5 ms·

99% of math can be outsourced to either a machine, or to the rare and precious jewel of a human that enjoys it. But at this point it's basically vestigial know

by 23B1 2y ago

99% of math can be outsourced to either a machine, or to the rare and precious jewel of a human that enjoys it. But at this point it's basically vestigial knowledge – like balancing a checking account by hand. Good to understand the underlying principles of personal finance – but almost nobody keeps a checkbook anymore.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
frogeyedpeas 2y ago
if you can quickly outsource a solution of P=NP for me I'd love it. Surely that's as simple as balancing a checkbook. I'm not saying everyone needs to know math but its hardly "vestigial knowledge".
- LtWorf 2y ago
  I use math to decide which bus to take to get home.
dinkumthinkum 2y ago
Maybe that lack of knowledge explains why so many people are broke. Honestly, this is a pretty weird take to see on “Hacker News”. This place sure has changed a lot.
- jeremyt 2y ago
  What kind of math skills are you talking about that people lack that causes them to not have any money?
  - frogeyedpeas 2y ago
    I'd say if someone can't do calculus based statistics then a lot of high earning career paths (ex: machine learning, data science, actuary, quant) are not available to them. That doesn't mean you won't be rich. It's just some of the lowest hanging fruit are not an option.
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      Yah, failure to understand statistics is a big risk financially. I remember a rich man interviewed on TV who said he got his start making money in high school by running gambling games. He understood statistics while the other kids did not, and although the game was fair, he cleaned up regularly. Take a walk through a Vegas casino, and you'll see legions of people who do not understand statistics and pay a heavy price for that.
      - pirocks 2y ago
        > you'll see legions of people who do not understand statistics and pay a heavy price for that. At the risk of stating the obvious, and not adding to the conversation, I think we all know that people putting their life savings into slot machines aren't doing so because they don't understand expected value. They may or may not understand that they are going to lose all their money, but they are gambling because they are addicted/have some kind of mental health problem. Knowledge of statistics doesn't really affect things for problem gambling. As for those putting modest amounts of money into gambling, most of them will tell you that card games/etc. are fun, and are therefore worth it.
        WalterBright 2y ago
        Many of these people claim to have a "system" which will enable them to win. I've talked with some of them. None of them I've spoken to had money. Coincidence? Watch people at the slots. Do they look like they're having fun? Not to me. Personally, I've gambled a few times. Lost money. I don't like losing money, it is not entertaining to me in the slightest. Tell me about people who play the lottery, picking their "lucky numbers". It's sad.
        mhh__ 2y ago
        Blackjack can be beaten (i.e. Ed Thorpe) Or are these "systems" for slots?
        2y ago
  - mquander 2y ago
    Many people lack the numeracy to understand basic ideas about money and finance, which directly results in them getting scammed by banks, brokerages, credit card companies, and various hucksters.
    - 23B1 2y ago
      And yet mathematics has been a mandatory topic in public schools for at least a century if not longer. We also don't teach car repair, or hunting, or sewing, or cooking much anymore either, not because we don't need those things but because those high-friction tasks have been highly optimized to the point of being background noise.
      - dinkumthinkum 2y ago
        Meta-adaptations and “kink-shaming” about math … I don’t know if I walked into some parody of the Silicon Valley show or if this is some kind of weird AI bot, either way I guess this is the shape of things to come …
        23B1 2y ago
        I'm not like the other girls (commenting on the internet can be fun you know ;-) )
  - dinkumthinkum 2y ago
    I think I am making an obvious point that normal people understand. A lot of people have trouble understanding the concept of spending less or significantly less than they earn. This is another it seems like HN has changed a lot. The idea what I’m saying is controversial is pretty hilarious and sad at the same time.
    - fragmede 2y ago
      What's controversial about that is that's simply not possible for low wage earners. I'd hazard a guess that it doesn't affect high wage readers here, but if you're making minimum wage in a HCOL area, not buying big screen TVs and not buying luxury cars and shoes isn't enough to make ends meet if you also want to save anything for retirement. That or everyone else is an idiot, but I've found that mindset is only good for feeling smug about yourself and underestimating people, so let's assume it's not that and try to find something else.
  - magicalhippo 2y ago
    There's broke and there's broke. One of my in-laws bought a house in the suburbs. She kept her low-wage job downtown, despite pay being average for her vocation, and she could easily get a job closer to her new home. So now she has a long commute, and decided to get a petrol car. Despite knowing very well that petrol is taxed heavily and electricity is cheap here in Norway, petrol cars have significantly higher road tax and congestion charge than EVs here. The distance she needs to commute is well within what even a first-gen Leaf could do during winter, so she had plenty of EV options. She also knew the job had no parking for employees, so she has to park at a public parking facility, which downtown costs a fortune. Basic math skills shows that between the petrol, the road tax and congestion charge and the parking, that car is costing her half her daily paycheck each time she goes to work. Didn't take long after she got the car till she started complaining she was "broke each month".
