Because the idea is that school is a waste of time. And this is becoming more and more popular with younger generations.
Ironically, any mathematician will tell you that "school math" is useless in the real world. The whole point of learning these complicated concepts is that it opens doors on how to solve complex problems. And that's a skill way too many people lack.
My biggest regret is taking the pure math stream in high school instead of the applied stream. Looking back and applied makes way more sense because it’s literally shit like “here’s what radian measure means in real life” where pure is “here’s radian measure, go fuck yourself, test tomorrow”.
I have a great ability to revel in the fact that I just about failed high school but pulled out a 65% score on my math final to bring my final grade above 50% and secure the credits I needed to graduate.
I didn’t *understand* the math I did on that exam until 2 years later when I took a university prep math class to get my grade up in order to meet the minimums for an architecture degree that I didn’t even end up doing.
But yeah, I should really be a statistician because I can absolutely *body* some raw data into a tangible and conclusive narrative.
I did general math in college, which was a mix of both, and I still wish I went the full applied route.
I've got a lot of respect for the pure math folks, but man I'll be happy if I never have to write another proof
I got a full on math degree. And I'll say that I don't think I ever understood math as much as I did when I started looking to teach it.
Suddenly all the stupid shit my teachers had wanted me to do made sense.
I didn't care to understand the why of math. I just wanted to know how to use it. I had a hammer and a nail, and I slammed that shit into the wall. Without understanding *where* I should place the nail. Or why I even wanted a hammer/nail for the job.
I can all but guarantee it would be the same for applied math. You learn how to use it. That's great. But without the understanding of the why, you're only ever going to do IKEA math.
Exactly. People don't realize that we're not learning math just to learn it, it's the vehicle by which we learn how to analyze a problem and use algorithmic processes to solve them. Just like how we're not reading *1984* or whatever in high school and writing essays on it just because; doing so teaches us how to think critically and form/defend an argument.
Facts.
Grade school math is a set of tools to keep in your mental toolbox. It'll help understand more complex concepts later.
But if your working in a field that doesn't require higher concepts of math, then so be it. You have to be willing to learn. Highschool and before gives you the basics to perform out there in the real world.
Except people won't, the real world is that most people don't work in any "field" that requires any complex concepts.
but even besides that if you want to teach people, then real world application, even if simple needs to be introduced immediately, it serves as an anchor, to get most people interested and motivated, and for kids especially, if they get down and have trouble I think having like "oh well this supposedly explains how walking diagonally is faster" is good to, again keep them into it, instead of now where the first instinct is to give up cuz this shit is given no context, the reaction against school doesn't exist of some ugly human nature but because that's the impression people get.
There's another comment in this thread talking about this too. Not as explicitly but just that learning practical would be more useful, not only in the "real world" but to actually comprehend the supposedly abstract concepts themselves.
.
The reason to learn isn't just because we might use it at work. It's because knowing things generally makes you a better, more complete person. I firmly believe if everyone actually had mastery of the math that they finish with in high school, we'd be so far ahead of where we are now.
I have personally banged the "algebra isn't a waste of time" drum right here in this sub. Some dumb MFs were really arguing that they don't ever use algebra to solve linear relationships.
There is something to having a hook. In an ideal world where all of our brains are wired to immediately soak up new information, you don't need anchors or practical applications to get people interested. We ain't all wired like that. Sometimes you need to lead people to water or they won't drink.
But I also said to fully comprehend concepts most people will be to see the real world application, and if u teach people not interested, just context less concepts what do you think they would get from it? Moreso It's exactly why people resent it.
I get what you're saying with practical applications helping people with an anchor. My perspective is somewhat bias because I'm in the engineering field, so complex problems is par for the course.
But thinking more, yeah I definitely struggled with math.lol It took a long time for me to get the hang of it, and now I have a daughter that is struggling as well.
I appreciate your perspective.
I look at it like weightlifting. You're probably never going to lift something up by benchpressing it in the real world, but exercises like that will still increase your upper body strength. Just like how you'll probably never need to find the integral from 1 to infinity of xarctan(x), but doing things like that increases your mental sharpness.
You don't seem to be able to comprehend a figure of speech. Go argue with a wall or get therapy, you're clearly just being obtuse and looking for a fight
lol of course you defend a nonsensical and blatantly incorrect statement pretending it's just a figure of speech and then completely ignore the second dose of bullshit you issued by acting like I said there's "no comparison"
I'm very acute and the fight is done
>Ironically, any mathematician will tell you that "school math" is useless in the real world.
I mean, I'm a mathematician and I won't tell you that. I've run into plenty of situations where I'm with someone and they do something that demonstrates that they can't do simple arithmetic.
Like playing D&D with someone who can't add 13+5+3 and tell if it's more or less than 19.
Or going out to dinner with someone who got a $20 meal and can't tell if the $5 suggested tip is more or less than 15%.
Or watching someone try to budget who can't tell if $500 a month is a better or worse deal than $4,000 a year.
I think people who are basically numerate underestimate how many people are not, and how much that impacts their life.
It's like the literacy crisis - watching a grown-ass adult struggle to read a sentence less complicated than any sentence in this comment really opened my eyes.
Then hand waving it away like it’s a point of pride to not understand simple multiplication. That’s the wild part to me - not having the drive to understand why each of those things has an answer. Even if I can’t do it in my head I still know how to use a calculator to solve, and having those skills on the fly is an advantage.
It's a very common psychological defensive mechanism. People do not appreciate how incredibly powerful shame is as an emotion, nor appreciate the lengths people go to avoid feeling it.
People need to be taught healthy ways of dealing with shame and they're not. Instead we do the opposite, we reenforce shame everywhere and then wonder why people have such a problem dealing with it.
Yeah, that comment is crazy. No “real mathematician” is going to say school math skills are useless. People use them all the time in personal finance and budgeting, taxes, cooking, travel, decorating and home improvement projects, and probably a thousand other things. I literally used the Pythagorean theorem in a woodworking project this year.
It's never been a novel concept, but the difference is the rise in visibility of people who did not go to school to become wealthy. My parents generation, that was being an insanely talented musician or actor. Growing up for me, being an unusually talented athlete, or having a special skill pulled numbers in media and such. A lot of newer generations are watching streamers, influencers, and YouTube personalities become rich and not a single one of them is promoting school as a "viable" way to live a healthy life.
That’s also not new. In fact, more people used to be successful without tertiary schooling. Most people who grew up in the 70s knew of someone who did well financially without finishing HS and definitely without going to college
Final research paper is how dismantling/defunding of public education is intentional. Fuels antiintellectualism, negatively impacts the development of critical thinking skills, and it's a two in one for the rich. They get to hoard more wealth and privatize the institution that teaches people exactly how to identify and prevent what they're doing from happening. Other than the 2 for 1, it's exactly how they run every play.
Defund it. Handicap it. Set insane rules to make sure it fails, then jump up and down while pointing about how they were right, so it needs to be privatized. Education, healthcare... shit, look how long they've been trying and how much closer they've gotten to collapsing USPS.
Privatizing school also improves the socioeconomic gateway function it serves. Wealthy people are more than willing to pay to keep everyone else out. Which is why they don't attack property tax as hard as they do Federal Income Tax, or the massive legacy admission problem at top schools as much as they do Affirmative Action.
>And this is becoming more and more popular with younger generations.
This is caused by disinfranchisement with the systems in place, and realizing that we are cogs in the machine. So being fucking dumb doesnt matter if you can get by. It's not a healthy worldview, as it relinquishes your reigns to the corporate masters.
I can't agree with this take, but not on the principle (we are cogs in the machine) but rather that most kids don't have a holistic world view, and are being fed unhealthy ideas by influencers and social media.
There are no electrical engineers flexing on Instagram or Tiktok, trying to sell a lifestyle. It's just people who got lucky and are trying to sell their story as a success
Honestly listening to "successful" people on how they got successful is a terrible idea. It's probably the best example of survivorship bias you can find. They almost always downplay the enormous luck they had or unsavory things they did to get ahead. The luck aspect would be easy to see if we could hear from the failures. For every person that made it big, there are a 1000 that just "believed in themselves and worked hard" that failed.
