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i think estimating is one of the most important skills in maths (well, arithmetic/common sense) that is rarely taught in schools. for example, estimating the co

i think estimating is one of the most important skills in maths (well, arithmetic/common sense) that is rarely taught in schools. for example, estimating the cost of your supermarket trolley, estimating how much wallpaper you will need to paper a room, etc. now, obviously you want to get these things accurate, but the estimate tells you when you got the calculation wrong in your measurements, spreadsheet or calculator. i was guilty of this when i over-valued my late-dad's book collection in a python program. i sort of knew it was wrong but what i didn't realise he had changed his data format halfway the dataset.

mapierce2 4y ago
You're right. It's hard to teach in schools though because of standardized (often multiple-choice) tests; teachers are incentivized to teach "skills" that have objective correct answers that can be easily tested. Then by the time students hit college, they're resistant to any sort of mathematics that doesn't have a correct answer. I've been trying to sell it as a means of error-correction, or as a sanity check. If they've gotta answer a question "Joe is 6'4" tall and, at the suggestion of an ergonomist, wants to build a desk 40% of his height. How tall should the desk be?" I urge them to not immediately go into math-brain and just think for a minute, and estimate a reasonable answer to match their calculations against. This mental workflow sticks for a few of them by the end of the class.
- delecti 4y ago
  Absolutely. The concept of a "sanity check" is so valuable. Thinking about what the answer should "look like", ignoring the precise value, always makes me much more confident in a precise value I've computed. It's the kind of thinking makes math so much more useful in the "real world" too.
JohnFen 4y ago
It was my shop teacher who taught me the value of estimating. As he put it, "in the real world, you rarely need high precision. Start with the quick-and-dirty, most of the time that's plenty good enough."

mapierce2 4y ago

You're right. It's hard to teach in schools though because of standardized (often multiple-choice) tests; teachers are incentivized to teach "skills" that have objective correct answers that can be easily tested. Then by the time students hit college, they're resistant to any sort of mathematics that doesn't have a correct answer. I've been trying to sell it as a means of error-correction, or as a sanity check. If they've gotta answer a question "Joe is 6'4" tall and, at the suggestion of an ergonomist, wants to build a desk 40% of his height. How tall should the desk be?" I urge them to not immediately go into math-brain and just think for a minute, and estimate a reasonable answer to match their calculations against. This mental workflow sticks for a few of them by the end of the class.

delecti 4y ago
Absolutely. The concept of a "sanity check" is so valuable. Thinking about what the answer should "look like", ignoring the precise value, always makes me much more confident in a precise value I've computed. It's the kind of thinking makes math so much more useful in the "real world" too.

JohnFen 4y ago

It was my shop teacher who taught me the value of estimating. As he put it, "in the real world, you rarely need high precision. Start with the quick-and-dirty, most of the time that's plenty good enough."