Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Comments
It's a subject that's taught very, very poorly, and its nature as something sequential means if you get a crap teacher it leaves you floundering for years.
But speaking as someone who's tutored people that insist they're bad at math, and who learned to do so from a teacher that taught AP calculus and remedial algebra and got awesome results from both, I can feel rather comfortable in saying that there aren't a whole lot of people in the world who are actually bad at math.
If you're having trouble, get a tutor. One-on-one time and practice without being left in the dust to fend for yourself work wonders. Try to get one who explains material from several different angles instead of just telling you to memorize arbitrary shit. Pretty much everything in math can be conceived in a whole bunch of different ways, and the main failing of schools in teaching it is that they jump to the one that takes the least effort to describe instead of sitting down and getting into your head long enough to figure out how to describe it to you.
If you ask pretty much anyone who is good at math, they'll probably tell you that they don't think of it in a memorization way (most of them have memory like a sieve in the first place!) and focus more on underlying patterns. Hell, I can count on two hands the number of formulas I've actually memorized over the course of two math-intensive majors. The rest of them, I understand how they work well enough to derive them as needed, and if I use them often enough over the course of a single project they wind up in medium-short-term memory by happenstance and usually empty out when I'm done.
Well, I just need to take this CLEP test, and I'll never have to take another math class again.
I can sympathize with that.My main contention with education outside your focus is that it's just taught so poorly that not much sticks, and when you get to college it's used as an excuse to bloat tuition costs by several times.
Like, most of the classes that they used to hold my degree ransom were things I was totally interested in anyhow -- but the class never got around to learning anything of substance about it, so it was just a complete waste of oxygen and an excuse to grub money.
Possibly.
On a personal level, I kind of failed badly at maths in tenth grade. In ninth grade, I was bounced around between three different math teachers, and thus missed a large portion of what was being taught during that grade. When I moved into tenth grade, we moved on to trigonometry and calculus, and I spent the entirety of tenth grade trying to get my fundamentals up to the point that I could understand what they were saying. (I failed at that, shown by my end-of-year exam where I scored a big 0 on my maths exam.)
There are a whole host of things that can screw over one's understanding of subjects, and they're not always easily repairable gaps in your knowledge. By the time you can fix them, schooling has often already moved on to topics that require you to have that previous knowledge, causing you to have to play catch-up for years.
tl;dr down with symbols and numbers, maths sucks
When I changed school between seventh and eight grade I had to learn algebra at an accelerated pace for my new school was already advanced in them while my previous one wasn't even close. So what I did was burrow the algebra book and read it over in two months. Problem solved.
I don't know about you, but algebra is quite useful in back-calculating affordability of big-ticket deferred-payment items like loans.
Furthermore, having a strong grasp of math makes it far easier to understand how the world works around you, making it easier for you to do everything from organizing resources for large-scale projects (in business or personal affairs) to telling when an unscrupulous salesperson is trying to pull a fast one on you (by being able to process the numbers they give you on the fly).
Here's the thing: Basic reading, writing, and grammar will get you through dealing with people who you are generally familiar with.
However, very often, you'll need to deal with people you're unfamiliar with, and both understand how they think and make them understand you...and do so properly, such as without looking like a doofus.
For that you need a higher degree of language comprehension and understanding concepts like irony, satire, and narrative.
Now, granted, I'm not sure the way to teach this is to make people read Shakespeare. If anything, the biggest reason to read Shakespeare specifically is for cultural familiarity, rather than communication. Though becoming well-versed in some sort of good storytelling is definitely a strong communication skill.
You put this much better than anything I've ever come up with. I've always felt there was an issue here but couldn't quite put my finger on it. Props.
Unfortunately I'm not sure this is something that can be easily taught.
I think a key point about algebra is that algebra enables people to work with conceptual placeholders and thus allows us to deal with situations without complete information, by manipulating the information that we do have so that we find out what we need to know and how to get it.
I wonder if thinking of numbers pictorally might help. Because I noticed that's what I do, and I don't think people generally do that, from my experiences tutoring people.
For example: How much is 98 times 56, roughly? I could sit down with a piece of paper and write it out using long-form multiplication, and that's boring to most people. Instead, I think, 98 is slightly less than 100, so picture a long series of rods (56 of them) each 100 inches long. If you were to shorten each rod by a little bit, you'd get 56 rods each 98 inches long. So the first thing I'd say is that it's slightly less than 5600.
How much less? Well, 98 is 2 less than 100, so 56 98s is 56 2s less than 5600. 56 2s is 2 56es because we can swing them around freely in multiplication (and addition). That's slightly more than 2 50s, or a 100. Taking slightly more than 100 off of 5600 means slightly less than 5500.
And so on. I find using guide numbers like this for arithmetic much easier than cracking open arithmetic tables in my head. They still have their place--especially for precision calculations--but are less useful for ballpark estimates where speed and easiness is key.
This sort of pictoral stuff is really useful for algebra (and even calculus). That's because as I manipulate equations I can imagine stuff being moved around in my head. Subtracting 3x from both sides to get rid of it on one side becomes moving 3x to the other side of the equation and making it negative. Got -(x-y)? The negative sign outside "dissolves" into the (a - b) pattern and reverses that pattern into (y-x).
Stuff like that. After a while you get used to seeing visual patterns. And you'll notice how things that are multiplied/divided "stick together harder" than things that are added/subtracted, because you have to jump through more hoops in order to "unstick" them. And you'll also more easily get used to the fact that x^2 (x squared), because it contains multiplying by a second x, just can't be combined with regular x, when you do quadratic equations.
At least, these are some issues that my tutorees have had, in my experience.
