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"Not a single one of them said that the math I described was necessary in their profession." I know I'm biased. Geek is as geek does, but $deity almighty am I

"Not a single one of them said that the math I described was necessary in their profession." I know I'm biased. Geek is as geek does, but $deity almighty am I tired of that line. If simple math isn't valuable to your profession, it might at least be worth a think about how valuable your "profession" might be in the first place. Some of the huge systemic problems we are facing right now may have something to do with the fact that we have entirely too many professions where it really doesn't matter if one could master simple math.

narkee 15y ago
I think that's the difference between academic education, and vocational training. I've made this point before, but people often conflate the two, and are unable to separate them in their minds. What this person is saying is "these things do not train a person to perform these specific sets of tasks". That's vocational training, and there's nothing wrong with that. Academic education, on the other hand, is about learning to think, about history, rhetoric, science, and all sorts of things that aren't directly applicable to a particular job, but provide a necessary foundation for critical thinking and enlightenment, so to speak. What our system really needs is two streams. An academic stream, for those who choose, and a vocational stream, which is what a large proportion of students and seemingly educators like this guy want. This way, everyone gets what they want. Students truly interested in learning things not directly related to performing a job will have the benefit of a more supportive learning environment, and students who just want to get a job will also attain the required vocational training. It's really win-win.
- gnaritas 15y ago
  Our system already has those two streams, has practically forever. People still abuse the college stream as if it were vocational training.
  - absconditus 15y ago
    Unfortunately they are winning and academia is being dumbed down so that everyone can obtain a degree.
    - michael_dorfman 15y ago
      How do you reconcile that position with the original article?
      - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
        The article is a single anecdote from the wrong side of the college continuum. After helping my daughter all year with geometry, it is not surprising to me that he couldn't do the math. Those kinds of tests ask questions like "Can you prove these triangles are congruent" and you have to remember all the SAS, SSA, ASA, etc theorems and postulates to have a chance. You will forget those after 20 years, no matter how much you excelled in high school, if you aren't using them (or derivative concepts in higher math) regularly.
        bostonvaulter2 15y ago
        Proving theorem's is often taught very poorly. If you haven't already I highly recommend you read Lockhart's Lament: http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html
        rapind 15y ago
        I haven't finished reading it yet, but so far it's been pretty eye-opening. It reminds me of how I once took a photoshop course in order to improve my design skills... pretty easy to guess how well that worked.
        sidek 15y ago
        Perhaps I'm the exception, but in Grade 10 I didn't take math (long story) and had never seen most of the math concepts but still was the go-to math helper. High school math is fairly trivial- easy enough to figure out with just some intuition and general thinking skills.
- amurmann 15y ago
  This is once again caused by education inflation. It's easier for the HR department to compare formal education than to really look at the applicant. So Master's degree wins over Bachelor's wins over solid vocational training and society carries the cost.
- lambersley 15y ago
  These streams already exist. One of the major issues I see wit this is it assumes a child at 15 years old is capable of making this choice and understands all the implications. I think back to grades 9 thru 13 (Canadian), thank God it's not so long ago, but I realize decisions I made then were primarily based on emotion, testosterone and some social influence. Could I really have imagined life 15 years later? Absolutely not.
tibbon 15y ago
Sometimes the things you've forgotten are important indeed! The other day I was building something and realized that I hadn't done a trig problem in at least 10 years. I felt pretty sad when I had to look up how to solve it. I still remembered the general concept, but the details were lost on me. Yet, it was important that I knew how to do it. I'm trying to go through Khan Academy in my spare time to learn and relearn the math that has slid out of my memory.
- pixelcort 15y ago
  Yes but isn't that better than having never known it in the first place; better to have a known unknown than an unknown unkown? At least in this case you know what things to look up; imagine never having learned those things in the first place.
  - tibbon 15y ago
