Math(s)

[Morays]

26 minutes ago, Epic Tetus said:

But the reason I quoted you was trig. I feel like a lot of people know the mnemonic 'SOHCAHTOA', but I had a much better one instilled in me at a young age by a pretty odd teacher I had in 7th grade: "Some Old Hippie/Caught Another Hippie/Tripping On Acid". I remember thinking it was hilarious at the time, and then when I took trig again in high school, I was confused why everyone didn't just use the drug related mnemonic.

Completely off topic now, but similarly, my favorite mnemonic for the order of planets in the solar system (MVEMJSUN) is "Mary's 'Virgin' Explanation Made Joseph Suspect Upstairs Neighbor." (courtesy of xkcd.)

[quadfasciata]

10 hours ago, Emery. said:

As others pointed out previously: it's like taking a very rigid fence painting class as an art class. Or caligraphy instead of making sense of the writing. Maybe it was just a too easy class in my case. I was known for multiplying those stupid matrices in my head. The two last years of high school was when it got interesting for me, in the advanced math class, which had some university material already. I could apply it in the advanced physics class, also univeristy level - kinematics (with calculus), oscillations, quantum mechanichs, alternating currents. This is where it gets you to some really not obvious and interesting stuff. 

That makes sense. In my case, I was/am allowed to take classes multiple grades ahead, so that was/is never a problem. I also had/have family that studies these fields, so that made/makes it more intresting for me.

[daveb]

Another thing, as is true with most subjects, teachers can make a huge difference in making learning fun. I had some really good teachers/professors who made various math classes more fun, more interesting, and more relatable. Also had a few teachers who made various subjects I was really interested in tedious.

[nazokashii]

7 hours ago, Emery. said:

@nazokashii I also memorize things better when I know where they come from, and I'm not particularly good at memorizing. The great thing about math is that it makes sense. Unlike a ton of history dates...

  Very true! I mean, I like history in general, but not if it gets reduced to memorization of dates ^^"

 

2 hours ago, daveb said:

Another thing, as is true with most subjects, teachers can make a huge difference in making learning fun. I had some really good teachers/professors who made various math classes more fun, more interesting, and more relatable. Also had a few teachers who made various subjects I was really interested in tedious.

Definitely couldn't agree more. Teachers are incredibly important, and it's a great shame they generally aren't appreciated more I'd say it's one of the most if not the most important professions, usually requiring a long education too, yet in most countries severely underpaid etc 😕

[daveb]

6 minutes ago, nazokashii said:

Teachers are incredibly important, and it's a great shame they generally aren't appreciated more I'd say it's one of the most if not the most important professions, usually requiring a long education too, yet in most countries severely underpaid etc 😕

Absolutely!

[Emery.]

5 hours ago, trifasciata said:

That makes sense. In my case, I was/am allowed to take classes multiple grades ahead, so that was never a problem. I also had/have family that studies these fields, so that makes it more intresting for me.

I wish that was a possibility for me back at school. This is why I picked a high school that offered uni level classes finally. But I really wish I had the possibility earlier.

 

5 hours ago, daveb said:

Another thing, as is true with most subjects, teachers can make a huge difference in making learning fun. I had some really good teachers/professors who made various math classes more fun, more interesting, and more relatable. Also had a few teachers who made various subjects I was really interested in tedious.

I can't remember a teacher who spoiled a subject for me or who was exceptionally bad, but the quality of teaching has a lot of impact. 

[Emery.]

10 hours ago, capytton said:

I'm humble, one is enough. 😅
Idk, I have large knowledge gaps in my native language, Chinese to me is something from another universe.

I learn Japanese and do math

[Guest]

On 5/9/2021 at 4:30 AM, Homer said:

Fuck maths in the butt with a rusty fork.

I couldn't have said that better, unless stated in mathematical terms.

[Unleash the Echidnas]

On 5/10/2021 at 6:08 AM, soychiara said:

(english isn't my first language so idk if I said the right translations hehe, I hope it can be understood)

For some reason it's always law of gravity here instead of gravitation law, but that's it, not that it matters. Law of gravity is kind of a strange way of saying it anyways since the others always seem to get called just electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces. Or electroweak at higher energy levels.

 

I personally consistently have problems with package incompatibilities but the physicists around here seem to use python. Fortran's kind of a curious choice. Among compiled projects I only know one Fortran code that's still under development, the rest are all C++ or C#.

[MarRister]

I've always been had a kind of up and down relationship with maths.