That sounds like something a manager might do.
If you want to move up the ladder, you might need to be able to figure out how to do that.
Math is a toolbox. Unless you're going into studying math, these are going to remain tools--as in, means to ends rather than ends themselves. However, they're extremely useful means.
The reason why people teach graphing is because graphs are used in almost every field to document data and derive trends. Basically they're used to describe how some sort of objective measure of a situation is changing, over time, space, or another variable. Knowing how the graph of a certain set of data looks, and knowing how the math behind that graph works, you can make reasonably good...predictions of the future, pretty much.
This applies to business, engineering, science, policy, architecture, communication, journalism, and much more.
I can attest to this.
Math is about remembering only a rather small set of formulas, and then knowing how to apply them. It's about seeing patterns, and being able to apply the right equation in the right place. At first it seems to be trial and error but once you get the hang of it it's basically like solving little puzzles. So it's all about becoming skilled in something, rather than memorizing a ton of stuff.
In contrast, it seemed to me that biology and chemistry were all about memorizing lots of information. Yes, you could derive trends, but there's a lot more basic information you need to know. You need to remember all the different organelles in a cell, for example, and their functions. Sure, the trends follow from the generic animal and plant cell diagrams, but that's still a lot of information.
And when you get to higher math, such as trigonometry and calculus, you often get formula sheets in tests. Because in real life, people like engineers do in fact carry pocket guides with formulas. So it's not really about memorizing anymore; it's about applying the formulas in the right place at the right time.
Agreed. If anything, memorization is what all those practice problems are for--you shouldn't be memorizing formulas like history facts. You should be getting to know formulas "personally"--the way you'd learn to play a game, for example. You don't check your brain's mental manual for how to cast a magic spell in a game; you just know how to do it because you've done it a lot and know what works and what doesn't.
Holy shit, Bee, you're speaking my mind.
Anyway, Saturn, if you need math help, feel free to ask us.
t;dr words
I'm just going to use this CLEP College Algebra study guide, take the CLEP test and then never have to take another math class again.
i'm sorry i gigantpost -_-
TL;DR:
I'm sorry but I just can't completely agree with number 3, GMH. I mean, it may be true, but other classes I would be good at would be better for that, by just saying that and giving examples. College Algebra did no such thing.
But I am very grateful for everyone's advice and ideas.
OK; let me respond.
When I took my formal examinations for maths in tenth grade (My School Certificate exams), we didn't get a formula sheet. We were expected to have memorized formulas for algebra, calculus and trigonometry. Thankfully, the trigonometry and calculus sections were short, but they were there and were a stumbling block for many students.
This is a skill that can be learned in many ways. Algebra is one way to do it. In high school, we were taught this during science class; we had to figure out what data was missing and how it was necessary to get the information we required, and often we had to either plan around the missing data or find a way to get the missing data ourselves.
On your second paragraph, Nova, what you're still doing is algebra. Any process by which you find unknown values by using known values and a known relationship between values is algebra.
I don't think finding the missing cell in a table (In one case I remember, we were missing the times on a table) counts as algebra at all.
In fact, I'm pretty sure that's not algebra at all.
Edit to clarify: We didn't have to find the times. We had to figure out that it was the times that were missing. It was seventh grade, okay?
You're finding missing values via existing known data and a known relationship. That's algebra, no matter what format is used to express it.
Then I guess I hate the stupid format it is taught to me in.
Finding the missing cell by simply looking through a spreadsheet isn't algebra.
But coming up with a way of dealing with the missing information--how to move forward with it, or how to backsolve for it if you have an answer (if you really need to backsolve, which is not really applicable in this situation) requires algebra concepts.
So does finding the missing cell in a fuckhuge spreadsheet by writing a formula.
If you could give me a reason why I need to know about matrices, vertexes, the quadratic formula and polynomials, etc, then I would be satisfied.
Because those are the simplest equations involving unknown variables we can come up with and if you can't deal with the simple ones like that, how do you expect to deal with the more complicated ones like loan repayment schedules?
No, that's deductive reasoning, which algebra is basically a formalized expression of.
That's a really bad example, simple logic and basic maths skills can cover that.
What Nova said.
So far, all the reasons you can give for learning the things I have to learn can boil down to "Why don't I just stick to the simple logic and basic math skills then?"
Because "simple logic and basic math skills" is exactly what a college algebra class is teaching.
I mean, seriously: If you have $8000 of credit card debt that increases at a rate of 1% per month, and you pay off $100 per month, how long will it be before you no longer have to deal with the constant calls from the debt collectors? Use "simple logic and basic math skills", no algebra.
Well, actually, simple logic and basic math skills are the basis of algebra. It's just that people figured out that they could cut to the chase and not reinvent the wheel by building on structures from basic math and logic to make something else. For example, the idea of noting that instead of figuring out "oh, I have to subtract the height of the table from the height of the tip of the lamp", simply being able to start with "lampheight + tableheight = totalheight" and plugging in the right numbers and manipulating that.
Plus it's far easier to manipulate numbers and variables in a way that's easy to read. Text is hard to read.
Ponicalica, you didn't answer the question. I am okay with that stuff.
I am NOT okay with all the stupid unnecessary parts.
That's not what was taught in algebra class. And by the sounds of it, Saturn's college class isn't teaching him that either.
My two cents:
Learning stuff is only half of what college classes are for. The reason why you are required to take classes outside your focus is to ensure that you're smart and flexible enough to excel outside your comfort zone. Yes, algebra probably won't be relevant to a screenwriter, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that you can pick it up and do good anyway.
Then I guess I don't deserve to excel in life because math and I don't click.
Question: When did you first feel math and you don't click?