    Absolutely. I knew there some something with an opposite angle and a hypotenuse, and it only took me a minute or two. If I had never known it, there's no way I could have done that so quickly.
    - williamcotton 15y ago
      SOHCAHTOA!
      - melvinram 15y ago
        "sucka-toe-ah" that's how we remembered it in high school :D
  - randomdata 15y ago
    How about "latent" knowledge? I try to quickly learn about every concept I come across to the point that I understand when and why you would want to use it, but not the point that I understand how to implement it. When I encounter a problem that fits the concept, then I can look it up and learn how to do it fully. I don't know, I feel it has served me well anyway. I like to jump on problems in all kinds of industries, so it is impossible to study everything ahead of time.
jxcole 15y ago
A lot of people have voiced similar concerns on this thread and I strongly disagree, at least with the part where you say "no math=no value". I know plenty of people at my work who probably can't add two fractions together but are still extremely valuable to the company as a whole. Managers, lawyers, graphics designers, salespeople, the list goes on. Though a passing knowledge of math may be mildly useful in a few situations, having no knowledge of the subject at all really isn't any kind of problem for some people. I agree that everyone should learn math in school, but that's so they can learn how to think and analyze. If the skills have atrophied through disuse I would conclude that they have found other ways to achieve the same goals.
- onemoreact 15y ago
  Managers Sales people, and Lawyers with poor understanding of math as basic as adding fractions are vary risky. It's not that they can't preform most job fuctions it's that they are extreamly likely to make costly mistakes. When should I add one more person to keep people from charging as much overtime. Or the old should I offer overtime or comp time etc. As to sales people and Lawyers effective negotiation require them to be able to say: I can't drop the price any more but I can do X (which costs us less) etc. Graphics designers often use a lot of math directly when working out layout's and things. An intuitive understanding and lot's of effort can help compensate but it's a significant loss if they can't do simple math on how tall / wide things are when you scale them.
  - absconditus 15y ago
    What about poor language skills? You made a mistake in nearly every sentence in your comment. I apologize if English is not your native tongue.
    - Goronmon 15y ago
      What about poor language skills? You made a mistake in nearly every sentence in your comment. Then I guess he won't be using his comment history on HN as a reference for his next interview.
kahawe 15y ago
> simple math The point probably is your and other people's definition of what "simple math" is and should be...
ed209 15y ago
Everyone (irrespective of their profession) should be able to master basic math. > If simple math isn't valuable to your profession, it might at least be worth a think about how valuable your "profession" might be in the first place I don't think the requirement for maths is a way to judge the value of a profession. I think it's essential for every day life, but not necessarily for work.
Cl4rity 15y ago
That is exactly what I was thinking! I don't care if the simple arithmetic isn't necessary in one's profession (if it's 10th grade, I'd guess that it's either Algebra 2 or Trigonometry/Pre-calc), it's still shocking to know that someone who has a B.S. degree doesn't know it. The test-taker seems to be making excuses.
damoncali 15y ago
I get that math can be a valuable skill, but you're suggesting that it is the only valuable skill. That anything that does not make use of high school math is inherently worthless. That is a very strong statement. Take a look around and I think you'll find many, many incredible things that were done and made without the aid of trig and algebra. Specialization is pretty much the foundation of modern economics after all.
absconditus 15y ago
Both you and the article are confusing the issue. The value to be gained from a good mathematical education is problem solving skills. These skills are neither the focus of high school mathematical education nor what is being accessed by standardized tests. Whether one uses specific knowledge directly in their profession is irrelevant. The knowledge is required to teach the concepts and skills. There is also more to life than one's profession.
TylerE 15y ago
The problem is too much focus on 'simple math', and not enough on numeracy.
vijayr 15y ago
One of my ex-colleagues (in his 40s, and is exceptionally good in programming) continues to learn new stuff every day - often I'd find him learning some obscure programming language or algorithm, which he'd never ever use in his "day job" or "profession". I asked him why he does that, knowing well that he'd never use that knowledge - his answer was "you don't need to directly use everything you learn. the more you learn, the better you entire thinking faculty develops, and you'll solve your existing problems better/quicker". Just because basic calculus (or other math) isn't used in our everyday life, doesn't mean it is wasteful to learn it. So yeah, I'm tired of that line too.
