The Math Mojo Chronicles » why learn math

Nine Awesome Careers that Use Math

Brian — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 00:19:43 +0000

This is a guest-post. I’ve never had a guest-post on the Math Mojo Chronicles before, but I’m open to anything that fits in with the Math Mojo Manifesto, and had real value for readers. Jeremy Fordham has written just such an article, and I’m happy to present it to you here:

A Look at 9 Awesome Careers that Use Math

Many students have the same question when they have to study math in high school: “When am I going to use this?” The answer to that question is multifaceted. First of all, math is one way that students can learn logic, problem solving and critical thinking skills, which are all extremely important for furthering one’s education, especially if a student is considering getting an advanced degree like an online Ph.D. Second, basic principles of math are important in everyday life, even if it is just as simple as keeping financial records, calculating costs and estimating simple probabilities. Third, and finally, more advanced mathematics can be directly useful in many different careers involving mathematics and science. As such, when determining how their math degree will best serve them, students might want to consider the following nine possibilities.

Computer Scientist

Computer science is a practical field that requires some knowledge of math. In fact, computer programming in general requires the same step-by-step logical thinking involved in mathematics. Some areas of computer science require knowledge of advanced mathematics; and math and computer science are often so integrated that universities combine their math and computer science departments. Computer scientists solve problems, program computers, develop new technology and may work in fields such as robotics and artificial intelligence.

Physicist

Of the “hard sciences,” physics is the most math-heavy. It is often the case that abstract, or “pure” mathematicians will work on an entirely theoretical problem that they think has no real-world application, and it will turn out to have an application later in quantum mechanics or some other field in physics. Physics is a difficult subject, but for those who are interested in the fundamental principles of the universe, being a physicist can be an extremely rewarding career. Physics has both theoretical and applied divisions.

Chemist

Chemists require knowledge of mathematics both for theoretical and research calculations. In chemistry research, different types of mathematics such as statistics, algebra and calculus may be utilized. Students in basic chemistry classes are required to know algebra and basic mathematical operations, but in some areas of chemistry, the mathematical calculations can get much more advanced. Like physicists, chemists can work in the chemical industry as applied chemists or do research as theoretical chemists.

Biologist

The biological sciences are also great career option for those that like math. This is due to the fact that all scientific researchers need to be familiar with statistics, as well as basic math to perform tasks in the laboratory and for biochemical calculations. Likewise, some occupations in biology such as ecology and population genetics have a heavy theoretical foundation in math. Not all fields in biology require the knowledge of advanced math, but this knowledge is beneficial and useful.

Social Scientist

Social scientists and anthropologists study populations of people, their traits and how they interact. All researchers in the social sciences need a solid background in statistics. Statistics help researchers determine whether a trend they are observing is significant or if it is due to chance alone. Believe it or not, this is not easy to determine without using math to account for observer biases. People who do research in psychology also need to know statistics for the same reason.

Medical Professional

Pharmacists, doctors, medical technicians and others in the health care industry are required to understand math. This is incredibly important when calculating dosages for medications and the parameters for the treatment of certain patients. Anesthesiologists, for example, are required to calculate the correct dosages of anesthesia that a patient receives before surgery. Pharmacists are also required to calculate and measure correct dosages of medications. Similarly, people who work in a medical laboratory need to use math during certain lab tests.

Financial Analyst/Business Person

Mathematics is extremely important in the financial world. People with a background in math can work in any field of financial mathematics, from banking to becoming a tax professional on Wall Street. Likewise, people with a background in mathematics are very qualified to run a business or work for a large or small company. Having a degree in math shows that you are capable of logical and critical thinking.

Epidemiologist

People with degrees in math may choose to specialize in statistics or epidemiology. Statisticians are hired to analyze data, and statistics is an important part of any scientific research. Epidemiology is basically statistics as applied to health care. As such, epidemiologists may study outbreaks of infectious diseases, risk factors for certain health conditions or transmission of genetic diseases.

Bioinformatician

A relatively new field that has formed in the past few decades is called bioinformatics . Bioinformatics is basically a combination of the biological sciences, computer science and mathematics. This type of discipline may appeal to someone with a wide variety of scientific interests. People who work in bioinformatics help to develop databases to store biological information and create algorithms to analyze this data. Bioinformatics is, at its heart, a way to make scientific research more efficient and informative. It is useful in many fields, such as genome mapping, protein folding and evolutionary biology.

