I saw this over at dr stu's blog. I'm with Billy on this one definitely.
{Incidentally dr stu was saying that his daily visitor stats had gone down recently by about 100. If mine did that, I'd be in negative figures. }
But what I was going to say was about maths. Dr stu writes a lot about maths; I don't. I have maths A-level but most days I find it hard to add 7 and 9. In fact i find it hard to add 7 to anything. It's a strange sort of number.
Husband is wont to say, 'Kids today have got it easy with their computers. I had to work everything out with a slide rule.'
I'm only a little bit younger than him but even I didn't have a slide rule. (But perhaps that was for a different subject.) I did, however, have a log book. (I googled that to find an image but had to search again for logarithm book.)
I do not and did not not have the slightest idea what sines or cosines are. I used them in maths (geometry maybe?) but I was following instructions. Do this and you get that. What I got I have no idea. As Billy says in his video, who on earth uses algebra after they leave school? Of course I need to add up and take away, multiply and divide, but I've never reached a point in my day to life where I have to work out the square root of 15a + 3b cubed.
Latin would be more use.
10 comments:
I do use basic algebra a bit in everyday life to figure things out. But maybe not as much as I used to. Mostly, I use a lot of best guess.
Omigosh, I went from that comment to the next blog on my list and found that San was also talking about algebra at A Life With A View . How totally weird is this day going to be?
Like Katney, I do use some basic algebra every once in awhile, but trigonometry (sines & cosines) and calculus have been no use whatsoever. Good thing, since I don't remember any of either. And I do remember using slide rules in school, though I never could get the hang of them!
I was actually quite good at math in school, but it's amazing how quickly you forget something you never have to use. Whenever I have to substitute for a math teacher, I feel totally stupid because I can't remember any of it. And of course the kids don't believe me when I tell them I used to know this, but when you've been out of school for 10+ years you forget it. Or maybe they're just snickering at how old I am:)
Slide rules and log tables? I give thanks for computers! All I've used since university is arithmentic andaome statistical formulae
Actually, many of you may be using algebra on a daily basis! Except that you call it 'Spreadsheets' :-)
Even George secretly does algebra, when he does trajectory-prediction for the sticks and/or balls etc which Liz throws for him, even if he doesn't use symbols, just doggone(sic!) 'intuition' ;-)
@Katney,
thanks for the link to
"A Life with a View", good blog :-)
I won the Math Prize at school for graduating year but I think I just did everything by rote too. I certainly think they teach it in a better way these days but lots of kids still seem to fear it. I won the Latin Prize too so I don't have to regret that.
I have to say I don't hold with the "kids have it easy these days" thoughts. Watching my son I notice that in our day if you had a good crack at the question knew how to look up the log etc. you could pretty much pass the exam on trying but getting each question wrong. Now the assumption is that you have a calculator and therefore you will get the question right and when I see the wall of equations my son has had to learn for his recent maths exams ... bloody hell!!!
However do we teach kids the useful stuff in life? The most useful stuff of Maths is how to add up the shopping etc. I tought my daughter the 17.5% VAT trick just before they changed it which was a bummer... trick was say something is £32 excl VAT - what is the VAT? Easy 10% is £3.20 half that is £1.60 (5%) and half that is £0.80 (2.5%) add them together and VAT is (was) £5.60. Still works just don't have to do the last bit now so 15% is £4.80.
See that's useful maths...
See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/7304645.stm for motivation to improve your maths skills.
I have been searching madly for your algebra post. A while back you came to my blog at Katney's advising and I have been meaning to get over here ever since.
I never had a slide rule either. I thought engineers carried those. Wow, I wonder how my life would have been transformed had I carried a slide rule.
It was fun searching for this post, since I had to read so many others posts to get here. I will add you to my blogroll. Or better yet, since that has gotten unmangeably long, why not come over and click on my Followers widget? That way I can keep up with you. Do you have a Followers widget? I don't see one. Then again, I'm not carrying a slide rule.
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