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Your conception of math is too limited. There are various different kinds of algebras. Elementary and middle education in the United States focuses on one of th

Your conception of math is too limited. There are various different kinds of algebras. Elementary and middle education in the United States focuses on one of these (the natural numbers and their extensions). Programming deals with alternate algebras. However, intuition from one algebra typically carry over. For example, the intuition that all fields have an identity element (1 in 'grade school' arithmetic) carries over into computer arithmetic (which is the natural numbers modulo 2^n, n = 32 or 64 or something). In particular, you speak of learning programming via logo (an algebra in and of itself) and a map editor composing logical ops (boolean algebra is another subfield). The systematic manipulation of symbols that both of these require is the skill learned even in grade school math. Realistically, you can probably achieve the same results teaching any algebra systematically. What matters is the intuition, which only naturally develops if you're made to repeatedly do tedious problems. > Maybe people stopped building things because we focus too much on the theoretical in-classroom parts, as opposed to the hands-on stuff? Perhaps but I doubt it. In my experience, when thinking about new projects, we shy away from things where any of the parts seem hard. For myself in particular, I became way more into 3d game creation once I learned linear algebra, whereas before, I wanted to be able to do it, but was incapable, so i never started.

solardev 3y ago
I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying anymore (you're being perfectly clear, it's just over my head now, not having studied math beyond the middle-high school level). As for the difficulty of new projects, it's not so much "we should teach kids to build houses before they can count to 100", but that learning by doing & mimicking often helps a lot of people compared to learning in the classroom by theory. If I wanted to make a game today, I'd probably just watch a Unity or Unreal intro on YouTube rather than starting with math... but that's just me.
- anon291 3y ago
  Here's how I see this conversation. I say it's important to rote practice math. You say no we shouldn't because here are a bunch of things I wanted to do that didn't require numbers. I then point out that these are also math. I agree with you! We should teach these things. It would greatly simplify teaching higher level math. However, there is also an innate utility to the integers and their extensions. An extension is something like 'all quotients of integers'. Recall that the quotient of any two integers may or may not be an integer. The full set is the rationals, which we typically study (incorrectly in my opinion) as decimals and fractions. Nevertheless, there's utility in adopting the colloquial terminology, even if it's not useful for every field. > If I wanted to make a game today, I'd probably just watch a Unity or Unreal intro on YouTube rather than starting with math... but that's just me. I would suggest instead of teaching children to 'make games' we teach them to make the 'game engines'. The latter would involve math, whereas the former is more a creative endeavor.

solardev 3y ago

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying anymore (you're being perfectly clear, it's just over my head now, not having studied math beyond the middle-high school level). As for the difficulty of new projects, it's not so much "we should teach kids to build houses before they can count to 100", but that learning by doing & mimicking often helps a lot of people compared to learning in the classroom by theory. If I wanted to make a game today, I'd probably just watch a Unity or Unreal intro on YouTube rather than starting with math... but that's just me.

anon291 3y ago
Here's how I see this conversation. I say it's important to rote practice math. You say no we shouldn't because here are a bunch of things I wanted to do that didn't require numbers. I then point out that these are also math. I agree with you! We should teach these things. It would greatly simplify teaching higher level math. However, there is also an innate utility to the integers and their extensions. An extension is something like 'all quotients of integers'. Recall that the quotient of any two integers may or may not be an integer. The full set is the rationals, which we typically study (incorrectly in my opinion) as decimals and fractions. Nevertheless, there's utility in adopting the colloquial terminology, even if it's not useful for every field. > If I wanted to make a game today, I'd probably just watch a Unity or Unreal intro on YouTube rather than starting with math... but that's just me. I would suggest instead of teaching children to 'make games' we teach them to make the 'game engines'. The latter would involve math, whereas the former is more a creative endeavor.