- 23B1 2y ago
  > this is a pretty weird take to see on “Hacker News”. This place sure has changed a lot. I mean I've been in 'tech' for ~25 years. The simple fact is that technology is a meta-adaptation whose primary purpose to make life easier and more enjoyable for humans. I'm not kink-shaming math lovers or anything.
elefanten 2y ago
In many cases, you need to understand the concepts to conceive of applying them beneficially to a problem at hand, whether you apply them or outsource the application.
vundercind 2y ago
I think this goes too far, but I do think math is… overrated? Kinda? Overrated isn’t exactly the word I want, but there’s definitely something weird going on. 98% (I’m being generous) of people can no longer work almost math past early algebra and maybe a handful of finance-related plug-in-the-numbers formulas by age 35 because, assuming they ever learned any, they have never used it, so it’s gone by then. And that state of things seems to be entirely Ok. Like, if they needed it, they’d have used it and the many of them who could once at least kinda work with calculus, or what have you, wouldn’t have lost that skill. Meanwhile, I’ve not found the “it teaches problem solving skills, that’s why it’s important even if you never use 80% of it outside of school” thing to really hold. Maybe for the kinds of courses math majors take in college, I dunno, but not for the rest. If it does teach any, they don’t seem to generalize well for almost all people who learn them, and the rest, I think that’s more about who they are than that they took some math courses. Ultimately, it’s not clear to me that if we taught quite a bit less math to most kids and even college students, anything bad would happen. I think there are probably ways to approach math in primary and secondary school, and maybe also math courses for undergrads who have a small load of math courses anyway, that would temper its evident uselessness quite a bit—namely, a laser-focus on applications past the very earliest grades—but most math majors seem to want math education to go exactly the opposite way. Maybe they’re right and I’m wrong, I dunno.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  I used calculus a lot in my mechanical engineering job. As a programmer, not. But as a programmer, I use a different kind of math (such as 2s complement arithmetic, boolean logic, floating point math, vectors, graph math, etc.) all the time. Knowing math has blocked many attempts by salesmen, contractors, bankers, etc., from ripping me off. If I didn't know math, I never would have even realized that my tailfeathers had been plucked. As for "anything bad would happen", bad things probably happened to you that you were not aware of. An anecdote: years ago, it used to be popular to run 30 minute seminars on TV called (my version) "Get Rich In Real Estate Using Scams". I recall one that bragged about making a quick $10,000. I figured it was a con, and so watched the show carefully, noting each transaction. And yes, it did net a $10,000 score for the person. But how it worked was through a confusing combination of transactions meant to obfuscate what was actually happening. The key in it was getting your mark to accept a bond that would be worth $XXXX in the future while you got the $XXXX today. In essence, it was exploiting the mark's failure to understand the concept of current value vs future value. The beauty (if you could call it that) was there was nothing illegal about this. With my math knowledge, it stunk from the outset, even though it took me a while to find the dead rat. Just like with my knowledge of physics, when it was posted on HN that electric cars were 90% efficient, that set me off immediately, and sure enough, there was a rat corpse in it. (The actual efficiency is 60% on a good day.) I was shocked at the well-educated people who bought that article hook, line, and stinker. (The cake topper on that one was the author was a ski instructor!)
WalterBright 2y ago
Failure to understand math leads to a lifetime of poor financial decisions. I've found this to be consistent in my experience. For a small example, ever watch "Shark Tank" on TV? The sharks are constantly throwing out ROI, valuations, percentages, interest rates, and it's clear the sharks understand the math behind it implicitly, and how each of those numbers relates to the other numbers. With the rapid fire back-and-forth with the acolyte, it's clear they're at a severe disadvantage if they cannot keep up. If the acolyte were to whip out a calculator, it's pretty clear that would be "no deal".
- 23B1 2y ago
  > Failure to understand math leads to a lifetime of poor financial decisions Failure to understand a few basic mathematical principles leads to a lifetime of poor financial decisions, but the underlying math is something a 10 year old can handle – as can anyone with a calculator.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    A calculator is of little use to someone who does not understand mathematical principles. I've seen that in action many times.
  - lelanthran 2y ago
    > but the underlying math is something a 10 year old can handle – as can anyone with a calculator. The calculator is just a tool to get the precision needed. If you understand the concepts, you can get a rough idea of what '17%' is and whether that ballpark is acceptable. You whip out the calculator only when you need the precision.
xanderlewis 2y ago
Why are there always so many commenters on here who don't seem to understand the difference between 'mathematics' and 'arithmetic'?
- 23B1 2y ago
  Why are there always so many commenters on here who don't seem to understand the difference between "hacker news" and the "real world"? Outsourcing low-value/high friction tasks is the whole point of technology.

by 23B1 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

frogeyedpeas 2y ago

if you can quickly outsource a solution of P=NP for me I'd love it. Surely that's as simple as balancing a checkbook. I'm not saying everyone needs to know math but its hardly "vestigial knowledge".