- marshray 15y ago
  But it wouldn't even be calculus in 10th grade. In 10th grade most kids have done a year of algebra and are doing plane geometry along with simple proofs. That must be it: the scientific sample of people he described the test contents too did not use proofs in their work. Therefore, introducing mathematical logic in 10th grade is not going to prepare students for the high-tech jobs of the future. Brilliant!
  - learc83 15y ago
    From what I've seen from tutoring 3 younger siblings in math throughout their high school days, I think they should spend the first 3 years of high school drilling Algebra into their heads. Then in the last year they can spend half a year on geometry and half a year on trig. From what I've seen the biggest problems my sibs had with higher math wasn't the higher math, it was the algebra underlying it. They get one year of Algebra in 8th grade and the move on to Geometry assuming they have mastered it, but they havent.
    - kalid 15y ago
      I agree. I'd rather people graduate high school actually knowing algebra than pretending to know calculus.
  - flatline 15y ago
    We have quite the conundrum in this country: not enough qualified workers for high tech jobs, and a strong resistance to teaching kids the skills to do those jobs. I think it's going to take a major cultural shift for us to move past this and have parents demanding their kids learn more math and science. There seems to be an incipient movement in this direction but man is there a lot of inertia!
loopdoend 15y ago
Simple math? What? Who said 'simple math' and how do you define it? I know my GP probably couldn't 'simple math' his way out of a paper bag, neither could a lot of valuable professionals who don't use math on a daily basis. There's more to life than knowing how to do math. And the people ruining the world are generally not the ones that suck at math.
tptacek 15y ago
I'm not sure this argument really has any force. Doctors need less math than engineers. Is "medical doctor" therefore a less valuable profession? Similarly, electricians need very little math at all. We clearly need electricians. Should we just not educate the students we think are likely to be electricians? Or should we have a real discussion about what topics are most likely to enrich the lives of the most students? We just yesterday had an article posted about the 1850's Harvard entrance exam. Surely, if they had a time machine, there'd be quite a few antebellum Harvard freshman willing to tell us all how important it is to memorize Thucydides in the original Greek.
- cbsmith 15y ago
  > Doctors need less math than engineers. Is "medical doctor" therefore a less valuable profession? If you fail to recognize the importance of understanding math in your profession, then yes: http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_donnelly_shows_how_stats_fool_juries.html http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_donnelly_shows_how_stats_fool....
- khafra 15y ago
  The stronger variant of that argument is, I think, that you don't know how much better you could do your job with math until you know a substantial amount of the math that would improve it. For instance, a large number of doctors tested (in a study I can't locate the citation for) fell prey to Base Rate Neglect[0] when doing a mock diagnosis. This seriously affects the amount of money wasted and the amount of illnesses cured in medicine. Along with a wide swath of related problems, it could be cured with an intuitive understanding of basic probability theory. [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate
  - tptacek 15y ago
    A way to bring this back to the productive side of the thread would be to point out that both sides can be right: the math taught in schools can be so irrelevant that nobody (outside engineering) retains it, meaning, we should teach more stat and less "pre-calc".
Natsu 15y ago
> If simple math isn't valuable to your profession, it might at least be worth a think about how valuable your "profession" might be in the first place. I regularly end up doing simple math for people who cannot, including those in management. And that's not even counting the programs I have written. Apparently, a lot of people have forgotten how to deal with simple fractions, to say nothing of simple 2D geometry. Most of you probably have no idea how many windows have ended up screwed up or back ordered because of this...
Tichy 15y ago
For starters, people should at least try to master enough maths to be able to master their own personal finances. That most people chose to neglect to do so and instead gave 100% trust to their bank advisers might be one of the causes for recurring economic crisises(es). Also while I can think of several jobs you might be able to conduct without knowing maths, performance in most of them could nevertheless improved a lot by knowing maths. I imagine running your own business without knowing maths is also a recipe for disaster, so by deciding against maths, you automatically settle for loan slavery for your life.

