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> “Who is going to trust somebody who got a degree in airline engineering who doesn’t know how to think through a problem without a computer telling them the an

by NiloCK 11mo ago

> “Who is going to trust somebody who got a degree in airline engineering who doesn’t know how to think through a problem without a computer telling them the answer?” Years ago when I was working in education (Canadian public schools) our school board had a conference ahead of the school year. The keynote was an inclusive-ed researcher / consultant / speaker who told an anecdote of how they had successfully lobbied for a student with a substantive intellectual disability to be registered for the high school physics courses. Part of the anecdote was pushback from the physics head: "I've known Jake for years. Great kid. But what is he supposed to get out of physics class?" The consultant's in-anecdote response: "what is anybody supposed to get out of physics class?" Wild laughter and applause. --- A surprising number of people in education seem to simply not know that there is substantive and consequential content in the curriculum. Having never really learned math, they've never really used it. Having never used it, they don't recognize its utility. They seem to earnestly believe that it isn't an actual tool but a gatekeeping mechanism devised by autistic persons to humiliate normies.

webdevver 11mo ago
>They seem to earnestly believe that it isn't an actual tool but a gatekeeping mechanism devised by autistic persons to humiliate normies. it should be that, though.
- Joel_Mckay 11mo ago
  A learned language is often lost without regular repetitive practice. People often either become overly specialized in some area, or end up teaching basic-theory while regretting their life choices. In time, most figure out people create pet mathematical fictions regardless of background, and while authoritative confident liars often allow people to feel better about uncertainty... it adds little value in the long-term. =3
IAmBroom 11mo ago
The anecdote I heard was a grade-school teacher admitting they had never used the Pythagorean formula IRL. Well, no fucking shit, Sherlock! You aren't the sort of person to turn to math to solve problems. You're the sort of homesy chuckle-cluck who puts up inspirational posters on your bedroom wall. OTOH, I've been on my back in an attic with a house builder, and calculated the 3-dimensional length of the bizarre edges of a skylight (where the ceiling opening was completely skew to the roof opening). We absolutely used math to solve the problem. That grade school teacher? They wouldn't have been asked to check the calculations. The carpenter? Used math IRL.
nicbou 11mo ago
To be fair no one ever takes a moment to show you what the math is useful for. You're just expected to learn it because it's said to be important.
- triceratops 11mo ago
  Word. I got taught matrix multiplication in high school without any context. "Here's a grid of numbers kid. Go do some elementary school arithmetic on all of them. No it's not Sudoku I promise". If only I'd know how important matrix multiplication would turn out to be...
  - mna_ 11mo ago
    Funny thing is you can use Linear Algebra to solve Sudoku puzzles.
- xboxnolifes 11mo ago
  I'm not sure why this is down-voted. Nearly every single teacher I had from elementary though high school, when asked what was the usefulness of the math lesson, said that we would need it when we got to the next level of education. Elementary teachers said we would need it in middle school. Middle school teachers said we would need it in high school. High school teachers said we would need it in college. By college you learned to stop asking questions. I'm lucky I enjoyed math and science, but I'm not surprised that people who don't enjoy it think it isn't going to be useful to them. It's very much one of the things that if you don't know how to apply it, you won't find the places to apply it, so you end up thinking it has no use.
  - Meekro 11mo ago
    I think the GP post might have been downvoted because "what the math is useful for" frames it in the wrong way, making it sound like every lesson needs to be immediately applicable to your everyday life. An honest answer might be "this lesson in fractions is one step on a difficult 15-year journey that culminates in a junior developer position at OpenAI," but most 10-year-olds aren't ready for that conversation, so "just trust me, bro" might be the best we can do at that point.
satisfice 11mo ago
Are there degrees in “airline engineering?”
- ponector 11mo ago
  A degree from Ryanair university with major in how to screw your customers while keeping flights fully booked.
  - red-iron-pine 11mo ago
    there are definitely accountants with a lot of number skills working hard on screwing flights up -- unironically lots of math in those fields. mostly excel-based tho.
ponector 11mo ago
Having learned math a lot in university, it is mostly useless knowledge outside of academia. Some basic calculus and logic is useful for sure, but overall, 98% of the math is needed just to be able to learn other math topics later.
- progbits 11mo ago
  https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/why-i-couldn39t-be-a-math-teacher https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/why-i-couldn39t-be-a-math-...
- mangodrunk 11mo ago
  As someone who loves math, I do think math education would benefit from making the primary focus be probability and statistics for high school. In addition, financial math instead of algebra. I would replace trigonometry and geometry with discrete math as electives. And have calculus as another elective but taught without a focus on calculation.
  - s1mplicissimus 11mo ago
    As someone who went to economics school and had roundabout the math curriculum you suggested, I think it was a terrible idea. It leaves one with the wrong idea that math is mostly about handling money. Only later, when I got to study math for the computer science degree, I realized that financial math is only a small part of this marvelous huge pie of knowledge.
    - mangodrunk 11mo ago
      Thanks for sharing your experience. I do think it’s more important for most students to understand money than most of what is currently taught with algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus. My main point though was to focus on probability and statistics. Right now, most students barely understand and remember what is currently taught and also lack knowledge to understand important matters that directly affect them.
franktankbank 11mo ago
Alternative anecdote. I was a students physics TA which involved lecturing and labs and lots of homeworks and in class work. I had a student who really never seemed to understand algebra and he came and said he couldn't really understand how to do the physics problems very well. I said well its going to be hard without really getting your algebra issues figured out and so he just went and did that. I think having a solid understanding of where it is deeply useful (and math and physics have evolved together forever) can be the spark that lights the fire to build the missing understanding. I can say math was very rote for me until I got into physics and I would never have gotten into hairy math without a physics motivation.

by NiloCK 11mo ago

webdevver 11mo ago

>They seem to earnestly believe that it isn't an actual tool but a gatekeeping mechanism devised by autistic persons to humiliate normies. it should be that, though.

