3 ms·

A person who has a degree in math ought to be able to easily understand the result and the “why” behind it the first time they see the result.

globnomulous 2y ago
And a mature adult should be able to communicate this without treating it, or seeming to treat it, as a marker of superiority.
- redczar 2y ago
  Agreed. And they didn’t do this. If a physicist says that A is obvious to physicists then this isn’t an insult to others. It’s expected that having expert level knowledge in something indicates that some things are obvious after all the training that are not obvious to those without training.
  - globnomulous 2y ago
    Your comment convinced me to revisit the quotation. It's even worse than I thought. The author contrasts people who 'understand' because they 'did maths' (i.e. studied maths formally in school) with those who don't understand because they haven't. The implication: formal study in school is the only, and a guaranteed, path to understanding.
    - redczar 2y ago
      Clearly they were not saying this. It is a fact that the overwhelming majority of people who grok mathematics were trained to do so. The set of people who are self taught in math is small enough that one ought to be forgiven for assuming this. Similar to how people who know how to perform brain surgery almost certainly got that knowledge from training.
      - globnomulous 2y ago
        > Clearly they were not saying this. It's the meaning of what the author wrote. Even if the author doesn't believe it, I think I'm accurately interpreting the overall posture and attitude. Given the pretention of the rest of the post, I'm not willing to cut the author slack or give the benefit of the doubt
bmacho 2y ago
As a person who has a degree in math, I can claim that I easily understand it. Yet I wasn't aware of it, and I've never used it (as a mental math trick). It was definitely surprising that it is true--and I wasn't aware of it.
- eterm 2y ago
  You really weren't aware that x% of y = y% of x? I find that very surprising. Maybe it was just the way I was taught percentages ( "% means /100, 'of' means multiply), but it seems too trivial a result to even be something worth commenting on.
  - bmacho 2y ago
    Yes, I really wasn't aware. > but it seems too trivial a result to even be something worth commenting on. Yes, but I also think it is memetic and lovely enough to remembered it if you've encountered it. Calculating 52% of 25kg of something as 52/4=13 sparks joy.
- redczar 2y ago
  I have training in math and wasn’t consciously aware of this a few years ago when I first saw this. I didn’t then and don’t now think the language used was insulting.
  - bmacho 2y ago
    I feel that categorizing people into math-doers and people that just merely apply formulas is insulting in general. Mathematicians can too use other people's theorems without working out all the details, not just people the working in other fields. (Also mathematicians use results from other fields in their daily lives all the time without understanding.) Also using this random factlet to sort them out seems especially weird, since - as I am an example, people with education in math might find it surprising - it is standard middle-school stuff, so everyone *understands* it, regardless of a degree in math - - - .. this is just a reasoning of why > For those of us who did maths this is obvious, but for those for whom maths was just a list of formulas and processes, applied without any real understanding, I can see that this can come as a surprise. is not lovely. Okay, I'm done. I've probably spent too much time on a random 2 sentences on a random internet stranger's blog, I don't find this topic that interesting.

globnomulous 2y ago

And a mature adult should be able to communicate this without treating it, or seeming to treat it, as a marker of superiority.

redczar 2y ago
Agreed. And they didn’t do this. If a physicist says that A is obvious to physicists then this isn’t an insult to others. It’s expected that having expert level knowledge in something indicates that some things are obvious after all the training that are not obvious to those without training.
- globnomulous 2y ago
  Your comment convinced me to revisit the quotation. It's even worse than I thought. The author contrasts people who 'understand' because they 'did maths' (i.e. studied maths formally in school) with those who don't understand because they haven't. The implication: formal study in school is the only, and a guaranteed, path to understanding.
  - redczar 2y ago
    Clearly they were not saying this. It is a fact that the overwhelming majority of people who grok mathematics were trained to do so. The set of people who are self taught in math is small enough that one ought to be forgiven for assuming this. Similar to how people who know how to perform brain surgery almost certainly got that knowledge from training.
    - globnomulous 2y ago
      > Clearly they were not saying this. It's the meaning of what the author wrote. Even if the author doesn't believe it, I think I'm accurately interpreting the overall posture and attitude. Given the pretention of the rest of the post, I'm not willing to cut the author slack or give the benefit of the doubt

bmacho 2y ago

As a person who has a degree in math, I can claim that I easily understand it. Yet I wasn't aware of it, and I've never used it (as a mental math trick). It was definitely surprising that it is true--and I wasn't aware of it.

eterm 2y ago
You really weren't aware that x% of y = y% of x? I find that very surprising. Maybe it was just the way I was taught percentages ( "% means /100, 'of' means multiply), but it seems too trivial a result to even be something worth commenting on.
- bmacho 2y ago
  Yes, I really wasn't aware. > but it seems too trivial a result to even be something worth commenting on. Yes, but I also think it is memetic and lovely enough to remembered it if you've encountered it. Calculating 52% of 25kg of something as 52/4=13 sparks joy.
redczar 2y ago
I have training in math and wasn’t consciously aware of this a few years ago when I first saw this. I didn’t then and don’t now think the language used was insulting.
- bmacho 2y ago
  I feel that categorizing people into math-doers and people that just merely apply formulas is insulting in general. Mathematicians can too use other people's theorems without working out all the details, not just people the working in other fields. (Also mathematicians use results from other fields in their daily lives all the time without understanding.) Also using this random factlet to sort them out seems especially weird, since - as I am an example, people with education in math might find it surprising - it is standard middle-school stuff, so everyone *understands* it, regardless of a degree in math - - - .. this is just a reasoning of why > For those of us who did maths this is obvious, but for those for whom maths was just a list of formulas and processes, applied without any real understanding, I can see that this can come as a surprise. is not lovely. Okay, I'm done. I've probably spent too much time on a random 2 sentences on a random internet stranger's blog, I don't find this topic that interesting.