narkee 15y ago

I think that's the difference between academic education, and vocational training. I've made this point before, but people often conflate the two, and are unable to separate them in their minds. What this person is saying is "these things do not train a person to perform these specific sets of tasks". That's vocational training, and there's nothing wrong with that. Academic education, on the other hand, is about learning to think, about history, rhetoric, science, and all sorts of things that aren't directly applicable to a particular job, but provide a necessary foundation for critical thinking and enlightenment, so to speak. What our system really needs is two streams. An academic stream, for those who choose, and a vocational stream, which is what a large proportion of students and seemingly educators like this guy want. This way, everyone gets what they want. Students truly interested in learning things not directly related to performing a job will have the benefit of a more supportive learning environment, and students who just want to get a job will also attain the required vocational training. It's really win-win.

gnaritas 15y ago
Our system already has those two streams, has practically forever. People still abuse the college stream as if it were vocational training.
- absconditus 15y ago
  Unfortunately they are winning and academia is being dumbed down so that everyone can obtain a degree.
  - michael_dorfman 15y ago
    How do you reconcile that position with the original article?
    - SoftwareMaven 15y ago
      The article is a single anecdote from the wrong side of the college continuum. After helping my daughter all year with geometry, it is not surprising to me that he couldn't do the math. Those kinds of tests ask questions like "Can you prove these triangles are congruent" and you have to remember all the SAS, SSA, ASA, etc theorems and postulates to have a chance. You will forget those after 20 years, no matter how much you excelled in high school, if you aren't using them (or derivative concepts in higher math) regularly.
      - bostonvaulter2 15y ago
        Proving theorem's is often taught very poorly. If you haven't already I highly recommend you read Lockhart's Lament: http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html http://www.maa.org/devlin/devlin_03_08.html
        rapind 15y ago
        I haven't finished reading it yet, but so far it's been pretty eye-opening. It reminds me of how I once took a photoshop course in order to improve my design skills... pretty easy to guess how well that worked.
      - sidek 15y ago
        Perhaps I'm the exception, but in Grade 10 I didn't take math (long story) and had never seen most of the math concepts but still was the go-to math helper. High school math is fairly trivial- easy enough to figure out with just some intuition and general thinking skills.
amurmann 15y ago
This is once again caused by education inflation. It's easier for the HR department to compare formal education than to really look at the applicant. So Master's degree wins over Bachelor's wins over solid vocational training and society carries the cost.
lambersley 15y ago
These streams already exist. One of the major issues I see wit this is it assumes a child at 15 years old is capable of making this choice and understands all the implications. I think back to grades 9 thru 13 (Canadian), thank God it's not so long ago, but I realize decisions I made then were primarily based on emotion, testosterone and some social influence. Could I really have imagined life 15 years later? Absolutely not.

tibbon 15y ago

Sometimes the things you've forgotten are important indeed! The other day I was building something and realized that I hadn't done a trig problem in at least 10 years. I felt pretty sad when I had to look up how to solve it. I still remembered the general concept, but the details were lost on me. Yet, it was important that I knew how to do it. I'm trying to go through Khan Academy in my spare time to learn and relearn the math that has slid out of my memory.

pixelcort 15y ago
Yes but isn't that better than having never known it in the first place; better to have a known unknown than an unknown unkown? At least in this case you know what things to look up; imagine never having learned those things in the first place.
- tibbon 15y ago
  Absolutely. I knew there some something with an opposite angle and a hypotenuse, and it only took me a minute or two. If I had never known it, there's no way I could have done that so quickly.
  - williamcotton 15y ago
    SOHCAHTOA!
    - melvinram 15y ago
      "sucka-toe-ah" that's how we remembered it in high school :D
- randomdata 15y ago
  How about "latent" knowledge? I try to quickly learn about every concept I come across to the point that I understand when and why you would want to use it, but not the point that I understand how to implement it. When I encounter a problem that fits the concept, then I can look it up and learn how to do it fully. I don't know, I feel it has served me well anyway. I like to jump on problems in all kinds of industries, so it is impossible to study everything ahead of time.