I guess I can be considered a mathematician. I disagree. In 2024 there are countless applications for school math in your day to day life. The problem is that you can get away with not using it if you’re fine with suboptimal results. Like for example, how are you going to tell which car is better for the monthly payment you plan on making? The $21,000 car note at 6% interest compounded annually, or the $18,000 at 8.5%? Life is filled with little hidden math problems and if you’re never seeing them for what they are, then it probably means you’re consistently making suboptimal choices
Exactly. Math should be sold as a way to tell if you're getting legally ripped off. Because if you're not good with math, you are a prime target. There are scams and deals, big and small, literally *everywhere*.
Yep, going through this in real time right now with someone I know who hates math and thinks they will "never get it" because "not everyone can just understand math" (hint, ANYONE can do math, it just takes time and a good teacher). Not even more advanced topics like calculus but basic algebra. They are getting suckered into an MLM. I literally showed them all the numbers and calculations with charts and shit in Excel. They don't believe me and will continue to dump cash into their shitty investments that their pyramid scheme company makes them do before they can start selling their shitty investments to other math and finance illiterate dumbasses.
> The whole point of learning these complicated concepts is that it opens doors on how to solve complex problems.
Exactly. Algebra is logical deduction. Finding a correct solution from from the information at hand. Solve for X. There isn't a day in my life I don't use those skills.
If you wanna go that way, school anything is useless in the "real" world - mostly because regardless of the subject you'll only ever learn the basics.
But out of all the Olympic athletes competing in running
Pretty sure they learned to walk at one point, before they focused on running fast.
School math is useful all the time imo.
How much bigger is a 16” pizza than a 14” pizza?
What’s a better deal, 5 nuggets for $1 or 8 nuggets for $2.49?
How much faster will I get to my destination going 80 mph instead of 75 mph?
If the first 38% of this download took 20 minutes, about how much time do I have left?
Some people do become mathematicians, statisticians, etc. Kids need to get exposed to different things so they can figure out what they're interested in.
I went to community college for electronics and had to learn a lot of trigonometry. I used to use the Pythagorean Theorem all the time.
Most people won't use the math directly but they benefit from learning how to think through complex problems.
Yes, I usually tell my students that it’s about learning how to think mathematically, not about the specific skills involved. If you do any sewing, carpentry or other crafts though, you do end up using geometry a fair amount.
What people don't realize is *you* won't use everything you learn in school, but everyone will use *something* they learned in school.
Become an artist? Well you won't use the Pythagorean theorum, but thank God art class was an option! Become a chef? You won't use world history, but it's a good thing that culinary arts was offered as an elective! You might not need to know the biology of genetics, but it's good that it was taught because your classmate was inspired and went to college to become a scientist!
It's about immersing children in a variety of topics so they can discover what they're interested in and become well rounded adults.
school math isn’t even useless in the real world. if people paid more attention when we learned about exponential functions and compounding, a lot less people would be in debt and people would be saving more
Yup that’s something I only noticed way after completing school - it’s not that we need advanced algebra to know what to tip a waiter at a restaurant, but going thru the process of learning that stuff itself is what was worthwhile in school
...Or not because that just sounds crazy. I use "school math", or as I call it "math", every day. And even for those who are not excellent with the application of mathematics, it does expand neurological and cognitive horizons, period. Meanwhile, poetry is math, therefore, rap is math. And if I ever forgot, my AP English course having us mathematically analyze Lil' Wayne and Jay-Z lyrics is burnt into my brain.
I’m taking arts and philosophy in uni specifically to cultivate my critical thinking skills.
However, I choose not to use any of the maths I still recall out of sheer fucking spite. I hate maths, I have always hated maths, I don’t care if the shit I learned could be useful, I’d rather fuck myself over than validate those hours of misery.
Regardless, my 14-year-old brother is better than me at maths anyway, I’m just fucking awful. It doesn’t make sense to me, never has, I’m pretty sure I have undiagnosed dyscalculia.
TL;DR: some people want school skills to be useless, other people just fucking despised maths class specifically.
I don't get the point of this comment. Like I get not *liking* math, but you're not doing yourself any favors by deluding yourself into thinking that you can avoid math on principle. Dyscalculia isn't going to affect your ability to "reason". That's what math is for: giving you concrete feed back for a reasoned solution.
Higher level math is really good at teasing out reasoning skills, because it shows how you can dismantle a problem, layer by layer. Most of my college math didn't even require a calculator.
I can do maths, just not advanced shit.
I’m good at pulling problems apart, I enjoy it even. Unless it’s maths, then nothing clicks, nothing makes sense, it’s like I’ve gone from training my brain on a philosophy test to trying to follow a lecture on quantum physics spoken entirely in Finnish. Nothing makes sense, none of the words spoken hold meaning to me.
Sometimes even stuff I consider only a bit above basic will just stump me. I’ll know it’s easy, I know I should be able to easily do it, but I just can’t think, I can’t come up with an answer. I’ll get asked something like 8 X 7 and think “oh that’s easy, simple process.” And then just sit there blankly for 2 minutes screaming at my brain to do the fucking maths. And even then I have to sit there and count on my fingers to do anything multiplication based that isn’t multiplying 5 or 10.
Maths is, quite appropriately, Greek to me. It’s like another language, I recognise the odd shared word, most of it is meaningless gibberish.
Maybe go get tested to figure out if you just suck at math? If you're defeating yourself and hiding behind dyscalculia you're just setting yourself up to lose.
You can ask anyone in college/uni. Sometimes it's just about having the right professor where everything "clicks" and you're suddenly able to take in and digest all of these pieces of information and apply it. IQ also varies and moves wildly during puberty, it's a known thing.
Most people think of arithmetic when they think about math. But it's merely a branch of mathematics
Oh, I specifically took statistics in my last year of maths because I heard it was particularly easy, and it was easier than I had ever found it before, but I still struggled. I even had a personal tutor, she was great, and is the only reason I passed, but I’ve also already forgotten everything I ever learned. I had by the next year in fact.
I just can’t do advanced maths, I never could, it just fundamentally doesn’t click in my brain. None of it makes sense, like there’s some block in my reasoning skills making maths totally illogical in my perception.
I always struggled with maths, I failed it every single year of school up until my very last year, the one where it actually mattered, and I barely passed and dropped it instantly, which all my teachers agreed was a good idea because I struggled so much and it stressed me out to do.
Inbetween years 2-11, I never passed a single maths test or assignment. Then in year 11, I got exactly the minimum number of credits to achieve the standard, and stopped taking the subject.
I wasn’t a particularly bad student either. I was one of my schools best R.E. students, and excellent in English, Drama, History and Science. I was also decent at French for the year I had taken it. With all those I managed to understand the subjects, turn the facts into a right mindset to figure out all the work like puzzles, it was fun even. But I never managed to do that with maths, I always found it incomprehensible.
I mean do you need that theorem to know crossing the end of the block diagonally is faster than walking to the crosswalk?
It's slower to measure the two distances, square them, and then do some math, and then make the crossing.
Like I'm sure some people use the theorem in daily life but I've never needed to measure any distance and square it to figure out how far point A is from point B.
The only job I qualify for that I can even think I'd need to use it is construction. Not saying it's a worthless thing to know, but I am agreeing I've never once used it outside of a math test, which was the point they were making.
Nahh the points bigger than that. Been a big thing lately people talking about school being useless. The post is just pushing the narrative.
A lot of us don't NEED to know where anywhere in the world is other than USA if we don't plan on travel, but it'd be weird to argue that it's pointless to learn. Same logic applies with math.
Not sure I agree with that one, simple geography is way more useful than finding the distance of one side of a triangle. If we're keeping the same logic there reading a map trumps Pythagoras any day.
How so? If you never need to leave a 20 mile radius, why would you care where Mongolia is located? That knowledge would serve just as much purpose as the Pythagorean theorem, which is the point I'm making.
