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For me, it wasn't math itself that scared me, it was actually doing calculations by hand. Even though we have calculators and software, we still expect kids to
by ddelony 17y ago
For me, it wasn't math itself that scared me, it was actually doing calculations by hand. Even though we have calculators and software, we still expect kids to do complicated things like long division and solving equations, and even calculus by hand. (Maybe it's a holdover of the Protestant work ethic.)
If I'd known about things like Gödel's Theorem or mathematical logic as a teenager, I would have seen the big picture.
- eru 17y agoThe name is the only thing the school subject shares with `real' mathematics.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- orborde 17y agoIt is very true that serious users of mathematics (engineers, scientists, even mathematicians themselves) don't really rely on their ability to do calculations by hand; indeed, a lot of them suck at it. Doing it by hand while learning the subject matter gives you a much more visceral experience of what's actually happening, though, even if you use a tool to do it for you most of the time.
- lmkg 17y agoVery true. I became a math major in college because it was the only technical discipline where I didn't have to deal with numbers. I calculate the standard deviation the same way everyone else does, I plug the numbers into Excel, but I know what's going on under the hood and I have a better understanding of what the result means. For example, the standard deviation of the sample versus the standard deviation of the mean came up the other day.
- pmiller2 17y agoI wish I could get people to believe me when I tell them math is not about numbers and that computer science isn't about computers.
- camccann 17y agoThere's a well-known quote that says "computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes". Often attributed to Dijkstra, but I don't know if there's a reliable source.
- godDLL 17y agoThe reason kids are made to do this stuff is so that they get real contact with tangible abstractions. Granted, it is not the best way to force this kind of thing down your throat, but from my own school experience they teach a kid "one orange", "two oranges" first, and then simply hammer them with problems. At no point do they explain the concept of numbers as an abstraction, as in "just one" and "just two". Kids don't get to internalize numbers, and all of what comes after, because it's all built on more complex abstractions from there on. Come to think, they don't even "get" the concept of "abstraction" in itself. The education system as of now (and 200 years ago) still brute-forces through this very basic thing, and many students just don't come through, which is to be expected.