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Recent example. A family member who is an artist asked me about submission rules to a guild competition (now, of all people, the artists are commonly believed t
by bluekeybox 14y ago
Recent example. A family member who is an artist asked me about submission rules to a guild competition (now, of all people, the artists are commonly believed to require algebra knowledge the least). The flyer indicated, "the photos/scans you submit must be 300dpi" (dots/pixels per inch). Which is perfectly confusing because even a 100x100 pixel thumbnail can be considered 300dpi if you set its width to 1/3 inches. When I tried to explain said family member that the guideline is confusing, that whoever wrote it probably failed their high-school algebra, he started to mistrust what I'm saying. Words can't explain how dumb the situation was: one idiot writes a guideline that can't be followed (or rather one that can be satisfied even by a still from a security camera), another takes what is written on blind faith and refuses to use logic to understand why the guideline is insufficient.
Now imagine dealing with people who never completed high-school algebra but who are trying to calculate dosage of a drug. According to a pharmacist I knew, a child died on his watch because of incorrect dosage.
- benzofuran 14y agoHold on there hot shot, they're likely saying the required scanning resolution of submittals. While not incredibly clear, 300dpi is the general high-resolution setting on most scanners and they're just indicating as such.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- joe5150 14y agoI think you're actually the one misunderstanding here. The "72 DPI" that's output to EXIF doesn't actually mean anything since the actual resolution is dependent on the display medium. The camera produces a fixed number of pixels and your LCD screen/computer monitor/printer creates an image of a certain DPI (72 for most monitors and between 300 and 1200 for most printers).
- bluekeybox 14y ago> The "72 DPI" that's output to EXIF doesn't actually mean anything since the actual resolution is dependent on the display medium. Well hello, that's exactly what I tried to explain to said family member. In particular, he noticed that the EXIF said 240dpi and assumed that the DSLR is no good, because "it's not 300dpi".
- joe5150 14y agoI don't know if that's necessarily related to not performing well in algebra as much as it's related to not understanding some relatively complicated technical details. Which is inexcusable if these people are claiming to be professionals, but I wouldn't expect most people to get it right away.
- stcredzero 14y agoSocial expectation is a big part of how a technological society functions. Trains run on time, garbage cans are airtight and emit no odors, and the streets have no trash on them in Stuttgart because people expect things to be that way. If we let innumeracy be acceptable in the US, the quality of our workforce will decline.
- joe5150 14y agoFailing to understand that an in-camera DPI of 240 doesn't correlated to a print DPI of 240 is not "innumeracy". It's frankly the logical and intuitive thing to assume.
- stcredzero 14y agoIf one spends zero time thinking about the issue. I'd rather live in a society where people did so and held the bit of knowledge you just related in some esteem. The US is not like that anymore.
- bluekeybox 14y ago
- moron 14y agoThis whole discussion is silly and unrelated to the topic.
- bluekeybox 14y agoAdding to this... I knew many med-school candidates whose biggest hurdle with MCAT were physics and (to a somewhat lesser extent) chemistry requirements. Now, the way you learn physics is either you memorize a huge amount of rules and equations (which is exhausting and takes forever), or you learn only a few basic intuitive principles (say Newton's laws when it comes to mechanics or Maxwell's equations when it comes to electromagnetism), and then apply algebra, calculus, and trigonometry to extend those basic principles to the problem at hand. Chemistry requires more rote memorization than physics, but even there knowing how to balance chemical equations reduces to knowing basic algebra. Taken to the extreme, I learned first-hand that it is possible to pass college-level physics with flying colors with little or no studying, but it requires being good at math. TL;DR A huge amount of college-level material, from economics to physics to chemistry depends on working knowledge of algebra.