LtWorf 2y ago
I use math to decide which bus to take to get home.

dinkumthinkum 2y ago

Maybe that lack of knowledge explains why so many people are broke. Honestly, this is a pretty weird take to see on “Hacker News”. This place sure has changed a lot.

jeremyt 2y ago
What kind of math skills are you talking about that people lack that causes them to not have any money?
- frogeyedpeas 2y ago
  I'd say if someone can't do calculus based statistics then a lot of high earning career paths (ex: machine learning, data science, actuary, quant) are not available to them. That doesn't mean you won't be rich. It's just some of the lowest hanging fruit are not an option.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    Yah, failure to understand statistics is a big risk financially. I remember a rich man interviewed on TV who said he got his start making money in high school by running gambling games. He understood statistics while the other kids did not, and although the game was fair, he cleaned up regularly. Take a walk through a Vegas casino, and you'll see legions of people who do not understand statistics and pay a heavy price for that.
    - pirocks 2y ago
      > you'll see legions of people who do not understand statistics and pay a heavy price for that. At the risk of stating the obvious, and not adding to the conversation, I think we all know that people putting their life savings into slot machines aren't doing so because they don't understand expected value. They may or may not understand that they are going to lose all their money, but they are gambling because they are addicted/have some kind of mental health problem. Knowledge of statistics doesn't really affect things for problem gambling. As for those putting modest amounts of money into gambling, most of them will tell you that card games/etc. are fun, and are therefore worth it.
      - WalterBright 2y ago
        Many of these people claim to have a "system" which will enable them to win. I've talked with some of them. None of them I've spoken to had money. Coincidence? Watch people at the slots. Do they look like they're having fun? Not to me. Personally, I've gambled a few times. Lost money. I don't like losing money, it is not entertaining to me in the slightest. Tell me about people who play the lottery, picking their "lucky numbers". It's sad.
        mhh__ 2y ago
        Blackjack can be beaten (i.e. Ed Thorpe) Or are these "systems" for slots?
        2y ago
- mquander 2y ago
  Many people lack the numeracy to understand basic ideas about money and finance, which directly results in them getting scammed by banks, brokerages, credit card companies, and various hucksters.
  - 23B1 2y ago
    And yet mathematics has been a mandatory topic in public schools for at least a century if not longer. We also don't teach car repair, or hunting, or sewing, or cooking much anymore either, not because we don't need those things but because those high-friction tasks have been highly optimized to the point of being background noise.
    - dinkumthinkum 2y ago
      Meta-adaptations and “kink-shaming” about math … I don’t know if I walked into some parody of the Silicon Valley show or if this is some kind of weird AI bot, either way I guess this is the shape of things to come …
      - 23B1 2y ago
        I'm not like the other girls (commenting on the internet can be fun you know ;-) )
- dinkumthinkum 2y ago
  I think I am making an obvious point that normal people understand. A lot of people have trouble understanding the concept of spending less or significantly less than they earn. This is another it seems like HN has changed a lot. The idea what I’m saying is controversial is pretty hilarious and sad at the same time.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    What's controversial about that is that's simply not possible for low wage earners. I'd hazard a guess that it doesn't affect high wage readers here, but if you're making minimum wage in a HCOL area, not buying big screen TVs and not buying luxury cars and shoes isn't enough to make ends meet if you also want to save anything for retirement. That or everyone else is an idiot, but I've found that mindset is only good for feeling smug about yourself and underestimating people, so let's assume it's not that and try to find something else.
- magicalhippo 2y ago
  There's broke and there's broke. One of my in-laws bought a house in the suburbs. She kept her low-wage job downtown, despite pay being average for her vocation, and she could easily get a job closer to her new home. So now she has a long commute, and decided to get a petrol car. Despite knowing very well that petrol is taxed heavily and electricity is cheap here in Norway, petrol cars have significantly higher road tax and congestion charge than EVs here. The distance she needs to commute is well within what even a first-gen Leaf could do during winter, so she had plenty of EV options. She also knew the job had no parking for employees, so she has to park at a public parking facility, which downtown costs a fortune. Basic math skills shows that between the petrol, the road tax and congestion charge and the parking, that car is costing her half her daily paycheck each time she goes to work. Didn't take long after she got the car till she started complaining she was "broke each month".
23B1 2y ago
> this is a pretty weird take to see on “Hacker News”. This place sure has changed a lot. I mean I've been in 'tech' for ~25 years. The simple fact is that technology is a meta-adaptation whose primary purpose to make life easier and more enjoyable for humans. I'm not kink-shaming math lovers or anything.

