4 ms·

You clearly are very isolated from the world. Even if the author had a good math experience, polynomials do not appear in everyday problems. As for the start t

You clearly are very isolated from the world. Even if the author had a good math experience, polynomials do not appear in everyday problems. As for the start time, likely she is involved in extra-curricular activities, like cheerleading or sports. I wouldn't judge so harshly.

anigbrowl 13y ago
I can't believe I'm reading someone on hacker news saying 'polynomials don't appear in everyday problems.' As for the start time, likely she is involved in extra-curricular activities, like cheerleading or sports. 5 nights a week? Not buying it. I don't think I'm isolated from the world at all; I managed to deal with a heavy homework load and still have plenty of fun and get into various sorts of trouble (often at the same time) as a teenager.
- Afforess 13y ago
  I can't believe I'm reading someone on hacker news saying 'polynomials don't appear in everyday problems.' Name a situation where solving a polynomial is something the average person has to do? The only one I can think of is compound interest.
  - Someone 13y ago
    That's not a polynomial, but an exponential, discretized (x^2 is a polynomial, 2^x an exponential) In everyday life, I would guess most polynomials you encounter are of order zero or one. Most people would not call those polynomials. Second order ones you encounter when doing quick math for computing how hard an impact will be, or how far a car accelerating from zero to X in T seconds will go.
  - gshubert17 13y ago
    Problems involving projectile motion involve quadratics, s = vt + 0.5g*t^2 The average person may not be called on to solve it analytically, but should have a general understanding of function, solution, and so on. Having worked through some example polynomials may make retaining the general concepts easier.
  - smsm42 13y ago
    As noted, compound interest is exponential, not polynomial. Which brings me to one of my favorite pet peeves - I don't think schools still have any basics of financial literacy - like understanding how compound interests work, what present value and net present value is, how to estimate value a cash flow, etc. And those are things which you can encounter every day - taking a loan, negotiating a raise, figuring out if you can afford a new car, etc. Much more useful than knowing how exactly crystals which 99.999% would never see in their life are built.
- neltnerb 13y ago
  Even purely from a practical perspective of "I have to get into college", if you are not very active in extracurricular activities you are screwed on your applications. If you're doing athletics, you're spending five days a week for three hours after school every day during the sports season. Even not during the sports season I was spending a minimum of two hours every day on extracurriculars including Boy Scouts, Academic Superbowl, Chess Club, and Science Olympiad. Those I all did because I had honest enthusiasm and got a lot out of all of those things (contributed more to my engineering and general life education than many classes for sure). But this kind of load is not and should not be unusual in children trying to find out what they enjoy in life. Perhaps the problem is that there has been a shift from unstructured extracurricular activities to structured ones. I've seen this both in high schools and in universities. Writing poetry used to be something you did in an unstructured fun way, now it's a poetry club at school. So perhaps the difference is that what you define as "fun and trouble" is now a formal extracurricular activity.
  - Goronmon 13y ago
    If you're doing athletics, you're spending five days a week for three hours after school every day during the sports season. And when I played sports in high school, there really wasn't an 'offseason'. Wrestling started the Monday following the Thanksgiving game for football, and if you did well in wrestling, your season butted up pretty close to baseball season as well.
- narwally 13y ago
  Maybe polynomials appear in everyday problems of Hacker News users. But Hacker News isn't exactly representative of your average everyday person. Also, I think a lot of people are forgetting the relative privilege they had while growing up. I was always forced to do the majority of my homework during the schooldays because I was busy taking care of my three younger siblings in the evenings. Expecting every child in a class to be equally capable of completing an assignment at home is making a lot of assumptions about their home situation.

anigbrowl 13y ago

I can't believe I'm reading someone on hacker news saying 'polynomials don't appear in everyday problems.' As for the start time, likely she is involved in extra-curricular activities, like cheerleading or sports. 5 nights a week? Not buying it. I don't think I'm isolated from the world at all; I managed to deal with a heavy homework load and still have plenty of fun and get into various sorts of trouble (often at the same time) as a teenager.

Afforess 13y ago
I can't believe I'm reading someone on hacker news saying 'polynomials don't appear in everyday problems.' Name a situation where solving a polynomial is something the average person has to do? The only one I can think of is compound interest.
- Someone 13y ago
  That's not a polynomial, but an exponential, discretized (x^2 is a polynomial, 2^x an exponential) In everyday life, I would guess most polynomials you encounter are of order zero or one. Most people would not call those polynomials. Second order ones you encounter when doing quick math for computing how hard an impact will be, or how far a car accelerating from zero to X in T seconds will go.
- gshubert17 13y ago
  Problems involving projectile motion involve quadratics, s = vt + 0.5g*t^2 The average person may not be called on to solve it analytically, but should have a general understanding of function, solution, and so on. Having worked through some example polynomials may make retaining the general concepts easier.
- smsm42 13y ago
  As noted, compound interest is exponential, not polynomial. Which brings me to one of my favorite pet peeves - I don't think schools still have any basics of financial literacy - like understanding how compound interests work, what present value and net present value is, how to estimate value a cash flow, etc. And those are things which you can encounter every day - taking a loan, negotiating a raise, figuring out if you can afford a new car, etc. Much more useful than knowing how exactly crystals which 99.999% would never see in their life are built.
neltnerb 13y ago
Even purely from a practical perspective of "I have to get into college", if you are not very active in extracurricular activities you are screwed on your applications. If you're doing athletics, you're spending five days a week for three hours after school every day during the sports season. Even not during the sports season I was spending a minimum of two hours every day on extracurriculars including Boy Scouts, Academic Superbowl, Chess Club, and Science Olympiad. Those I all did because I had honest enthusiasm and got a lot out of all of those things (contributed more to my engineering and general life education than many classes for sure). But this kind of load is not and should not be unusual in children trying to find out what they enjoy in life. Perhaps the problem is that there has been a shift from unstructured extracurricular activities to structured ones. I've seen this both in high schools and in universities. Writing poetry used to be something you did in an unstructured fun way, now it's a poetry club at school. So perhaps the difference is that what you define as "fun and trouble" is now a formal extracurricular activity.
- Goronmon 13y ago
  If you're doing athletics, you're spending five days a week for three hours after school every day during the sports season. And when I played sports in high school, there really wasn't an 'offseason'. Wrestling started the Monday following the Thanksgiving game for football, and if you did well in wrestling, your season butted up pretty close to baseball season as well.
narwally 13y ago
Maybe polynomials appear in everyday problems of Hacker News users. But Hacker News isn't exactly representative of your average everyday person. Also, I think a lot of people are forgetting the relative privilege they had while growing up. I was always forced to do the majority of my homework during the schooldays because I was busy taking care of my three younger siblings in the evenings. Expecting every child in a class to be equally capable of completing an assignment at home is making a lot of assumptions about their home situation.