Let me clarify that. You'd still learn "maths", but in the context of a certain career rather than pure theory. So you'd still have a maths grade, as such. Anyways, I'll shut it now.
When I look back at high school, I kick myself. I was talking trigonometry and calculus and crap. I graduated with a 3.7/4 GPA. If I had taken it easy, and took easier math classes, rather than totally useless stuff, I could have actually gotten the good scholarships. I've never needed to find the limit of x as y approached infinity once in my life.
I agree, not just with math but high school in general. If we spent less time having to learn things that our teachers consider interesting versus stuff that is actually useful, our society would be way better off.
This is where Math can hurt. Consider gasoline from the 50's isn't totally chemically the same as those of today. Today's gasoline is more expensive to manufacture since all the new additives are included, and further refined. Oh-No, what could have driven up the manufacturing costs, and regulations. I'm going back to my finger-paint. Math is bad! tom
Common sense math is something they don't teach in school either. there should be a mandatory "how to not get screwed by deceptive ads class"
Good point. I dunno how much those factor in, but if you take the same gas from the 50's to today, the point remains
Well point understood. I'm glad no one mandated to help the farmers by making us use "milk-powered" engines. Cheaper to drink Gas than Milk, and might be healthier.
I dujnno if you only study what is 'practical' I guess you will never learn new things and that would be kinda a drag.
See I believed in the opposite. I took as many advanced classes as I could in high school to be better prepared for collge: trig, calc, physics, ect, even taking college trig my junior year of high school. I could definitley tell a difference when I started college. All the classes were a breeze.
I HATE maths. It was my worst subject in school. Even if I see a question like... ''If train B left the station at 16:00 and Train A left at 16:20 and train A was travelling at 24927 mph then...blahblahBLAH'' I panic. Who ever invented math's lessons needs castrating.
I was good at math. I drove my two older sister nuts by starting calculus in high school before they could start it in college. It's fun getting ahead of older siblings in school!
"Did you not go to a real university? Every college I've seen has vastly different mathematical requirements for different types of majors. An English major can generally take something like College Algebra and Trig. A mechanical engineer would have to take 3 semesters of Calculus" Hodgedup Yes, I did go to college and got my degree, and what I said above I feel is true. College actually doesn't have much to do with this discussion, as college offers many courses in math. I was referring specifically to highschool and elementary school. Math needs to be divided earlier on than college. Something is wrong with our society here in the US. How is it India and China graduates hundreds of thousands of engineers while the US only graduates around thirty thousand? I don't like the way they teach math in highschool or college. I feel as if they make it more complicated than it is. This alienates students. I've sat in a classroom and precalc and watched a teacher go through a whole bunch of unnecessary steps to solve a problem. I then went home, sat down, and figured out a simple way to solve it. I believe math is very important for our society. When I was younger I hated it, but when I got in college I respected it. Some of the greatest discoveries in history were made by people good in math, like Tesla, Einstein, Heavyside, and others. I would teach my children math at home or send them to a private school. Advanced math problems would be second nature to them once they graduated from highschool. Mella, I took personal offense to the quote you made above about how people who ever invented math's lessons needs castrating. I understand you not liking math but you realize by the quote you made above you spit in the face of every scientist or mathematician who ever lived, from Paul Erdos to Kurt Godel. The is a bigger difference between these men and the average man than the average man and a monkey. Without them, we would not have all the stuff you take for granted, like cell phones, computers, and other things.
That's a good point. I wonder if pounding over inane trig equations and things like that helped my critical thinking ability later in life. Never really thought about it quite like that. I think a lot of it depends on the teacher, though. I thought calc I was impossible, but I had an awesome teacher for calc II and I understood it. I know I credit my latin classes for helping my vocabulary and understanding of words and all that.