math ability, and people who have a specifically math-related disability:
To repeat, I have yet to personally meet anyone that I’d consider belonged in either of those categories. I’ve met plenty of the math-anxious and math-disaffected, though.
Looking at your avatar the cursive I expected was this:
I am disappointed.
Now you mention it…
Apart from signalling that you are not in the camp of idiots. And cooking. Baking also. And common sense, defined as the sense that is not statistically rare on a planetary scale. Makes communicating easy. Reduces mistakes.
I remember that. My friend’s parents were into Chisanbop. They also believed in levitation
What would Washington say?
Yes, General, that makes as much sense as anything I’ve seen in the news recently.
Same here. I was failing Algebra 2 as a high school junior and begged to be allowed to drop it after the first semester, the teacher and principal wouldn’t allow it. That was because my math PSAT scores were high, because I could usually eliminate at least a couple of choices quickly. All you really had to do was work backward.
My issue is that I hit a wall in math that I never hit in other subjects. I needed a tutor every day after school to pull out a D in Algebra 2, and in those days no one took it before junior year of high school. Could I have gone further? Probably not without subjecting myself to more frustration and anxiety than I was willing to do. I didn’t like the easier subjects either, but they just boring for the most part. I did like history and government classes ok, or at least well enough to get a BA in those areas.
I use fractions all the time when I’m adjusting recipes to serve more people or fewer people or to adjust a recipe that calls for a round 9 inch cake pan for an 8 inch pan.
You do not need to be a professional mathematician or engineer for studying mathematics— and I mean beyond merely adding and subtracting numbers like a human calculator— to be useful. You learn important problem-solving skills along with numeracy.
Richard Feynman recounts a “contest” with an abacus wizard in Rio de Janeiro, which demonstrated that the abacist sure could calculate fast, but did not really understand what he was doing. So being able to do rapid arithmetic was the “useless” skill, not mathematics. Something to consider with the ease of access to calculator apps, “AI”, and other computer aids even today.