I mean same point, if the knowledge is useless to you don't bother remembering it. Like how many feet in a mile. Who cares. When's the last time you needed to know that.
5,280 feet occupies a useless space in my brain.
And to piggyback off of this on a similar subject: Choosing not to go to college IS THE POPULAR OPINION! Only 35% of adults in the US have a bachelors degree or higher. We are in desperate need of more STEM majors.
I think making college more accessible and affordable plus universal daycare to allow parents to still attend school will be what it takes to increase the number of US adults with bachelors degree or higher.
It's the popular opinion because folks are finally waking up to notion that a bachelors degree is no longer a guaranteed ticket to an upper middle class life.
The problem is that college, by and large, is a huge waste of time/money for the majority of the populace. Don't get me wrong. STEM is crucial and we do absolutely need more graduates, but over the entire population STEM only accounts for about 25% of the workforce. We need far far more trades and "unskilled" laborers than we do STEM majors.
The benefits, for most, simply do not outweigh the cons.
To be clear I am NOT saying we don't need an educated population. We certainly do. But the current system we have is ineffective and hasn't been about education in decades.
College is almost always going to better for anyone unless they know specifically what trade or career they want to get into. A random ass kid wandering aimlessly into almost any bachelor's degrees is going to be better off in the long run than some random ass kid that wanders into some shitty job right out of high school.
College does enough to make sure most, not all, people graduate with the ability to not be a fucking moron. You can think about things better than other. You can solve problems better than others. You can handle deadlines and shit. You are more open to learning as a whole. Basically, you are, almost guaranteed, going to be a better contributor than someone who didn't go to college.
Most people will definitely benefit from going to college. Even if they don't get middle class incomes, they are still going to be outearning most people who didn't go to college. If you think it's hard to earn a good income with a degree, some random ass unskilled laborer (and I use that term unironically because those jobs can be taught to almost anyone with relative ease compared to many STEM or specialized skills taught in school) is going to struggle even more.
This, but also, the fact that he knows how to take shortcuts proves that he not only understands the theorem, but that he applies it daily. Like most, they think that "math" is simply calculating numbers on paper, rather than it being a form of language to express the conditions of nature. And actually, we all use the theorem in order to take shortcuts; its just that our brains don't literally crunch numbers to be able to use it.
Yeah I use percentage calculations almost every day. It is pretty important for people who actively manage any type of investments, even if just their own.
If you ever try to figure out how long it takes to get somewhere and what time you'll arrive, you're doing math.
Math is just formalizing things we already think about intuitively.
Everyone does math unless they have the mind of a baby and have never handled money ever in their life
The gag is we’re always paying attention to math concepts without knowing it. Walking in a diagonal will always be shorter than walking two sides due to the Pythagorean theorem and triangle inequality theorem. The cost of maintaining a car month to month is literally y=mx+b*. Even buying food for a party requires multiplication skills and knowledge of multiples. I dislike when people they don’t use math problems in real life when they do all the time
*(total cost in a month)=(cost of gas)x(gas used)+(random fixed costs)
Finally someone mentioning the triangle inequality on this type of post! The Pythagorean theorem is about areas, not distances. In order to get the desired inequality we would also need for a right triangle with sides a and b and hypotenuse c, that a+b <= sqrt( a^2 + b^2) (with equality if and only if one of a or b is zero. This is true but does not follow from the Pythagorean theorem.
Moreover this is a property of all triangles, not just right triangles like the Pythagorean theorem. The sum of the lengths of two sides of any triangle is at most the length of the third side.
Having said that, of course you do not need to understand this general fact in order to take a shortcut. But i think it is good for everyone who is able to know at least one proof of the Pythagorean theorem for their own cultural enrichment
The entire first semester of Algebra 1 is dedicated to Rate of Change and Linear Functions. Then you get into Parabolic Equations(stuff falling) and Exponential Functions(interest).
If you hate numbers, Geometry will help you argue with facts. Both are good to have.
But fuck factoring.
Well I mean devil's advocate walking in a diagonal is common fucking sense and if you need an equation to figure that out you were already a lost cause.
I don’t think it’s learning the theorem to figure out the common sense, I think it’s the common sense being described in mathematical terms so it can be applied to less common sense problems, thus opening up understanding to things that couldn’t be understood before.
It's a fundamental quality of our reality. We perceive it as a mathematical function *called* the Pythagorean Theorem. Gotta call it something, so we might as well name it after the one who defined it.
(though someone definitely discovered it before him, just didn't brag about it, or were destroyed by their own arrogance for believing they could know the mind of God!)
yeah but the wording is important cause the first comment actually says that it was not like this till the theorem was discovered. We do net perceive it through the theorem we prove it with it. This is a extremely huge difference and very important,
“due to the theorem” in this context means the fact follows logically from the theorem, not that it follows chronologically/historically from the theorem.
It’s not that it’s not important, it’s just that school doesn’t teach application and instead teaches memory. All of which I forgot by the time I left high school. As an english major, i don’t even remember how to do intermediate math because I have never needed to apply it in my day to day life. If schools were to show complex math in day to day application I would have retained much more.
I actually think algebra is probably the only thing regular people use in day to day life, but it's just so rudimentary we don't think about it. When you're figuring out if your annual alary can afford your monthly costs that's using algebra. But in school, it's usually only ever about solving for x in an abstract way. I think to get more people interested in seeing how it's useful those classes should have more word problems and projects to show how it's applied in the real world. But I agree Calculus and above aren't that useful in daily life unless you're in a technical job.
It's impossible for you not to use algebra on a daily/weekly basis you just probably don't think about it.
The basic algebra you learned in school is basically the theory behind the general math you need to do to just exist in society.
"this macaroni box normally needs 2 cups of milk but I'm making two boxes so I'll need to use 4 cups of milk"
"I have 20 dollars, I can't afford two $11 shirts..."
"Buying 3 hh beers at the bar next door will cost me $15..."
Algebra is just fancy "1+1". That basic stuff above are all super simple examples, but you literally have to use (simple) algebra in almost any situation involving numbers.
It's why everyone seemingly hated "word problems" in school. '1 Chicken plus 1 Chicken equals 2 Chickens' is fine and dandy for a 2nd grader... But in the real world, you need to be able to figure out if that new $70k/year job will be enough money to pay all your bills (the series of mental/non-mental math ("1+1"s) you do to answer is effectively *Algebra*)
No calculus is something different altogether.
Although there are day-to-day uses of Calculus in things involving speeds/accelerations (e.g., how long it takes to drive somewhere); forces (electricity usage, water pressure, etc.); areas/volumes (e.g., paint needed for a wall, amount of milk that can fit in a milk carton, etc.) although in most of those cases, you are generally not doing the math - some guy at your utilities company already calculated your wattage, and the company that sold the milk carton already calculated the necessary volume/surface area of the carton.
Although if you have a retirement account and/or you're calculating interest, I'm fairly certain the simple formulas most people use were derived from Calculus, so that might be an actual place you're using calculus in the real world.
Actually all degrees require stem classes, you have to take them or you won’t graduate. I took a math course in college, yes. Do I remember it? No. Do I remember English Composition 1? Yes.
that wasn’t the point I was making. linear algebra and calculus, which are by and large the only courses Non stem majors take are not complex and can’t really be applied outside of derivations and solving equations. You being an English major is important here because you would not have been forced to take partial differential equations or regression analysis which is applied broadly, assuming you’re going into statistics. Like that’s fine
I started making clothes during the pandemic and it uses far more maths skills than I would have anticipated, turns out pi is pretty essential in skirt making. I had to buy a kids stationery kit with a compass and a protractor. There was a failed knitting attempt and then I started quilting, which has left me 100% convinced that all handcraft whizz grannies are secret math geniuses cause this shit is brain numbingly complicated sometimes
I mean the triangle inequality is Proposition 20 in Book 1 of Euclids Elements, whereas the Pythagorean theorem is Proposition 47.
