Math

[Jake]

People are always so hostile to math.  They rant and rave about how evil it.  You'll never see a math major ranting and raving on literature or the social sciences though.

Not to say that EMD was doing this, but a lot of people do.

One of my best friends at school is a math major. She bitched and moaned about our history class. Fail.

[Nhoj]

     I love math. I find social sciences to be impossibly boring for the most part, though. Funny how that works, isn't it?

Isn't this forum kind of an odd place for you to be posting then?

     Not at all. I got interested in politics exactly because of my love for statistics. Besides, not all social sciences are created equal. I'd rather smash my foot with a hammer than study human geography.

i love statistics, its why i came to this site in the first place for all the elections stats, but im not a fan of math, i also love geography history and social studies. there must be something wrong with me.

[Sensei]

     I love math. I find social sciences to be impossibly boring for the most part, though. Funny how that works, isn't it?

Isn't this forum kind of an odd place for you to be posting then?

     Not at all. I got interested in politics exactly because of my love for statistics. Besides, not all social sciences are created equal. I'd rather smash my foot with a hammer than study human geography.

i love statistics, its why i came to this site in the first place for all the elections stats, but im not a fan of math, i also love geography history and social studies. there must be something wrong with me.

me too. But I suspect that my Social Science interest is based on my memorization skills. For example, I knew all the capitals of the world before I could tie my shoes. (I tied my shoes for the first time at 11, but that's another story altogether.).

[memphis]

I've got no problem with math. It's a hell of a lot more important than reading dusty Victorian novels.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

I wonder if people here realize that mathematicians don't study calculus. They study math far more advanced than calculus.

[ilikeverin]

I wonder if people here realize that mathematicians don't study calculus. They study math far more advanced than calculus.

Yes.  As if it weren't bad enough, you go off and invent even more impractical problems to solve, problems that matter to no one but mathematicians!

Silly math.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

I wonder if people here realize that mathematicians don't study calculus. They study math far more advanced than calculus.

Yes.  As if it weren't bad enough, you go off and invent even more impractical problems to solve, problems that matter to no one but mathematicians!

Silly math.

Yeah, they come up with useless ideas like encryption, error correction, and Fourier transforms.

[bgwah]

Calculus and Statistics were as far as I got. I had terrible teachers, as I'm sure anyone who took their classes would agree, and I think that kind of ruined it for me. I never had any trouble with math before those.

[ilikeverin]

I wonder if people here realize that mathematicians don't study calculus. They study math far more advanced than calculus.

Yes.  As if it weren't bad enough, you go off and invent even more impractical problems to solve, problems that matter to no one but mathematicians!

Silly math.

Yeah, they come up with useless ideas like encryption, error correction, and Fourier transforms.

Blah blah blah.  Come back when you can tell me something about humans rather than formless voids (I had to look up what a Fourier transform was, in any case, and the mathematics behind so-called "error detection" and encryption are useless for everyone but computer scientists who need to program it)

[AndrewTX]

I hated math in school. Trig was always so damn annoying. I swore that I would never do anything that involved numbers, and yet.. for over 6 years I managed an Accounting department. Psh, go figure.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

I wonder if people here realize that mathematicians don't study calculus. They study math far more advanced than calculus.

Yes.  As if it weren't bad enough, you go off and invent even more impractical problems to solve, problems that matter to no one but mathematicians!

Silly math.

Yeah, they come up with useless ideas like encryption, error correction, and Fourier transforms.

Blah blah blah.  Come back when you can tell me something about humans rather than formless voids (I had to look up what a Fourier transform was, in any case, and the mathematics behind so-called "error detection" and encryption are useless for everyone but computer scientists who need to program it)

So advanced math is bad because the average voter doesn't know anything about it? A Fourier transform is a basic useful thing.

[Bono]

I loved math (and still do) up through Geometry.  When it turned more into theory and imaginary numbers and that "f of x" BS I threw in the towel.

Yeah, same here.  I loved algebra because it represented operations that actually happened, and it seemed logical to me.  Geometry was fine too.  Loved stats.  Precalc was pushing it, and by the time I got to calc, I decided that I didn't want to spend an hour a night trying to understand theory stuff that I didn't care about.

This is a key problem in math today. There is just as much application to the real world for calc as there is with alg. However, much of our curriculum seems to be designed to teach people how to be computers, rather than how to use and interpret computers. This changes the direction of the theory taught to the non-major. I'm hoping that as this century unfolds, we recognize this reality.

Precisely. It may be true that calculus has more uses in every day life than any other subject in the realm of math. It's just that these uses are far more obscure and underutilized.

     Calculus is by far my favorite field of math precisely because it is so useful in real world applications. I never really appreciated math until I started studying physics. It's only natural then that I would want to show my appreciation for the area of math that was spawned to help solve the problems that Newton ran into in explaining physical phenomena.

Yea, I don't understand people who say calculus doesn't have any practical applications either--though for me those are in econ rather than physics.


Econ is also still the only way for a mathematician to get a Nobel Prize.

[platypeanArchcow]

Essay #1: http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf
Essay #2: http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html

That's what's wrong with math and English as taught in schools.  There are also things wrong with the social and natural sciences, but slightly less so.