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> Math is incredibly useful For what? It isn't useful for teenagers who are trying to get laid and be cool, at all. It also isn't useful for what 99% of humans
by alexashka 5y ago
> Math is incredibly useful
For what? It isn't useful for teenagers who are trying to get laid and be cool, at all. It also isn't useful for what 99% of humans end up doing, unless by math you mean basic arithmetic, enough to add and subtract on your 'smart' phone.
Math isn't useful. People who are amazing at math and are interested in it - they can be useful, but mostly not.
What they don't teach in school is how the real world works, because it is fucking outrageous. What they teach is how to go be a cog in a machine, run by idiots.
They don't teach it by telling you, they teach it by making you sit still, listen and do arbitrary, idiotic tasks for 12 years.
Sure they teach you a thing or two along the way, but anyone would learn more from doing anything else they were interested in for 12 years.
That's the dirty little secret. If you let people do what they are interested in, they'll learn math, programming, exercise, health, whatever, because it'll be necessary to achieve their goals. But you can't make people who've had a taste of achieving their goals slave away their whole life to help some idiot achieve theirs. Plus most parents are fearful idiots who never treat children like human beings, they treat them like their personal pet project whose goal is to line up with society's idea of success. Pathetic. Oh well, that's people for you :)
- foxes 5y agoThe way the world and universe actually works seems to be described by maths you probably have no hope of understanding with that attitude.
- waynesonfire 5y agoYou're an idiot. Math is everywhere. You can be ignorant of it, it won't kill you. But you're going to have a hard time in just about every endeavour I can think of.
- alexashka 5y agoYup, humans have been struggling for millions of years. Then math finally came to the rescue.
- waynesonfire 5y agoThat's exactly right. "It is a great profession. There is the satisfaction of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings jobs and homes to men. Then it elevates the standards of living and adds to the comforts of life. That is the engineer's high privilege." - Herbert Hoover
- alexashka 5y ago
- after_care 5y agoI find math to be incredibly useful in my day-to-day life, and am constantly quantifying things and making computations based on those quantifications. I specifically find double booking accounting, geometry, probability, and set theory to be useful in making daily decisions.
- leetcrew 5y agohighschool and to an extent middleschool math do spend a lot of time on stuff that doesn't matter to the average person. but it covers some things that matter a lot. what will the sales tax be on this item at the store? can I afford the items in my grocery cart? if I buy a TV on my credit card and pay it off in three months, how much extra am I paying? if I keep doing what I'm doing, when will I be able to retire?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- indigodaddy 5y agoThis isn’t a reason to not learn it or take it out of curriculums. We use these skills a lot more than we may realize automatically and without really realizing we are utilize the skills.
- truetraveller 5y agoMost people generally do not use these math skills. Most use the very basics. Never once have I used or seen another developer use Calculus, for example. Most devs will have no idea what a "polynomial" is, either (grade 8). Let alone factoring a quadratic polynomial!
- alisonatwork 5y agoI agree with you that math is pretty much useless in most people's lives. However I disagree that teaching it to everyone is useless. The whole point of making kids learn a whole bunch of different things is that it gives them a chance to figure out if they are, in fact, interested. If you don't provide lots of different topics of learning to children in school, where are they going to find out that one of those topics might be just the thing that fascinates them? Most parents aren't going to expose their kids to every topic under the sun. I think it's great that schools expose kids to math, physics, chemistry, biology, languages, music, physical education, social studies, history, geography, cooking, sewing, painting, carpentry, religion, you name it. I hated doing at least half of those things when I was in school, but I still appreciate in retrospect that I did it, because now I know much better what I like and don't like.
- truetraveller 5y agoYou don't need 12 years "figuring out" that you hate some field. That can and should be done in 2 weeks.
- the_only_law 5y agoEh, took me a couple years to figure it out with software.
- truetraveller 5y agoExactly. Most moth is not useful at all, even for senior software engineers. I've researched this topic a lot. I'd say the useful math peaks at grade 9/10. You know: Algebra, Geometry, Trig, Graphs. Obviously, for a very small fraction of the population, higher math is useful.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]