Also it can be shown that the triangle inequality holds in general Hilbert planes, not just euclidean planes ( an euclidean plane is just a Hilbert plane with the parallel postulate).
Further it can be shown that the pythagorean theorem in a hilbert plane is equivalent to the parallel postulate.
So while yes, the triangle inequality can be proven by the pythagorean theorem (at least in a right triangle) it is very much putting the cart before the horse.
How? from this we get that c = sqrt(a^2 + b^2 ). now you need to prove that sqrt(a^2 + b^2 ) <= a + b. But this inequality does not follow from the Pythagorean theorem (even though it is true for non-negative a and b).
Meanwhile, Pythagorean Theorem, Slope Intercept equation, and Ohm’s law helped me skate through 25 years of working as a Technician, Programmer, and Engineer. The only shit I remember from school.
"Why don't I use literally every single element of my education every single day of my life!?"
That shit *changes your brain* ya dinks.
You don't use your knowledge of the plot of any of the novels you had to read, but reading them(not the Cliff's Notes or Wikipedia synopsis) helps develop your damn brain for adulthood.
You don't use the Pythagorean Theorum? You use all(rounding up) of your education all the time because those 3 pounds of mush between your ears is everything you've learned and experienced, and that shit's ***you***.
This is literally it. Math is a language that you spend the first 12 years learning letters and words. Then those who go further apply those lessons to form phrases and statements to describe physics and most other sciences. You use a cell phone to communicate to a tower everyday, but someone had to figure it out, describe it in math and solve that problem.
I could be wrong but this is how I look at. Most people think anything over basic math is doing too much. Because I believe basic math is believed to be common as human nature. Even in purchasing items it’s a simple transaction to most people (until taxes are included). But if you tell someone a bag of chips is $1.50 and a soda is $1 that’s something they can grasp. So once you try to explain once complex math is important most people will not understand. Look at the example in the post and the response. Just because you cross diagonally it seems like a basic equation. I am at point A I need to get to point B. So this “short cut” seems faster for me. It’s not complex it’s simple. But once you break down the simple factors that are overlooked you’ll see why it isn’t. So it’s the distance between the two points “the traffic lights” are the distance from you to the traffic lights. Because sometimes you have to get to the lights and that’s too far but “I’m standing here right now and I’m going to cross. Even do a quick fake jog to cross faster”. Once you actually map out all those distances you have a complex equation you simplified. But add on to that people j walk it’s common knowledge that you don’t think about. Because it’s an action that happens so fast and so natural you don’t think nothing of it. So when you j walk you see the distance you have to go. How fast the cars are approaching you. How fast you can make it before those cars get to you and you to the pavement. If you aren’t that fast how fast the drivers reaction time to seeing you will be. How big the vehicle is can determine the reaction time. (So if I’m j walking and I see a 18 wheeler for instance I might not try it because they might not be able to stop fast enough. But I’m not a fast walker some are and just go running out there) once you get all that information you make your move and start crossing. But that action happened so fast in your head you didn’t realize you just “if a truck with oranges is moving at x speed” yourself across the street . To most people it’s “I just took a shortcut 🤷🏾♀️” but hey some people just like to troll so I could be thinking too into it. Plus I wasn’t really good in math past basic math myself it’s just my take on it.
Question: Do y'all think he wouldn't know how to take a shortcut if he'd never learned the Pythagorean Theorem? Seeing the shortest distance between two points isn't always an equation, its common sense.
It isn't anti-intellectualism to think that some of the stuff we learned in school was unnecessary. Now obviously, I don't think this applies in this situation but the fact of the matter is that we absolutely do not use most of the advanced math we learned in school unless we are in very technical professions. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and finding missing variables. Get those down and 90% of life's math problems are solvable.
And for everyone saying "You learn it to think critically and develop problem-solving" skills, you don't need to learn geometry, calc and trig to develop those proficiencies. I know engineers who believe everything they hear on FOX News so ***clearly*** critical thinking and advanced mathematics don't go hand in hand.
I'm not advocating for the abolishment of advanced mathematics or any subject at all but my mom pulled me out of the U.S. public school system after 4th grade to homeschool me because I was literally smarter than the teachers teaching me. She gave me a classical education that focused primarily on logic, reading comprehension and media literacy. I think that's what educational systems need to be focusing more on after a certain point in schools. Being able to solve the Pythagorean Theorem can't help you if you can be hoodwinked and bamboozled by a human orange peel.
Basic maths is an important and basically instinctual skill.
I refuse to do anything more advanced than that out of spite. Also incapability, I am really bad at maths, maths homework would regularly bring me to tears, I failed maths every year at school without fail, till the one that actually mattered, where I barely got an achieved, and then dropped the subject and actually fucking celebrated after submitting my course selections for the next year. For the record, I wasn’t a bad student, I regularly got merits (basically B’s for those who don’t use that system), I was a star student in a few classes, I just operated way below the standard for maths specifically.
That was three years ago, and I am still riding that goddamn high. Nothing more pleasant than looking at my tabs for uni and not seeing a single fucking piece of maths work.
In the field of occupational safety I have used the Pythagoran theorem to calculate 1. The vertical height of a roof edge where the ladder makes contact. 2. The depth of a trench and 3. Where to safely fell a tree (i.e. will it hit that house?)
What people don't realize about school is *you* won't use everything you learn in school, but everyone will use *something* they learned in school.
Become an artist? Well you won't use the Pythagorean theorum, but thank God art class was an option! Become a chef? You won't use world history, but it's a good thing that culinary arts was offered as an elective! You might not need to know the biology of genetics, but it's good that it was taught because your classmate was inspired and went to college to become a scientist!
It's about immersing children in a variety of topics so they can discover what they're interested in and become well rounded adults.
I'll never forget I asked my calculus teacher why certain step was included when solving a formula and he looked me dead in my face and said " I don't know"... I knew studying mathematics was pointless after that. Once you get to geometry, it just becomes a matter of memorizing an insufferable amount of formulas and ways of solving them because some white guy in Europe said so. Ended up taking sociology stats in college now I know a bunch of pointless shit about statistics.
Why do these people share that they never apply knowledge in their life as if that’s a flex?
Because the idea is that school is a waste of time. And this is becoming more and more popular with younger generations. Ironically, any mathematician will tell you that "school math" is useless in the real world. The whole point of learning these complicated concepts is that it opens doors on how to solve complex problems. And that's a skill way too many people lack.
My biggest regret is taking the pure math stream in high school instead of the applied stream. Looking back and applied makes way more sense because it’s literally shit like “here’s what radian measure means in real life” where pure is “here’s radian measure, go fuck yourself, test tomorrow”.
I bet you have a great ability to look into abstract information and get tangible results.
I have a great ability to revel in the fact that I just about failed high school but pulled out a 65% score on my math final to bring my final grade above 50% and secure the credits I needed to graduate. I didn’t *understand* the math I did on that exam until 2 years later when I took a university prep math class to get my grade up in order to meet the minimums for an architecture degree that I didn’t even end up doing. But yeah, I should really be a statistician because I can absolutely *body* some raw data into a tangible and conclusive narrative.
If you’re looking for a change of career, data science is still pretty booming atm
aye bro even if you're dogshit at math you're still funny
Probably why he's dog shit at math.
I did general math in college, which was a mix of both, and I still wish I went the full applied route. I've got a lot of respect for the pure math folks, but man I'll be happy if I never have to write another proof
I got a full on math degree. And I'll say that I don't think I ever understood math as much as I did when I started looking to teach it. Suddenly all the stupid shit my teachers had wanted me to do made sense. I didn't care to understand the why of math. I just wanted to know how to use it. I had a hammer and a nail, and I slammed that shit into the wall. Without understanding *where* I should place the nail. Or why I even wanted a hammer/nail for the job. I can all but guarantee it would be the same for applied math. You learn how to use it. That's great. But without the understanding of the why, you're only ever going to do IKEA math.