jxcole 15y ago

A lot of people have voiced similar concerns on this thread and I strongly disagree, at least with the part where you say "no math=no value". I know plenty of people at my work who probably can't add two fractions together but are still extremely valuable to the company as a whole. Managers, lawyers, graphics designers, salespeople, the list goes on. Though a passing knowledge of math may be mildly useful in a few situations, having no knowledge of the subject at all really isn't any kind of problem for some people. I agree that everyone should learn math in school, but that's so they can learn how to think and analyze. If the skills have atrophied through disuse I would conclude that they have found other ways to achieve the same goals.

onemoreact 15y ago
Managers Sales people, and Lawyers with poor understanding of math as basic as adding fractions are vary risky. It's not that they can't preform most job fuctions it's that they are extreamly likely to make costly mistakes. When should I add one more person to keep people from charging as much overtime. Or the old should I offer overtime or comp time etc. As to sales people and Lawyers effective negotiation require them to be able to say: I can't drop the price any more but I can do X (which costs us less) etc. Graphics designers often use a lot of math directly when working out layout's and things. An intuitive understanding and lot's of effort can help compensate but it's a significant loss if they can't do simple math on how tall / wide things are when you scale them.
- absconditus 15y ago
  What about poor language skills? You made a mistake in nearly every sentence in your comment. I apologize if English is not your native tongue.
  - Goronmon 15y ago
    What about poor language skills? You made a mistake in nearly every sentence in your comment. Then I guess he won't be using his comment history on HN as a reference for his next interview.

kahawe 15y ago

> simple math The point probably is your and other people's definition of what "simple math" is and should be...

ed209 15y ago

Everyone (irrespective of their profession) should be able to master basic math. > If simple math isn't valuable to your profession, it might at least be worth a think about how valuable your "profession" might be in the first place I don't think the requirement for maths is a way to judge the value of a profession. I think it's essential for every day life, but not necessarily for work.

Cl4rity 15y ago

That is exactly what I was thinking! I don't care if the simple arithmetic isn't necessary in one's profession (if it's 10th grade, I'd guess that it's either Algebra 2 or Trigonometry/Pre-calc), it's still shocking to know that someone who has a B.S. degree doesn't know it. The test-taker seems to be making excuses.

damoncali 15y ago

I get that math can be a valuable skill, but you're suggesting that it is the only valuable skill. That anything that does not make use of high school math is inherently worthless. That is a very strong statement. Take a look around and I think you'll find many, many incredible things that were done and made without the aid of trig and algebra. Specialization is pretty much the foundation of modern economics after all.

absconditus 15y ago

Both you and the article are confusing the issue. The value to be gained from a good mathematical education is problem solving skills. These skills are neither the focus of high school mathematical education nor what is being accessed by standardized tests. Whether one uses specific knowledge directly in their profession is irrelevant. The knowledge is required to teach the concepts and skills. There is also more to life than one's profession.

TylerE 15y ago

The problem is too much focus on 'simple math', and not enough on numeracy.

vijayr 15y ago

One of my ex-colleagues (in his 40s, and is exceptionally good in programming) continues to learn new stuff every day - often I'd find him learning some obscure programming language or algorithm, which he'd never ever use in his "day job" or "profession". I asked him why he does that, knowing well that he'd never use that knowledge - his answer was "you don't need to directly use everything you learn. the more you learn, the better you entire thinking faculty develops, and you'll solve your existing problems better/quicker". Just because basic calculus (or other math) isn't used in our everyday life, doesn't mean it is wasteful to learn it. So yeah, I'm tired of that line too.