Joel_Mckay 11mo ago
A learned language is often lost without regular repetitive practice. People often either become overly specialized in some area, or end up teaching basic-theory while regretting their life choices. In time, most figure out people create pet mathematical fictions regardless of background, and while authoritative confident liars often allow people to feel better about uncertainty... it adds little value in the long-term. =3

IAmBroom 11mo ago

The anecdote I heard was a grade-school teacher admitting they had never used the Pythagorean formula IRL. Well, no fucking shit, Sherlock! You aren't the sort of person to turn to math to solve problems. You're the sort of homesy chuckle-cluck who puts up inspirational posters on your bedroom wall. OTOH, I've been on my back in an attic with a house builder, and calculated the 3-dimensional length of the bizarre edges of a skylight (where the ceiling opening was completely skew to the roof opening). We absolutely used math to solve the problem. That grade school teacher? They wouldn't have been asked to check the calculations. The carpenter? Used math IRL.

nicbou 11mo ago

To be fair no one ever takes a moment to show you what the math is useful for. You're just expected to learn it because it's said to be important.

triceratops 11mo ago
Word. I got taught matrix multiplication in high school without any context. "Here's a grid of numbers kid. Go do some elementary school arithmetic on all of them. No it's not Sudoku I promise". If only I'd know how important matrix multiplication would turn out to be...
- mna_ 11mo ago
  Funny thing is you can use Linear Algebra to solve Sudoku puzzles.
xboxnolifes 11mo ago
I'm not sure why this is down-voted. Nearly every single teacher I had from elementary though high school, when asked what was the usefulness of the math lesson, said that we would need it when we got to the next level of education. Elementary teachers said we would need it in middle school. Middle school teachers said we would need it in high school. High school teachers said we would need it in college. By college you learned to stop asking questions. I'm lucky I enjoyed math and science, but I'm not surprised that people who don't enjoy it think it isn't going to be useful to them. It's very much one of the things that if you don't know how to apply it, you won't find the places to apply it, so you end up thinking it has no use.
- Meekro 11mo ago
  I think the GP post might have been downvoted because "what the math is useful for" frames it in the wrong way, making it sound like every lesson needs to be immediately applicable to your everyday life. An honest answer might be "this lesson in fractions is one step on a difficult 15-year journey that culminates in a junior developer position at OpenAI," but most 10-year-olds aren't ready for that conversation, so "just trust me, bro" might be the best we can do at that point.

satisfice 11mo ago

Are there degrees in “airline engineering?”

ponector 11mo ago
A degree from Ryanair university with major in how to screw your customers while keeping flights fully booked.
- red-iron-pine 11mo ago
  there are definitely accountants with a lot of number skills working hard on screwing flights up -- unironically lots of math in those fields. mostly excel-based tho.

ponector 11mo ago

Having learned math a lot in university, it is mostly useless knowledge outside of academia. Some basic calculus and logic is useful for sure, but overall, 98% of the math is needed just to be able to learn other math topics later.

progbits 11mo ago
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/why-i-couldn39t-be-a-math-teacher https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/why-i-couldn39t-be-a-math-...
mangodrunk 11mo ago
As someone who loves math, I do think math education would benefit from making the primary focus be probability and statistics for high school. In addition, financial math instead of algebra. I would replace trigonometry and geometry with discrete math as electives. And have calculus as another elective but taught without a focus on calculation.
- s1mplicissimus 11mo ago
  As someone who went to economics school and had roundabout the math curriculum you suggested, I think it was a terrible idea. It leaves one with the wrong idea that math is mostly about handling money. Only later, when I got to study math for the computer science degree, I realized that financial math is only a small part of this marvelous huge pie of knowledge.
  - mangodrunk 11mo ago
    Thanks for sharing your experience. I do think it’s more important for most students to understand money than most of what is currently taught with algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus. My main point though was to focus on probability and statistics. Right now, most students barely understand and remember what is currently taught and also lack knowledge to understand important matters that directly affect them.

franktankbank 11mo ago

Alternative anecdote. I was a students physics TA which involved lecturing and labs and lots of homeworks and in class work. I had a student who really never seemed to understand algebra and he came and said he couldn't really understand how to do the physics problems very well. I said well its going to be hard without really getting your algebra issues figured out and so he just went and did that. I think having a solid understanding of where it is deeply useful (and math and physics have evolved together forever) can be the spark that lights the fire to build the missing understanding. I can say math was very rote for me until I got into physics and I would never have gotten into hairy math without a physics motivation.