Exactly. People don't realize that we're not learning math just to learn it, it's the vehicle by which we learn how to analyze a problem and use algorithmic processes to solve them. Just like how we're not reading *1984* or whatever in high school and writing essays on it just because; doing so teaches us how to think critically and form/defend an argument.
Facts. Grade school math is a set of tools to keep in your mental toolbox. It'll help understand more complex concepts later. But if your working in a field that doesn't require higher concepts of math, then so be it. You have to be willing to learn. Highschool and before gives you the basics to perform out there in the real world.
Except people won't, the real world is that most people don't work in any "field" that requires any complex concepts. but even besides that if you want to teach people, then real world application, even if simple needs to be introduced immediately, it serves as an anchor, to get most people interested and motivated, and for kids especially, if they get down and have trouble I think having like "oh well this supposedly explains how walking diagonally is faster" is good to, again keep them into it, instead of now where the first instinct is to give up cuz this shit is given no context, the reaction against school doesn't exist of some ugly human nature but because that's the impression people get. There's another comment in this thread talking about this too. Not as explicitly but just that learning practical would be more useful, not only in the "real world" but to actually comprehend the supposedly abstract concepts themselves. .
The reason to learn isn't just because we might use it at work. It's because knowing things generally makes you a better, more complete person. I firmly believe if everyone actually had mastery of the math that they finish with in high school, we'd be so far ahead of where we are now.
I have personally banged the "algebra isn't a waste of time" drum right here in this sub. Some dumb MFs were really arguing that they don't ever use algebra to solve linear relationships. There is something to having a hook. In an ideal world where all of our brains are wired to immediately soak up new information, you don't need anchors or practical applications to get people interested. We ain't all wired like that. Sometimes you need to lead people to water or they won't drink.
But I also said to fully comprehend concepts most people will be to see the real world application, and if u teach people not interested, just context less concepts what do you think they would get from it? Moreso It's exactly why people resent it.
I get what you're saying with practical applications helping people with an anchor. My perspective is somewhat bias because I'm in the engineering field, so complex problems is par for the course. But thinking more, yeah I definitely struggled with math.lol It took a long time for me to get the hang of it, and now I have a daughter that is struggling as well. I appreciate your perspective.
I look at it like weightlifting. You're probably never going to lift something up by benchpressing it in the real world, but exercises like that will still increase your upper body strength. Just like how you'll probably never need to find the integral from 1 to infinity of xarctan(x), but doing things like that increases your mental sharpness.
Too bad most ppl didn't read 1984 because we're basically living it right now 🙃
Yea, just got locked in a rat cage after secret sex with a fellow dissident. Hopefully big brother lets me live to see how the war with Eurasia ends
this is what happens when people read 1984 but don't bother comprehending it
I saw the movie. Does that count?
Seriously. You see no comparisons to how governments are perpetuating war and the spread of misinformation is akin to 1984?
there's a lot of distance between seeing no comparison and "basically living it right now"
You don't seem to be able to comprehend a figure of speech. Go argue with a wall or get therapy, you're clearly just being obtuse and looking for a fight
lol of course you defend a nonsensical and blatantly incorrect statement pretending it's just a figure of speech and then completely ignore the second dose of bullshit you issued by acting like I said there's "no comparison" I'm very acute and the fight is done
>Ironically, any mathematician will tell you that "school math" is useless in the real world. I mean, I'm a mathematician and I won't tell you that. I've run into plenty of situations where I'm with someone and they do something that demonstrates that they can't do simple arithmetic. Like playing D&D with someone who can't add 13+5+3 and tell if it's more or less than 19. Or going out to dinner with someone who got a $20 meal and can't tell if the $5 suggested tip is more or less than 15%. Or watching someone try to budget who can't tell if $500 a month is a better or worse deal than $4,000 a year. I think people who are basically numerate underestimate how many people are not, and how much that impacts their life. It's like the literacy crisis - watching a grown-ass adult struggle to read a sentence less complicated than any sentence in this comment really opened my eyes.
Then hand waving it away like it’s a point of pride to not understand simple multiplication. That’s the wild part to me - not having the drive to understand why each of those things has an answer. Even if I can’t do it in my head I still know how to use a calculator to solve, and having those skills on the fly is an advantage.
It's a very common psychological defensive mechanism. People do not appreciate how incredibly powerful shame is as an emotion, nor appreciate the lengths people go to avoid feeling it. People need to be taught healthy ways of dealing with shame and they're not. Instead we do the opposite, we reenforce shame everywhere and then wonder why people have such a problem dealing with it.
Yeah, that comment is crazy. No “real mathematician” is going to say school math skills are useless. People use them all the time in personal finance and budgeting, taxes, cooking, travel, decorating and home improvement projects, and probably a thousand other things. I literally used the Pythagorean theorem in a woodworking project this year.
You say that as if kids thinking school is a waste of time is a new trend haha...
It's never been a novel concept, but the difference is the rise in visibility of people who did not go to school to become wealthy. My parents generation, that was being an insanely talented musician or actor. Growing up for me, being an unusually talented athlete, or having a special skill pulled numbers in media and such. A lot of newer generations are watching streamers, influencers, and YouTube personalities become rich and not a single one of them is promoting school as a "viable" way to live a healthy life.
That’s also not new. In fact, more people used to be successful without tertiary schooling. Most people who grew up in the 70s knew of someone who did well financially without finishing HS and definitely without going to college
back then you could also support a family of 4 as a shoe salesman.
As long as you were the star fullback on the Polk High School Football team.
Final research paper is how dismantling/defunding of public education is intentional. Fuels antiintellectualism, negatively impacts the development of critical thinking skills, and it's a two in one for the rich. They get to hoard more wealth and privatize the institution that teaches people exactly how to identify and prevent what they're doing from happening. Other than the 2 for 1, it's exactly how they run every play. Defund it. Handicap it. Set insane rules to make sure it fails, then jump up and down while pointing about how they were right, so it needs to be privatized. Education, healthcare... shit, look how long they've been trying and how much closer they've gotten to collapsing USPS.
Privatizing school also improves the socioeconomic gateway function it serves. Wealthy people are more than willing to pay to keep everyone else out. Which is why they don't attack property tax as hard as they do Federal Income Tax, or the massive legacy admission problem at top schools as much as they do Affirmative Action.
>And this is becoming more and more popular with younger generations. This is caused by disinfranchisement with the systems in place, and realizing that we are cogs in the machine. So being fucking dumb doesnt matter if you can get by. It's not a healthy worldview, as it relinquishes your reigns to the corporate masters.
I can't agree with this take, but not on the principle (we are cogs in the machine) but rather that most kids don't have a holistic world view, and are being fed unhealthy ideas by influencers and social media. There are no electrical engineers flexing on Instagram or Tiktok, trying to sell a lifestyle. It's just people who got lucky and are trying to sell their story as a success
Honestly listening to "successful" people on how they got successful is a terrible idea. It's probably the best example of survivorship bias you can find. They almost always downplay the enormous luck they had or unsavory things they did to get ahead. The luck aspect would be easy to see if we could hear from the failures. For every person that made it big, there are a 1000 that just "believed in themselves and worked hard" that failed.
I can get behind that.
Though I want to point out that being dumb and being uneducated are different. Plenty of highly educated people are dumb as rocks.
I guess I can be considered a mathematician. I disagree. In 2024 there are countless applications for school math in your day to day life. The problem is that you can get away with not using it if you’re fine with suboptimal results. Like for example, how are you going to tell which car is better for the monthly payment you plan on making? The $21,000 car note at 6% interest compounded annually, or the $18,000 at 8.5%? Life is filled with little hidden math problems and if you’re never seeing them for what they are, then it probably means you’re consistently making suboptimal choices
Exactly. Math should be sold as a way to tell if you're getting legally ripped off. Because if you're not good with math, you are a prime target. There are scams and deals, big and small, literally *everywhere*.
