Discussion Forums > The Lounge
Math doesn't suck, you do.
Nikkoru:
--- Quote ---People gladly learn art, music, literature and geography.
--- End quote ---
This is not true. I've known enough people who are fully satisfied with the ugly stick men school of artistic expression, desired fervently to smash their music-class instruments for the catharsis of the act, would sooner self-flagellate than read something long and terse from the literary canon, and can't read a local road map let alone decipher a complex topography.
The reason people complain about math, it's damn boring. It's tedious, repetitive, and if you make a careless error at any point -- it's worthless. Cooking is forgiving. It has movement, smells, textures, tastes, and the allure of creativity. Music captures the imagination, our emotions, our inner being -- creating it or listening to it can drive us into ecstatic bliss or deepest despair. Even if you lack the talent for it, the attraction is plain. Literature? go into an endless stream of different worlds and experience them in the technocolor of your imagination. There are accepted methods to literary criticism, but no absolutes, just an endless stream of arguments and interpretations which change with every reader. Geography? The world is an interesting place, both how it works physically and how it's shaped anthropologically. At any rate, geography is to any significant depth expressed in mathematical terms and equations, relatively complex ones at that.
What you can do with math is remarkable and enthralling, math is just a tool to do more interesting things with -- the actual process of learning and using said tool is deeply and unremittingly tiresome. Showing haughty disdain for anti-intellectuals is natural I suppose, and people should learn and retain the knowledge at least to the level of secondary school maths, but expecting them to like it because it's important to our civilization and more importantly -- because you like it -- is just being supercilious.
I have no practical knowledge of agriculture, in spite of its impossible importance to our civilization and species for the last 10 thousand years, I don't consider this a character flaw. I'm not going to mock farming, but I'm certainly not going to do a couple months hard labour on a farm to familiarize myself with the practice. I have no interest in it, it's difficult, and from my perspective I have better things to do.
Pentium100:
To me math (in general) is boring. I never start solving equations just for the fun of it. I may do it when I need to calculate something (though I would just use WolframAlpha or similar), but doing it by hand is hard, boring and unreliable (simple mistake and most of the work is worthless).
Statistics can be interesting - it is interesting to see patterns emerge from a collection of (real world) measurements.
On the other hand, taking an electronic device apart and learning how it works is really fun and useful (in the future it is easier to repair that class of devices). So is designing and building a new device (even if it involves some math). So is rpairing a broken device and "bringing it back to life".
Hadouken:
I guess I'll be a moron then cuz I loathe math.
Burkingam:
--- Quote from: AceHigh on May 12, 2012, 07:11:34 AM ---Why are there so many morons here? Math is a tool free to be used to solve various problems. Why do people hate a tool that is designed to help us? It makes just as much sense as saying "screwdrivers suck". Well... sure, don't mind me and the fact that even subconsciously you use math to some degree every day.
--- End quote ---
RAmen!!
I personally love math. Always have.
elvikun:
--- Quote from: AceHigh on May 12, 2012, 07:11:34 AM ---Why are there so many morons here? Math is a tool free to be used to solve various problems. Why do people hate a tool that is designed to help us? It makes just as much sense as saying "screwdrivers suck". Well... sure, don't mind me and the fact that even subconsciously you use math to some degree every day.
--- End quote ---
Note, just because something is used or beneficial in a long run doesn't meant it's cool and fun. I mean, those guys riding a big vacuum cleaner, collecting dog shit on the streets are really beneficial and needed, yet I somehow don't think it's fun and you're retarded if you don't like them or collecting dog shit.
But as I pointed out, dislike for math is something caused by the fact some people simply don't like it / find it hard to do combined with the fact (a FACT) that most shools have math teachers who have a knack for being really boring, bad at explaining and / or very forcefull and harsh.
Oh yeah, and going around saying how everyone who dislikes math is moron / ignorant / stupid also helps the cause. It reinforces the stereotype of how people who like math are like and makes people who dislike math offended / hate it more. Win - win, really.
For the record, I don't really have much aginst math. If I disliked something, it's prolly german language. Which by this logic is the very same, but eh.
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