People who get a degree in math may want to stay within the field of mathematics, as opposed to one of the careers described above. These people may teach in at a high school or college, or they may do mathematics research of their own.

Contrary to popular belief, mathematics is actually a very useful subject. All scientists and businesspeople need to have some degree of mathematical knowledge. Plus, the critical thinking skills learned in solving math problems are applicable in all careers and in everyday life.

Jeremy Fordham, a contributing writer for onlinephdprograms.com, is an engineer who addresses issues at the boundary of many fields with the hope of inspiring dialogue in unique niches. He is an advocate of process optimization and renewable energy.

Why you must understand basic Math

Brian — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 23:48:31 +0000

I hate to use the word “must.” But I’m not using it in a moral sense. It won’t make you bad if you don’t understand math, but it will make you a bit of a retard.

“Now just hold on a cotton-pickin’ minute, Homunculus, who are you calling a retard?”

Fair enough question; let me explain:

If someone doesn’t understand something because he or she hasn’t been taught it, or has a legitimate problem learning it (serious learning impairment that they are trying to overcome, but haven’t succeeded so far), then there should be no stigma whatsoever attached to that. If someone is “mentally retarded” (or whatever is the proper way to label that nowadays), there is no fault attached.

As a matter of fact, I would rather be handicapped in some way, and have the character to work with it, than be “normal,” and be a spoiled little dirtbag.

On the other hand, there is a phenomenon that I call, “self-induced retardation.” This simply means that a person is, in genteel terms, “an assh@le” – someone who is so sure that they are right, but are so wrong, that they are absolutely oblivious to the anything that approaches sense.

The best way for me to illustrate this is with this wonderful video. It shows the absolute denseness of some of the people who take your money and provide you with absolutely dismal service.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The idiots from Verizon have absolutely no excuse for their stupidity, except that it is self-induced. This is not a medical, mental, or other condition. It is a moral problem. They insist that their version of reality is right, and that the poor customer has to pay for it. Retardation is not a moral issue. Self-induced retardation is.

This happens over and over in our society. Do not be like these self-induced retards! Make sure you and your children understand basic math. You can do it. Here is a video that will explain the math behind the problem. You should be able to understand it (you probably do already.)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Have you been faced with idiots like the morons in the video? I have, and it’s often been by “customer service” representatives.

I want to make one more thing perfectly clear: It has never been by foreigners. It has alway been some poorly educated mungbat from my own country, who knows he’s right, because, “my boss said so,” “that’s what I learned,” “Im not a mathematician,” or some other self-induced retarded excuse .

Foreigners who have managed to learn a language other than their own well enough to do customer service are generally smart enough to be able to translate cents and dollars.

What is Math, Really?

Brian — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:45:35 +0000

There is a post about “Why I Love Mathematics” at AnAmazingMind.com . Go there and check it out. It is short, but it is right on target. If you have any lingering doubts about the beauty and fun of math, it should clear them up.

Really. It’s a great article.

Strange Powers – Some Hidden Benefits

Brian — Sun, 11 May 2008 00:05:24 +0000

I know that in the last post I mentioned that it is pretty much impossible to explain to immature minds what the benefits of learning math or any other skill is.

But I assume if your a Math Mojo reader, you have a pretty mature mind. (Cool sentence, eh? I get to flatter both you and me at the same time!)

So here are a few examples of concrete benefits I have gained from using “strange powers of the mind.” These are not necessarily the same benefits you will have. Everyone will experience different benefits. (Mileage may vary.)

In the last post, I mentioned:

“For me, it’s a sort of warm-up exercise to get me into the creative, non-judgemental flow of opening my mind. This helps let answers come to me that my mind would otherwise have blocked out. It makes thinking less of a chore and more of a ‘party in my mind.’”

Write to me, baby

Years ago, when I was going through a rough patch in life, I spoke to a friend from San Francisco on the phone. She told me to try this: Get a pad and a pen, go to a quite place, take a few deep breaths, and write a letter from your “inner child” to yourself, using your non-dominant hand. (Yes, of course she was from San Francisco.)

Actually, the exercise helped. I should do it more often. That was a benefit, but it’s not something I recommend to everyone, because it is a little on the “airy-fairy” side, and I feel silly recommending New Age (rhymes with sewage) stuff to anyone, even when it works. That’s the old skeptic in my magician’s bones at work there.