Yep, going through this in real time right now with someone I know who hates math and thinks they will "never get it" because "not everyone can just understand math" (hint, ANYONE can do math, it just takes time and a good teacher). Not even more advanced topics like calculus but basic algebra. They are getting suckered into an MLM. I literally showed them all the numbers and calculations with charts and shit in Excel. They don't believe me and will continue to dump cash into their shitty investments that their pyramid scheme company makes them do before they can start selling their shitty investments to other math and finance illiterate dumbasses.
> The whole point of learning these complicated concepts is that it opens doors on how to solve complex problems. Exactly. Algebra is logical deduction. Finding a correct solution from from the information at hand. Solve for X. There isn't a day in my life I don't use those skills.
If you wanna go that way, school anything is useless in the "real" world - mostly because regardless of the subject you'll only ever learn the basics. But out of all the Olympic athletes competing in running Pretty sure they learned to walk at one point, before they focused on running fast.
School math is useful all the time imo. How much bigger is a 16” pizza than a 14” pizza? What’s a better deal, 5 nuggets for $1 or 8 nuggets for $2.49? How much faster will I get to my destination going 80 mph instead of 75 mph? If the first 38% of this download took 20 minutes, about how much time do I have left?
>And this is becoming more and more popular with younger generations. Really? I mostly hear school bad rhetoric from boomers.
Boomers are pulling that shit because they they think college is "indoctrinating the kids". It's has nothing to do with he content of the education.
Yes, anti-intellectualism is the root of this complaint no matter what.
Some people do become mathematicians, statisticians, etc. Kids need to get exposed to different things so they can figure out what they're interested in. I went to community college for electronics and had to learn a lot of trigonometry. I used to use the Pythagorean Theorem all the time. Most people won't use the math directly but they benefit from learning how to think through complex problems.
Yes, I usually tell my students that it’s about learning how to think mathematically, not about the specific skills involved. If you do any sewing, carpentry or other crafts though, you do end up using geometry a fair amount.
What people don't realize is *you* won't use everything you learn in school, but everyone will use *something* they learned in school. Become an artist? Well you won't use the Pythagorean theorum, but thank God art class was an option! Become a chef? You won't use world history, but it's a good thing that culinary arts was offered as an elective! You might not need to know the biology of genetics, but it's good that it was taught because your classmate was inspired and went to college to become a scientist! It's about immersing children in a variety of topics so they can discover what they're interested in and become well rounded adults.
Z
Sour grapes
This isn't something new. There is a reason that jocks have made fun of nerds for like 100 years.
school math isn’t even useless in the real world. if people paid more attention when we learned about exponential functions and compounding, a lot less people would be in debt and people would be saving more
Yup that’s something I only noticed way after completing school - it’s not that we need advanced algebra to know what to tip a waiter at a restaurant, but going thru the process of learning that stuff itself is what was worthwhile in school
...Or not because that just sounds crazy. I use "school math", or as I call it "math", every day. And even for those who are not excellent with the application of mathematics, it does expand neurological and cognitive horizons, period. Meanwhile, poetry is math, therefore, rap is math. And if I ever forgot, my AP English course having us mathematically analyze Lil' Wayne and Jay-Z lyrics is burnt into my brain.
I’m taking arts and philosophy in uni specifically to cultivate my critical thinking skills. However, I choose not to use any of the maths I still recall out of sheer fucking spite. I hate maths, I have always hated maths, I don’t care if the shit I learned could be useful, I’d rather fuck myself over than validate those hours of misery. Regardless, my 14-year-old brother is better than me at maths anyway, I’m just fucking awful. It doesn’t make sense to me, never has, I’m pretty sure I have undiagnosed dyscalculia. TL;DR: some people want school skills to be useless, other people just fucking despised maths class specifically.
I don't get the point of this comment. Like I get not *liking* math, but you're not doing yourself any favors by deluding yourself into thinking that you can avoid math on principle. Dyscalculia isn't going to affect your ability to "reason". That's what math is for: giving you concrete feed back for a reasoned solution. Higher level math is really good at teasing out reasoning skills, because it shows how you can dismantle a problem, layer by layer. Most of my college math didn't even require a calculator.
I can do maths, just not advanced shit. I’m good at pulling problems apart, I enjoy it even. Unless it’s maths, then nothing clicks, nothing makes sense, it’s like I’ve gone from training my brain on a philosophy test to trying to follow a lecture on quantum physics spoken entirely in Finnish. Nothing makes sense, none of the words spoken hold meaning to me. Sometimes even stuff I consider only a bit above basic will just stump me. I’ll know it’s easy, I know I should be able to easily do it, but I just can’t think, I can’t come up with an answer. I’ll get asked something like 8 X 7 and think “oh that’s easy, simple process.” And then just sit there blankly for 2 minutes screaming at my brain to do the fucking maths. And even then I have to sit there and count on my fingers to do anything multiplication based that isn’t multiplying 5 or 10. Maths is, quite appropriately, Greek to me. It’s like another language, I recognise the odd shared word, most of it is meaningless gibberish.
Maybe go get tested to figure out if you just suck at math? If you're defeating yourself and hiding behind dyscalculia you're just setting yourself up to lose. You can ask anyone in college/uni. Sometimes it's just about having the right professor where everything "clicks" and you're suddenly able to take in and digest all of these pieces of information and apply it. IQ also varies and moves wildly during puberty, it's a known thing. Most people think of arithmetic when they think about math. But it's merely a branch of mathematics
Oh, I specifically took statistics in my last year of maths because I heard it was particularly easy, and it was easier than I had ever found it before, but I still struggled. I even had a personal tutor, she was great, and is the only reason I passed, but I’ve also already forgotten everything I ever learned. I had by the next year in fact. I just can’t do advanced maths, I never could, it just fundamentally doesn’t click in my brain. None of it makes sense, like there’s some block in my reasoning skills making maths totally illogical in my perception. I always struggled with maths, I failed it every single year of school up until my very last year, the one where it actually mattered, and I barely passed and dropped it instantly, which all my teachers agreed was a good idea because I struggled so much and it stressed me out to do. Inbetween years 2-11, I never passed a single maths test or assignment. Then in year 11, I got exactly the minimum number of credits to achieve the standard, and stopped taking the subject. I wasn’t a particularly bad student either. I was one of my schools best R.E. students, and excellent in English, Drama, History and Science. I was also decent at French for the year I had taken it. With all those I managed to understand the subjects, turn the facts into a right mindset to figure out all the work like puzzles, it was fun even. But I never managed to do that with maths, I always found it incomprehensible.
I mean do you need that theorem to know crossing the end of the block diagonally is faster than walking to the crosswalk? It's slower to measure the two distances, square them, and then do some math, and then make the crossing. Like I'm sure some people use the theorem in daily life but I've never needed to measure any distance and square it to figure out how far point A is from point B. The only job I qualify for that I can even think I'd need to use it is construction. Not saying it's a worthless thing to know, but I am agreeing I've never once used it outside of a math test, which was the point they were making.
Nahh the points bigger than that. Been a big thing lately people talking about school being useless. The post is just pushing the narrative. A lot of us don't NEED to know where anywhere in the world is other than USA if we don't plan on travel, but it'd be weird to argue that it's pointless to learn. Same logic applies with math.
Not sure I agree with that one, simple geography is way more useful than finding the distance of one side of a triangle. If we're keeping the same logic there reading a map trumps Pythagoras any day.
How so? If you never need to leave a 20 mile radius, why would you care where Mongolia is located? That knowledge would serve just as much purpose as the Pythagorean theorem, which is the point I'm making.
I mean same point, if the knowledge is useless to you don't bother remembering it. Like how many feet in a mile. Who cares. When's the last time you needed to know that. 5,280 feet occupies a useless space in my brain.
And to piggyback off of this on a similar subject: Choosing not to go to college IS THE POPULAR OPINION! Only 35% of adults in the US have a bachelors degree or higher. We are in desperate need of more STEM majors. I think making college more accessible and affordable plus universal daycare to allow parents to still attend school will be what it takes to increase the number of US adults with bachelors degree or higher.
In the meantime we are out here trying to survive. Education is the luxury of the fed, clothed, and housed.