 

In early grade school I hated it because I was (and still am) really horrible at mental math. Once they gave me a calculator I figured out I was actually decent at it.

 

I really enjoyed some areas of math and others not so much. I seem to enjoy it more when it is more integrated in other subjects like biology, chemistry, except physics, fuck physics. It might be interesting but it was always a struggle for me haha. Liked maths up to Grade 9 and then disliked it again, but got by. 

 

Statistics was somewhat hit and miss for me (didn't mind R though). Computer programing could be fun sometimes (though I only did the most basic of things). 

 

I failed Calculus in uni the first time through and struggled quite a bit with it and was very glad to not have to take another math course after that. I was friends with some math majors though and it almost seemed philosophical at higher levels haha. 

 

Now I'm in accounting, and everyone loves to say, "oh, you must be good at math." But really the math I do in accounting is hardly ever complicated and a lot of the time software will do it for you. 

[Zagadka]

Thank the gods for software doing math for us.

 

Random story because reasons... in 7th grade I won a school district math competition, and my reward was a several pound block of solid chocolate, I have no idea who thought that was a good idea, but I was nibbling on that block for over a year. I don't even like chocolate and I'm amazed I still have teeth.

[soychiara]

4 hours ago, Unleash the Echidnas said:

For some reason it's always law of gravity here instead of gravitation law, but that's it, not that it matters.

Oh thanks! I just kind of translated literally haha

 

4 hours ago, Unleash the Echidnas said:

Fortran's kind of a curious choice.

It is, I have a friend in 4th year of computer engineering and he hasn't learned it! But it makes sense I guess, it's a really old language. Later in the year we'll learn Python!

[Emery.]

6 hours ago, soychiara said:

But it makes sense I guess, it's a really old language.

Yeah, Fortran is old. But ut's interesting to learn. I know several schools that teach functional programming early in their CS courses or as programming classes for other majors. 

 

C, C++, Java and Python are the most common choices to teach programming. 

[Tree snake]

I'm not opposed to math. I can enjoy doing it in a quiet environment  but my problem is that I don't really have the patience for it in a professional setting. When math is required of me I get stressed and make stupid errors.

I'm a metallurgist and when I do the thermodynamic and kinetic equations that are just page after page after page of numbers and energies and elements and volumes I thank the gods for ThermoCalc. 

It takes forever to do those equations by hand. 

[Elsin]

I love it and always have. Finished my Mathematics degree in 2014 and towards the end I was quite burned out and tired of it, but still really appreciated parts of it even then. I think a lot of people only think they dislike the subject, while they have only really seen computation and hate that. It's a shame the subject is introduced in such a way because it is a very rich subject. That said I can't think of other ways for it to be introduced and taught to youngsters.

[Homer]

Can't say that the way maths was taught made a difference for me. It's all about being useful. Which, as I stated, for me (higher) maths is not.

[Unleash the Echidnas]

On 5/12/2021 at 6:49 AM, soychiara said:

I just kind of translated literally

How is it called for you? I only know a little Spanish and it's northern hemisphere dialects but gravitation law seems natural to me. Google is giving me ley de la gravitación, though.

 

On 5/12/2021 at 6:49 AM, soychiara said:

But it makes sense I guess, it's a really old language. Later in the year we'll learn Python!

That made me curious, so I looked things up. 1957 for Fortran, 1958 for Lisp, 1964 for BASIC, 1969 for the B-C-C++ lineage (C# in 2000), Pascal 1970, SQL 1974, S-R 1976, Perl 1987, Python 1991, Java and JavaScript 1995.

[Cranston]

I love physics and math and studied both in college, but the way we did math in physics and the way we did it in math weren't the same at all. For example, in physics math, we said things that make math professors very mad, such as "the square root of infinity is infinity" (the math professors would make you use limits, but physics professors don't have time for that). To me that kind of stickler-ness always made math classes annoying and it made me not want to go any farther than Differential Equations. I kind of wish I had gone on to stuff like abstract algebra, though, because things like this are absolutely beautiful: Banach–Tarski paradox - Wikipedia. My favorite classes were Probability (in the math department) and Quantum Physics (which is kinda the physics version of probability). 

[Homer]

Here is a video for you mathematically inclined weirdos

 

 

[quadfasciata]

Has anyone else been dissapointed with Veratasium as of late? I used to really like them because they actually explained things, but lately they just seem like they're spitting off memorised facts. Just me?