elefanten 2y ago

In many cases, you need to understand the concepts to conceive of applying them beneficially to a problem at hand, whether you apply them or outsource the application.

vundercind 2y ago

I think this goes too far, but I do think math is… overrated? Kinda? Overrated isn’t exactly the word I want, but there’s definitely something weird going on. 98% (I’m being generous) of people can no longer work almost math past early algebra and maybe a handful of finance-related plug-in-the-numbers formulas by age 35 because, assuming they ever learned any, they have never used it, so it’s gone by then. And that state of things seems to be entirely Ok. Like, if they needed it, they’d have used it and the many of them who could once at least kinda work with calculus, or what have you, wouldn’t have lost that skill. Meanwhile, I’ve not found the “it teaches problem solving skills, that’s why it’s important even if you never use 80% of it outside of school” thing to really hold. Maybe for the kinds of courses math majors take in college, I dunno, but not for the rest. If it does teach any, they don’t seem to generalize well for almost all people who learn them, and the rest, I think that’s more about who they are than that they took some math courses. Ultimately, it’s not clear to me that if we taught quite a bit less math to most kids and even college students, anything bad would happen. I think there are probably ways to approach math in primary and secondary school, and maybe also math courses for undergrads who have a small load of math courses anyway, that would temper its evident uselessness quite a bit—namely, a laser-focus on applications past the very earliest grades—but most math majors seem to want math education to go exactly the opposite way. Maybe they’re right and I’m wrong, I dunno.

WalterBright 2y ago
I used calculus a lot in my mechanical engineering job. As a programmer, not. But as a programmer, I use a different kind of math (such as 2s complement arithmetic, boolean logic, floating point math, vectors, graph math, etc.) all the time. Knowing math has blocked many attempts by salesmen, contractors, bankers, etc., from ripping me off. If I didn't know math, I never would have even realized that my tailfeathers had been plucked. As for "anything bad would happen", bad things probably happened to you that you were not aware of. An anecdote: years ago, it used to be popular to run 30 minute seminars on TV called (my version) "Get Rich In Real Estate Using Scams". I recall one that bragged about making a quick $10,000. I figured it was a con, and so watched the show carefully, noting each transaction. And yes, it did net a $10,000 score for the person. But how it worked was through a confusing combination of transactions meant to obfuscate what was actually happening. The key in it was getting your mark to accept a bond that would be worth $XXXX in the future while you got the $XXXX today. In essence, it was exploiting the mark's failure to understand the concept of current value vs future value. The beauty (if you could call it that) was there was nothing illegal about this. With my math knowledge, it stunk from the outset, even though it took me a while to find the dead rat. Just like with my knowledge of physics, when it was posted on HN that electric cars were 90% efficient, that set me off immediately, and sure enough, there was a rat corpse in it. (The actual efficiency is 60% on a good day.) I was shocked at the well-educated people who bought that article hook, line, and stinker. (The cake topper on that one was the author was a ski instructor!)

WalterBright 2y ago

Failure to understand math leads to a lifetime of poor financial decisions. I've found this to be consistent in my experience. For a small example, ever watch "Shark Tank" on TV? The sharks are constantly throwing out ROI, valuations, percentages, interest rates, and it's clear the sharks understand the math behind it implicitly, and how each of those numbers relates to the other numbers. With the rapid fire back-and-forth with the acolyte, it's clear they're at a severe disadvantage if they cannot keep up. If the acolyte were to whip out a calculator, it's pretty clear that would be "no deal".

23B1 2y ago
> Failure to understand math leads to a lifetime of poor financial decisions Failure to understand a few basic mathematical principles leads to a lifetime of poor financial decisions, but the underlying math is something a 10 year old can handle – as can anyone with a calculator.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  A calculator is of little use to someone who does not understand mathematical principles. I've seen that in action many times.
- lelanthran 2y ago
  > but the underlying math is something a 10 year old can handle – as can anyone with a calculator. The calculator is just a tool to get the precision needed. If you understand the concepts, you can get a rough idea of what '17%' is and whether that ballpark is acceptable. You whip out the calculator only when you need the precision.

xanderlewis 2y ago

Why are there always so many commenters on here who don't seem to understand the difference between 'mathematics' and 'arithmetic'?

23B1 2y ago
Why are there always so many commenters on here who don't seem to understand the difference between "hacker news" and the "real world"? Outsourcing low-value/high friction tasks is the whole point of technology.