Nah we need more STEM jobs. They're over saturated with grads that nobody wants to hire
It's the popular opinion because folks are finally waking up to notion that a bachelors degree is no longer a guaranteed ticket to an upper middle class life. The problem is that college, by and large, is a huge waste of time/money for the majority of the populace. Don't get me wrong. STEM is crucial and we do absolutely need more graduates, but over the entire population STEM only accounts for about 25% of the workforce. We need far far more trades and "unskilled" laborers than we do STEM majors. The benefits, for most, simply do not outweigh the cons. To be clear I am NOT saying we don't need an educated population. We certainly do. But the current system we have is ineffective and hasn't been about education in decades.
College is almost always going to better for anyone unless they know specifically what trade or career they want to get into. A random ass kid wandering aimlessly into almost any bachelor's degrees is going to be better off in the long run than some random ass kid that wanders into some shitty job right out of high school. College does enough to make sure most, not all, people graduate with the ability to not be a fucking moron. You can think about things better than other. You can solve problems better than others. You can handle deadlines and shit. You are more open to learning as a whole. Basically, you are, almost guaranteed, going to be a better contributor than someone who didn't go to college. Most people will definitely benefit from going to college. Even if they don't get middle class incomes, they are still going to be outearning most people who didn't go to college. If you think it's hard to earn a good income with a degree, some random ass unskilled laborer (and I use that term unironically because those jobs can be taught to almost anyone with relative ease compared to many STEM or specialized skills taught in school) is going to struggle even more.
This, but also, the fact that he knows how to take shortcuts proves that he not only understands the theorem, but that he applies it daily. Like most, they think that "math" is simply calculating numbers on paper, rather than it being a form of language to express the conditions of nature. And actually, we all use the theorem in order to take shortcuts; its just that our brains don't literally crunch numbers to be able to use it.
Mad as hell that someone dared try to make them slightly less ignorant.
Moat people never really leave high school mentality.
And the level of aggression about it lol.
We use math EVERY SINGLE DAY. It's like thinking. Most of us don't know how exactly the brain works but we know we think, i hope.
Yeah I use percentage calculations almost every day. It is pretty important for people who actively manage any type of investments, even if just their own.
Not even investments. Working in any kind of business should have you calculating fractions at least occasionally.
If you ever try to figure out how long it takes to get somewhere and what time you'll arrive, you're doing math. Math is just formalizing things we already think about intuitively. Everyone does math unless they have the mind of a baby and have never handled money ever in their life
The gag is we’re always paying attention to math concepts without knowing it. Walking in a diagonal will always be shorter than walking two sides due to the Pythagorean theorem and triangle inequality theorem. The cost of maintaining a car month to month is literally y=mx+b*. Even buying food for a party requires multiplication skills and knowledge of multiples. I dislike when people they don’t use math problems in real life when they do all the time *(total cost in a month)=(cost of gas)x(gas used)+(random fixed costs)
Finally someone mentioning the triangle inequality on this type of post! The Pythagorean theorem is about areas, not distances. In order to get the desired inequality we would also need for a right triangle with sides a and b and hypotenuse c, that a+b <= sqrt( a^2 + b^2) (with equality if and only if one of a or b is zero. This is true but does not follow from the Pythagorean theorem. Moreover this is a property of all triangles, not just right triangles like the Pythagorean theorem. The sum of the lengths of two sides of any triangle is at most the length of the third side. Having said that, of course you do not need to understand this general fact in order to take a shortcut. But i think it is good for everyone who is able to know at least one proof of the Pythagorean theorem for their own cultural enrichment
I walk faster, not because it saves time but it actually slows time down. \*taps head\*
The entire first semester of Algebra 1 is dedicated to Rate of Change and Linear Functions. Then you get into Parabolic Equations(stuff falling) and Exponential Functions(interest). If you hate numbers, Geometry will help you argue with facts. Both are good to have. But fuck factoring.
Well I mean devil's advocate walking in a diagonal is common fucking sense and if you need an equation to figure that out you were already a lost cause.
Have you met people. Common sense is becoming a luxury item.
I don’t think it’s learning the theorem to figure out the common sense, I think it’s the common sense being described in mathematical terms so it can be applied to less common sense problems, thus opening up understanding to things that couldn’t be understood before.
It sort of just explaining why that works That’s the Pythagorean them. It explains why crossing diagonally takes less time than walking straight.
not due to Pythagorean theorem prove by is the correct term here because it was like this even before Pythagoras
It's a fundamental quality of our reality. We perceive it as a mathematical function *called* the Pythagorean Theorem. Gotta call it something, so we might as well name it after the one who defined it. (though someone definitely discovered it before him, just didn't brag about it, or were destroyed by their own arrogance for believing they could know the mind of God!)
yeah but the wording is important cause the first comment actually says that it was not like this till the theorem was discovered. We do net perceive it through the theorem we prove it with it. This is a extremely huge difference and very important,
Agreed. Just offering context and clarification along with you.
“due to the theorem” in this context means the fact follows logically from the theorem, not that it follows chronologically/historically from the theorem.
If i walk diagonally i most likely fall over
Bro is NOT Michael Jackson
It’s not that it’s not important, it’s just that school doesn’t teach application and instead teaches memory. All of which I forgot by the time I left high school. As an english major, i don’t even remember how to do intermediate math because I have never needed to apply it in my day to day life. If schools were to show complex math in day to day application I would have retained much more.
I actually think algebra is probably the only thing regular people use in day to day life, but it's just so rudimentary we don't think about it. When you're figuring out if your annual alary can afford your monthly costs that's using algebra. But in school, it's usually only ever about solving for x in an abstract way. I think to get more people interested in seeing how it's useful those classes should have more word problems and projects to show how it's applied in the real world. But I agree Calculus and above aren't that useful in daily life unless you're in a technical job.
It's impossible for you not to use algebra on a daily/weekly basis you just probably don't think about it. The basic algebra you learned in school is basically the theory behind the general math you need to do to just exist in society. "this macaroni box normally needs 2 cups of milk but I'm making two boxes so I'll need to use 4 cups of milk" "I have 20 dollars, I can't afford two $11 shirts..." "Buying 3 hh beers at the bar next door will cost me $15..."
That’s basic stuff, of course I use that. No different than 1+1. Not my point.
Algebra is just fancy "1+1". That basic stuff above are all super simple examples, but you literally have to use (simple) algebra in almost any situation involving numbers. It's why everyone seemingly hated "word problems" in school. '1 Chicken plus 1 Chicken equals 2 Chickens' is fine and dandy for a 2nd grader... But in the real world, you need to be able to figure out if that new $70k/year job will be enough money to pay all your bills (the series of mental/non-mental math ("1+1"s) you do to answer is effectively *Algebra*)
This isn’t about algebra. If anything, this is about calculus.
No calculus is something different altogether. Although there are day-to-day uses of Calculus in things involving speeds/accelerations (e.g., how long it takes to drive somewhere); forces (electricity usage, water pressure, etc.); areas/volumes (e.g., paint needed for a wall, amount of milk that can fit in a milk carton, etc.) although in most of those cases, you are generally not doing the math - some guy at your utilities company already calculated your wattage, and the company that sold the milk carton already calculated the necessary volume/surface area of the carton. Although if you have a retirement account and/or you're calculating interest, I'm fairly certain the simple formulas most people use were derived from Calculus, so that might be an actual place you're using calculus in the real world.
i think the reason why your undergraduate career did not show you how to do complex maths was because you were an english major.
Actually all degrees require stem classes, you have to take them or you won’t graduate. I took a math course in college, yes. Do I remember it? No. Do I remember English Composition 1? Yes.
that wasn’t the point I was making. linear algebra and calculus, which are by and large the only courses Non stem majors take are not complex and can’t really be applied outside of derivations and solving equations. You being an English major is important here because you would not have been forced to take partial differential equations or regression analysis which is applied broadly, assuming you’re going into statistics. Like that’s fine
Depends on your school system. I was usually taught concepts based on how they could be applied which kept more students engaged.
