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I always found it amusing that most of my math and cs professors in college seemed to have terrible arithmetic skills. I'm sure part of it is just that it's har
by leetcrew 7y ago
I always found it amusing that most of my math and cs professors in college seemed to have terrible arithmetic skills. I'm sure part of it is just that it's hard to concentrate on the work when you're also narrating the process to the class, but I suspect it's also that basic arithmetic is a relatively unimportant skill in most advanced research. hiring this sort of person to teach/tutor grade school math might be like hiring a porsche engineer to repair your car. they'll get the job done, but maybe not as efficiently as your local mechanic.
- scruple 7y ago"My degree is in Mathematics, not arithmetic." was a common one that I'd hear from friends with Math degrees or in the Math department.
- klyrs 7y agoI'm a mathematician, not a calculator. Mathematicians spawned an entire field, computer science, to alleviate the tedium of computation! Back when I thought I was going to be an engineer, I went through a brief phase of doing everything by hand. Indeed, my brain is capable of "rapid" arithmetic, but it requires practice and discipline to achieve and maintain what amounts to a billion-time slowdown.