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Math at school started losing me some time around multiplying and dividing fractions, and I haven't seen anything uses of math in any of my jobs. I, for one, am

Math at school started losing me some time around multiplying and dividing fractions, and I haven't seen anything uses of math in any of my jobs. I, for one, am glad that schools are finally removing the unnecessary pressure to Take More Math Than Necessary. Maybe they can now focus on more practical subjects like CS or shop, or even just reduce the number of hours students spend cooped up in those kid prisons with tyrannical teachers.

skeeter2020 5y ago
I learned the conversion factors approach in chemistry but it's really just a basic math process of starting with something in one unit set, having a target unit and applying conversions until you get to your goal. It's probably the single most powerful technique I took from public school. If you think we can teach CS at any sort of non-trivial level without an understanding of math beyond grade 7/8 you don't really know what computer science is. Even if you mean "programming", kids want to primarily build games which involves tonnes of HS math. Even shop courses often involve questions like "find the center of an object".
- nyanpasu64 5y ago
  I think units are brilliant, and use them extensively in math and programming. However I often get sloppy and conflate conversion factors (60 minutes per hour) and quantities (44100 samples per second). This usually isn't a problem, as long as I use different units for sampling rates (samples per second) and waveform frequencies (cycles per second) instead of calling them both hertz. But things get messy when you're converting between multiple different sampling rates, polyphase resamplers ("64 subsamples per sample" etc.), overlap-add convolution (which has like 3 different quantities all labeled "samples"), and such.
it_does_follow 5y ago
> I haven't seen anything uses of math in any of my jobs Math didn't "click" with me until well after college, when I eventually caught up on a lot of calculus, discrete math, probability and stats, to the point where I ended up doing math most of the day as a data scientist. Before I learned math I used to feel like you did, and would argue that math wasn't necessary to be a good programmer. Funny thing is that only once I learned a lot of math did I realize how insanely applicable it was to a wide, wide range of problems I was working on. Because I had to learn it late in life I learned math more enthusiastically than most of my data science peers and so find that even in that domain people don't realize how often they can use math to solve problems better and faster. I wish I had had better teachers in HS that were able to make me realize just how important math is to so many interesting and fun problems. It's sort of shocking to me, looking back at HS, how many math teachers didn't have a good answer to "when are we going to use stuff?". I wish I could take some of my friends making high six figure salaries with a penchant for late night partying to explain to HS students exactly how math is useful because it lets you get a job where nobody cares how much weed you smoke, how late you sleep, and pay your more than many doctors all because you can do some basic calculus tricks. Plus you get to work on really fun problems.
jimbokun 5y ago
> Maybe they can now focus on more practical subjects like CS or shop, or even just reduce the number of hours students spend cooped up in those kid prisons with tyrannical teachers. Well that is a strong argument for separate tracks. Advanced math courses for those intending to study STEM in university, CS and shop for those intending to get a job directly out of high school. (And yes, CS as "programming" and not an academic discipline is something you could learn well enough to get a job right out of high school, or maybe with a couple more years technical education, at most.)

skeeter2020 5y ago

I learned the conversion factors approach in chemistry but it's really just a basic math process of starting with something in one unit set, having a target unit and applying conversions until you get to your goal. It's probably the single most powerful technique I took from public school. If you think we can teach CS at any sort of non-trivial level without an understanding of math beyond grade 7/8 you don't really know what computer science is. Even if you mean "programming", kids want to primarily build games which involves tonnes of HS math. Even shop courses often involve questions like "find the center of an object".

nyanpasu64 5y ago
I think units are brilliant, and use them extensively in math and programming. However I often get sloppy and conflate conversion factors (60 minutes per hour) and quantities (44100 samples per second). This usually isn't a problem, as long as I use different units for sampling rates (samples per second) and waveform frequencies (cycles per second) instead of calling them both hertz. But things get messy when you're converting between multiple different sampling rates, polyphase resamplers ("64 subsamples per sample" etc.), overlap-add convolution (which has like 3 different quantities all labeled "samples"), and such.

it_does_follow 5y ago

> I haven't seen anything uses of math in any of my jobs Math didn't "click" with me until well after college, when I eventually caught up on a lot of calculus, discrete math, probability and stats, to the point where I ended up doing math most of the day as a data scientist. Before I learned math I used to feel like you did, and would argue that math wasn't necessary to be a good programmer. Funny thing is that only once I learned a lot of math did I realize how insanely applicable it was to a wide, wide range of problems I was working on. Because I had to learn it late in life I learned math more enthusiastically than most of my data science peers and so find that even in that domain people don't realize how often they can use math to solve problems better and faster. I wish I had had better teachers in HS that were able to make me realize just how important math is to so many interesting and fun problems. It's sort of shocking to me, looking back at HS, how many math teachers didn't have a good answer to "when are we going to use stuff?". I wish I could take some of my friends making high six figure salaries with a penchant for late night partying to explain to HS students exactly how math is useful because it lets you get a job where nobody cares how much weed you smoke, how late you sleep, and pay your more than many doctors all because you can do some basic calculus tricks. Plus you get to work on really fun problems.

jimbokun 5y ago

> Maybe they can now focus on more practical subjects like CS or shop, or even just reduce the number of hours students spend cooped up in those kid prisons with tyrannical teachers. Well that is a strong argument for separate tracks. Advanced math courses for those intending to study STEM in university, CS and shop for those intending to get a job directly out of high school. (And yes, CS as "programming" and not an academic discipline is something you could learn well enough to get a job right out of high school, or maybe with a couple more years technical education, at most.)