marshray 15y ago
But it wouldn't even be calculus in 10th grade. In 10th grade most kids have done a year of algebra and are doing plane geometry along with simple proofs. That must be it: the scientific sample of people he described the test contents too did not use proofs in their work. Therefore, introducing mathematical logic in 10th grade is not going to prepare students for the high-tech jobs of the future. Brilliant!
- learc83 15y ago
  From what I've seen from tutoring 3 younger siblings in math throughout their high school days, I think they should spend the first 3 years of high school drilling Algebra into their heads. Then in the last year they can spend half a year on geometry and half a year on trig. From what I've seen the biggest problems my sibs had with higher math wasn't the higher math, it was the algebra underlying it. They get one year of Algebra in 8th grade and the move on to Geometry assuming they have mastered it, but they havent.
  - kalid 15y ago
    I agree. I'd rather people graduate high school actually knowing algebra than pretending to know calculus.
- flatline 15y ago
  We have quite the conundrum in this country: not enough qualified workers for high tech jobs, and a strong resistance to teaching kids the skills to do those jobs. I think it's going to take a major cultural shift for us to move past this and have parents demanding their kids learn more math and science. There seems to be an incipient movement in this direction but man is there a lot of inertia!

loopdoend 15y ago

Simple math? What? Who said 'simple math' and how do you define it? I know my GP probably couldn't 'simple math' his way out of a paper bag, neither could a lot of valuable professionals who don't use math on a daily basis. There's more to life than knowing how to do math. And the people ruining the world are generally not the ones that suck at math.

tptacek 15y ago

I'm not sure this argument really has any force. Doctors need less math than engineers. Is "medical doctor" therefore a less valuable profession? Similarly, electricians need very little math at all. We clearly need electricians. Should we just not educate the students we think are likely to be electricians? Or should we have a real discussion about what topics are most likely to enrich the lives of the most students? We just yesterday had an article posted about the 1850's Harvard entrance exam. Surely, if they had a time machine, there'd be quite a few antebellum Harvard freshman willing to tell us all how important it is to memorize Thucydides in the original Greek.

cbsmith 15y ago
> Doctors need less math than engineers. Is "medical doctor" therefore a less valuable profession? If you fail to recognize the importance of understanding math in your profession, then yes: http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_donnelly_shows_how_stats_fool_juries.html http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_donnelly_shows_how_stats_fool....
khafra 15y ago
The stronger variant of that argument is, I think, that you don't know how much better you could do your job with math until you know a substantial amount of the math that would improve it. For instance, a large number of doctors tested (in a study I can't locate the citation for) fell prey to Base Rate Neglect[0] when doing a mock diagnosis. This seriously affects the amount of money wasted and the amount of illnesses cured in medicine. Along with a wide swath of related problems, it could be cured with an intuitive understanding of basic probability theory. [0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate
- tptacek 15y ago
  A way to bring this back to the productive side of the thread would be to point out that both sides can be right: the math taught in schools can be so irrelevant that nobody (outside engineering) retains it, meaning, we should teach more stat and less "pre-calc".

Natsu 15y ago

> If simple math isn't valuable to your profession, it might at least be worth a think about how valuable your "profession" might be in the first place. I regularly end up doing simple math for people who cannot, including those in management. And that's not even counting the programs I have written. Apparently, a lot of people have forgotten how to deal with simple fractions, to say nothing of simple 2D geometry. Most of you probably have no idea how many windows have ended up screwed up or back ordered because of this...

Tichy 15y ago

For starters, people should at least try to master enough maths to be able to master their own personal finances. That most people chose to neglect to do so and instead gave 100% trust to their bank advisers might be one of the causes for recurring economic crisises(es). Also while I can think of several jobs you might be able to conduct without knowing maths, performance in most of them could nevertheless improved a lot by knowing maths. I imagine running your own business without knowing maths is also a recipe for disaster, so by deciding against maths, you automatically settle for loan slavery for your life.