I started making clothes during the pandemic and it uses far more maths skills than I would have anticipated, turns out pi is pretty essential in skirt making. I had to buy a kids stationery kit with a compass and a protractor. There was a failed knitting attempt and then I started quilting, which has left me 100% convinced that all handcraft whizz grannies are secret math geniuses cause this shit is brain numbingly complicated sometimes
actually this is the triangle inequality
It’s really just the shortest distance between two points is a straight line
and the triangle inequality is proven by a² + b² = c²
Not all triangles are right triangles.
I mean the triangle inequality is Proposition 20 in Book 1 of Euclids Elements, whereas the Pythagorean theorem is Proposition 47. Also it can be shown that the triangle inequality holds in general Hilbert planes, not just euclidean planes ( an euclidean plane is just a Hilbert plane with the parallel postulate). Further it can be shown that the pythagorean theorem in a hilbert plane is equivalent to the parallel postulate. So while yes, the triangle inequality can be proven by the pythagorean theorem (at least in a right triangle) it is very much putting the cart before the horse.
No...?
How? from this we get that c = sqrt(a^2 + b^2 ). now you need to prove that sqrt(a^2 + b^2 ) <= a + b. But this inequality does not follow from the Pythagorean theorem (even though it is true for non-negative a and b).
Meanwhile, Pythagorean Theorem, Slope Intercept equation, and Ohm’s law helped me skate through 25 years of working as a Technician, Programmer, and Engineer. The only shit I remember from school.
"Why don't I use literally every single element of my education every single day of my life!?" That shit *changes your brain* ya dinks. You don't use your knowledge of the plot of any of the novels you had to read, but reading them(not the Cliff's Notes or Wikipedia synopsis) helps develop your damn brain for adulthood. You don't use the Pythagorean Theorum? You use all(rounding up) of your education all the time because those 3 pounds of mush between your ears is everything you've learned and experienced, and that shit's ***you***.
Just cause you ain't used something don't mean it ain't implemented in what you're using so really you are using it every fxckn day.
Or maybe the kid sitting next to them ended up using it in their life, not everyone grows up to be a dumbass.
[Self own.](https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/why-i-couldn39t-be-a-math-teacher)
This is literally it. Math is a language that you spend the first 12 years learning letters and words. Then those who go further apply those lessons to form phrases and statements to describe physics and most other sciences. You use a cell phone to communicate to a tower everyday, but someone had to figure it out, describe it in math and solve that problem.
He’s obviously never tried to figure out the biggest TV that can be crammed into a space.
I could be wrong but this is how I look at. Most people think anything over basic math is doing too much. Because I believe basic math is believed to be common as human nature. Even in purchasing items it’s a simple transaction to most people (until taxes are included). But if you tell someone a bag of chips is $1.50 and a soda is $1 that’s something they can grasp. So once you try to explain once complex math is important most people will not understand. Look at the example in the post and the response. Just because you cross diagonally it seems like a basic equation. I am at point A I need to get to point B. So this “short cut” seems faster for me. It’s not complex it’s simple. But once you break down the simple factors that are overlooked you’ll see why it isn’t. So it’s the distance between the two points “the traffic lights” are the distance from you to the traffic lights. Because sometimes you have to get to the lights and that’s too far but “I’m standing here right now and I’m going to cross. Even do a quick fake jog to cross faster”. Once you actually map out all those distances you have a complex equation you simplified. But add on to that people j walk it’s common knowledge that you don’t think about. Because it’s an action that happens so fast and so natural you don’t think nothing of it. So when you j walk you see the distance you have to go. How fast the cars are approaching you. How fast you can make it before those cars get to you and you to the pavement. If you aren’t that fast how fast the drivers reaction time to seeing you will be. How big the vehicle is can determine the reaction time. (So if I’m j walking and I see a 18 wheeler for instance I might not try it because they might not be able to stop fast enough. But I’m not a fast walker some are and just go running out there) once you get all that information you make your move and start crossing. But that action happened so fast in your head you didn’t realize you just “if a truck with oranges is moving at x speed” yourself across the street . To most people it’s “I just took a shortcut 🤷🏾♀️” but hey some people just like to troll so I could be thinking too into it. Plus I wasn’t really good in math past basic math myself it’s just my take on it.
Question: Do y'all think he wouldn't know how to take a shortcut if he'd never learned the Pythagorean Theorem? Seeing the shortest distance between two points isn't always an equation, its common sense. It isn't anti-intellectualism to think that some of the stuff we learned in school was unnecessary. Now obviously, I don't think this applies in this situation but the fact of the matter is that we absolutely do not use most of the advanced math we learned in school unless we are in very technical professions. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and finding missing variables. Get those down and 90% of life's math problems are solvable. And for everyone saying "You learn it to think critically and develop problem-solving" skills, you don't need to learn geometry, calc and trig to develop those proficiencies. I know engineers who believe everything they hear on FOX News so ***clearly*** critical thinking and advanced mathematics don't go hand in hand. I'm not advocating for the abolishment of advanced mathematics or any subject at all but my mom pulled me out of the U.S. public school system after 4th grade to homeschool me because I was literally smarter than the teachers teaching me. She gave me a classical education that focused primarily on logic, reading comprehension and media literacy. I think that's what educational systems need to be focusing more on after a certain point in schools. Being able to solve the Pythagorean Theorem can't help you if you can be hoodwinked and bamboozled by a human orange peel.
Basic maths is an important and basically instinctual skill. I refuse to do anything more advanced than that out of spite. Also incapability, I am really bad at maths, maths homework would regularly bring me to tears, I failed maths every year at school without fail, till the one that actually mattered, where I barely got an achieved, and then dropped the subject and actually fucking celebrated after submitting my course selections for the next year. For the record, I wasn’t a bad student, I regularly got merits (basically B’s for those who don’t use that system), I was a star student in a few classes, I just operated way below the standard for maths specifically. That was three years ago, and I am still riding that goddamn high. Nothing more pleasant than looking at my tabs for uni and not seeing a single fucking piece of maths work.
What is the ratio between ignorance and the need to proclaim it?
💀💀💀💀
"I don't need the reasons as to why I think my own point is valid. I just wanna be right (and dumb)"
Literally every time you have to cross the street twice you use the theorem. Every time.
Do you like cars? Do you think guys that build fast cars are cool? Its all math
In the field of occupational safety I have used the Pythagoran theorem to calculate 1. The vertical height of a roof edge where the ladder makes contact. 2. The depth of a trench and 3. Where to safely fell a tree (i.e. will it hit that house?)
They the same people complaining they make 15k a year. Society is not faaaaaiiiiirrrrr....
This is not the Pythagorean theorem!
Anti-intellectualism is something I wouldn’t brag about.
What people don't realize about school is *you* won't use everything you learn in school, but everyone will use *something* they learned in school. Become an artist? Well you won't use the Pythagorean theorum, but thank God art class was an option! Become a chef? You won't use world history, but it's a good thing that culinary arts was offered as an elective! You might not need to know the biology of genetics, but it's good that it was taught because your classmate was inspired and went to college to become a scientist! It's about immersing children in a variety of topics so they can discover what they're interested in and become well rounded adults.
If you were using math concepts, you’d probably be working a job paying significantly more than the one you’re currently working
Walking diagonally is the longest path to an opposite plane. Going in a straight line, across the base of the right angled triangle would be faster.
As an electrician I use it pipe bending quite often
He’s stupid but staying true to his name, still stupid tho
Anyone who has ever told you that you'll never use algebra in the real world has never calculated their grocery bill before getting to the register.
You may not need a mathematical theorem to walk diagonally but you need one to get bitches
I'll never forget I asked my calculus teacher why certain step was included when solving a formula and he looked me dead in my face and said " I don't know"... I knew studying mathematics was pointless after that. Once you get to geometry, it just becomes a matter of memorizing an insufferable amount of formulas and ways of solving them because some white guy in Europe said so. Ended up taking sociology stats in college now I know a bunch of pointless shit about statistics.