4 ms·

Why should they? We have the tables in our pockets at literally all times; doing arithmetic without it might be useful, or a bit faster sometimes, but is hardly

Why should they? We have the tables in our pockets at literally all times; doing arithmetic without it might be useful, or a bit faster sometimes, but is hardly an essential skill.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
1970-01-01 2y ago
"Will you have enough fuel to make it over the mountain range?" "My phone is just rebooting" the pilot replied.
- freeone3000 2y ago
  The plane has an onboard calculator for this :)
- BeFlatXIII 2y ago
  These are the idiotic contrived examples that made me dismiss every lecture on the value of hard work my K–12 teachers gave.
BeFlatXIII 2y ago
For catching when you keyed something in incorrectly.
somenameforme 2y ago
It builds a numeric intuition. When you repeat something enough, it begins to do itself - you gain a subconscious mastery. Think about yourself as you read these words. Imagine if you were looking at the letters and actually trying to sound out each word, consciously thinking about each words meaning, and then finally trying to piece together the meaning. You'd spend 5 minutes reading a sentence or two, and oh God help yo if tere ws a tpyo. Instead it all just flows without you even thinking about it, even when completely butchered. And that sort of flow is, I think, obtainable for most of anything. But 100% for certain for numbers. Somebody who doesn't gain an intuitive understanding of basic arithmetic will have an extremely uncomfortable relationship with any sort of math, which mostly just means they'll avoid it at all costs, but you can't really. I don't even mean STEM careers, but everything from cooking (especially baking) to construction and generally an overwhelming majority of careers make heavy use of mathematical intuition in ways you might not consider, especially if you're already on good terms with numbers.
- em-bee 2y ago
  that's why montessori math is so impressive. it starts with counting out beads one at a time by the hundreds until they have internalized that. then they get beads on a stiff wire 10 at a time, and repeat the process counting them out up to a 1000. and so forth until eventually they hold in their hands blocks of 1000 beads glued together in a cube, and only after they have internalized that the beads get replaced with more abstract woodblocks and sticks. and all that happens in the first year or so at the age of 3.
- corimaith 2y ago
  It's a bit ironic to be saying this in the context of HN, the tech stack is built up on layers of abstraction that little of us have mastery of. If we made it so that only people who mastered assembly could be considered "real programmers" we'd get nowhere, certainly not to build modern web applications or video games.
  - milesrout 2y ago
    People that have a poor understanding of the stack under them almost invariably produce very poor software. Video games are an area where in fact good software is still produced, mostly because the people working on the cores of games DO know (at least how to read) assembly language. Modern web applications on the other hand so basically the same things we were doing with computers 20 years ago but consume 100x the resources to do so. No "modern web application" comes anywhere near the quality of Word or Excel 2003.
em-bee 2y ago
so every time i go shopping i have to type all the prices of what i buy into my phone and also have the calculator connect to my bank account and not only make sure i have enough savings, but also tell me that i am not spending more than my average for weekly groceries? and when doing that i need to make sure to not make any typos because my lack of numeric intuition won't allow me to recognize where i made a mistake. and i also won't be able to tell if an item is overpriced. nor will i recognize a bargain unless it is marked with a big colorful sticker.
cratermoon 2y ago
I suggest learning to use a slide rule and abacus.
Ekaros 2y ago
And soon those things will be able to read any text shown to them. And speak it out. So why teach kids to read at all. It can all be done by voice.
gsich 2y ago
It is an esssential skill.

Why should they? We have the tables in our pockets at literally all times; doing arithmetic without it might be useful, or a bit faster sometimes, but is hardly an essential skill.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

1970-01-01 2y ago

"Will you have enough fuel to make it over the mountain range?" "My phone is just rebooting" the pilot replied.

freeone3000 2y ago
The plane has an onboard calculator for this :)
BeFlatXIII 2y ago
These are the idiotic contrived examples that made me dismiss every lecture on the value of hard work my K–12 teachers gave.

BeFlatXIII 2y ago

For catching when you keyed something in incorrectly.

somenameforme 2y ago

It builds a numeric intuition. When you repeat something enough, it begins to do itself - you gain a subconscious mastery. Think about yourself as you read these words. Imagine if you were looking at the letters and actually trying to sound out each word, consciously thinking about each words meaning, and then finally trying to piece together the meaning. You'd spend 5 minutes reading a sentence or two, and oh God help yo if tere ws a tpyo. Instead it all just flows without you even thinking about it, even when completely butchered. And that sort of flow is, I think, obtainable for most of anything. But 100% for certain for numbers. Somebody who doesn't gain an intuitive understanding of basic arithmetic will have an extremely uncomfortable relationship with any sort of math, which mostly just means they'll avoid it at all costs, but you can't really. I don't even mean STEM careers, but everything from cooking (especially baking) to construction and generally an overwhelming majority of careers make heavy use of mathematical intuition in ways you might not consider, especially if you're already on good terms with numbers.

em-bee 2y ago
that's why montessori math is so impressive. it starts with counting out beads one at a time by the hundreds until they have internalized that. then they get beads on a stiff wire 10 at a time, and repeat the process counting them out up to a 1000. and so forth until eventually they hold in their hands blocks of 1000 beads glued together in a cube, and only after they have internalized that the beads get replaced with more abstract woodblocks and sticks. and all that happens in the first year or so at the age of 3.
corimaith 2y ago
It's a bit ironic to be saying this in the context of HN, the tech stack is built up on layers of abstraction that little of us have mastery of. If we made it so that only people who mastered assembly could be considered "real programmers" we'd get nowhere, certainly not to build modern web applications or video games.
- milesrout 2y ago
  People that have a poor understanding of the stack under them almost invariably produce very poor software. Video games are an area where in fact good software is still produced, mostly because the people working on the cores of games DO know (at least how to read) assembly language. Modern web applications on the other hand so basically the same things we were doing with computers 20 years ago but consume 100x the resources to do so. No "modern web application" comes anywhere near the quality of Word or Excel 2003.

em-bee 2y ago

so every time i go shopping i have to type all the prices of what i buy into my phone and also have the calculator connect to my bank account and not only make sure i have enough savings, but also tell me that i am not spending more than my average for weekly groceries? and when doing that i need to make sure to not make any typos because my lack of numeric intuition won't allow me to recognize where i made a mistake. and i also won't be able to tell if an item is overpriced. nor will i recognize a bargain unless it is marked with a big colorful sticker.

cratermoon 2y ago

I suggest learning to use a slide rule and abacus.

Ekaros 2y ago

And soon those things will be able to read any text shown to them. And speak it out. So why teach kids to read at all. It can all be done by voice.

gsich 2y ago

It is an esssential skill.