“Pick a card…”

On a more concrete level, the benefit I got from the exercise was a magic effect. (“Effect” is the preferred word of magicians to “trick.”)

The trick I came up with was this: A spectator is invited on stage, and invited to ask his “inner child” to write, with his non-dominant hand, something on a pad of paper. She’s to close her eyes, take some deep breaths, and begin scribbling with her non-dominant hand on the pad for a minute or two. Not to try to write anything that makes sense, just to regress to her, say, four year-old self (before she learned how to write) and scribble with abandon.

After she does that, she places the pad face down on the table. At this point, she picks a card from a deck of cards, or thinks of a favorite song, the name of a special relative, or something of that nature, that the magician could not possibly know. She is to say it out loud, or not.

Then she is invited to look at what she scribbled. To stare into it deeply, and say anything strange that she notices.

At this point, a typical reaction from the spectator is that she screams. She at least gasps with surprise. When asked what she saw, she says that she saw that she clearly had written what she named.

Considering that at the time she wrote, she had no Idea what she would be asked to think about later, this is an amazing trick.

If I told you, I’d have to kill you

Of course I’m not going to explain how it’s done. (Explanations for magic effects are offered strickly on a need-to-know basis.)

My point is, by simply trying to do something “useless” (writing with my non-dominant hand) I gleaned a benefit that I could never have known I would get. It’s like the trick itself. The spectator does something that seems useless, only to find something amazing about it later.

“… and as you read this, you can relax, and wonder what you will learn…”

That was a paraphrase of one of Milton Erickson’s signature hypnotic induction lines.

Years after I developed the above-mentioned magic effect, I learned that Milton Erickson, the brilliant clinical hypnotist, used something very similar as a therapeutic technique. Naturally, he didn’t use (or even have to use) the “something extra” (read: “trick”) I used to accomplish my effect. His method was much more subtle and effective.

An Unexpected Math Benefit

Very early in my magic career, some time while I was still in high-school, I bought a book which is one of the great classics of magic. It’s called, “Close-Up Card Magic,” by the great Harry Lorayne. Yes, that’s the same Harry who is the guy who kicked off the memory-craze in the seventies with “The Memory Book.”)

In that book, there was an effect by the even greater Dai Vernon, which used a specific magic concept to create an impossible card effect. It was “elegant.” There was no “pick a card,” no perceivable sleight-of-hand moves, nothing suspicious at all. The magic just seemed to “happen.”

The concept depended upon a certain mathematical permutation of order of the cards. There was no “set-up,” or anything like that. It was pure, elegant math. I’d never seen anything like that before. I got totally involved with the concept, not in order to “learn math,” but in order to be able to do this amazing trick.

You can’t stop me, Teach!

Never in my life would I have thought that I would become interested in math for math’s sake. Of course, when I tried to bring this concept up to my high-school algebra teacher, she shrugged it off, because it was not part of the curriculum. She seemed to think that that was not a good enough thing for math to be used for. Fortunately for me my love of magic was strong enough to deflect my teacher’s ignorance of education. I became very good at using the concept of that trick to accomplish many other pretty cool magic effects.

And that lead (albeit very slowly) to my further interest in arcane math concepts to achieve seemingly impossible feats. (Someday I’ll have to write another book for magicians about this.)

So what’s the point? The point is, you could have never convinced me, at say, sixteen, that I’d ever need math for doing what I was interested in then. But if a teenage magician can end up using math for something that means so much for him, there’s obviously no telling what you could put math (or some other skill) to use for you to accomplish.

Math is an adventure. Math isn’t a test, it’s not about competition, it opens many possibilities that you never would have dreamed of before, and once those possibilities are opened, your life becomes even more of an adventure.

Work on some strange powers today. Warm up with some non-dominant-handed scribbling, then maybe open some math book that you’ve been avoiding, and try some examples. Better yet, hie thee to a bookstore and play around in the math section. Look for non-textbooks. Here are some names of authors to look for:

Martin Gardner
Ivars Peterson
John Allen Paulos
Keith Devlin
John Conway
Lancelot Hogben
Theoni Pappas
Isaac Asimov

Not necessarily in that order.

That should keep you busy till next time.

Hotcha!

snlnɔunɯoɥ ