Thank you Whaterverist for giving me something to ponder today.
I took math from algebra and geometry through trig, but not into calculus. We also did some computer programing in basic which was cutting edge back in the late 70s. I did reasonably well, except that as anyone paying attention to my proofing skills has probably guessed, I'm medium dyslexic and accurate simple addition and subtraction was the hardest part for me. The concepts were a breeze. And please don't boo me but I liked story problems. I really loved geometry proofs too. Puzzles for homework! Yay!
But I agree that I've had little use for math beyond addition and subtraction in college, law school, or daily life. I used trig once in the 30 years since I learned it for quilting designs and once to figure out how tall a tree was in our back yard. I've caclulatedted volume regularly for bark dust and stuff, but it's just arithmetic. English, history, civics, geography, science and even shop, have served me much better. They're also continuing interests whereas math is not, though I've enjoyed some books like 1, 2, 3, Infinity, The History of Pi, and Innumeracy.
However, math does teach a kind of thinking, that I think is important to learn. It also teaches precision which I was certainly in need of. I think there is real value in learning different ways of thinking. It's one of the reasons I think at least one foreign language should be a high school requirement (I really suck at languages except in writing---I have a tin ear).
The one suggestion in the video that I really liked was teaching logic. Logic, I took in both high school (we were spoiled it was an elective) and again in college. That I use daily.
Could we compromise and leave off math except for the science bound at algebra or geometry and teach logic instead of calc and trig? Statistics would be useful. That I didn't get til college, but I use the knowledge reading the news daily.
I took math from algebra and geometry through trig, but not into calculus. We also did some computer programing in basic which was cutting edge back in the late 70s. I did reasonably well, except that as anyone paying attention to my proofing skills has probably guessed, I'm medium dyslexic and accurate simple addition and subtraction was the hardest part for me. The concepts were a breeze. And please don't boo me but I liked story problems. I really loved geometry proofs too. Puzzles for homework! Yay!
But I agree that I've had little use for math beyond addition and subtraction in college, law school, or daily life. I used trig once in the 30 years since I learned it for quilting designs and once to figure out how tall a tree was in our back yard. I've caclulatedted volume regularly for bark dust and stuff, but it's just arithmetic. English, history, civics, geography, science and even shop, have served me much better. They're also continuing interests whereas math is not, though I've enjoyed some books like 1, 2, 3, Infinity, The History of Pi, and Innumeracy.
However, math does teach a kind of thinking, that I think is important to learn. It also teaches precision which I was certainly in need of. I think there is real value in learning different ways of thinking. It's one of the reasons I think at least one foreign language should be a high school requirement (I really suck at languages except in writing---I have a tin ear).
The one suggestion in the video that I really liked was teaching logic. Logic, I took in both high school (we were spoiled it was an elective) and again in college. That I use daily.
Could we compromise and leave off math except for the science bound at algebra or geometry and teach logic instead of calc and trig? Statistics would be useful. That I didn't get til college, but I use the knowledge reading the news daily.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
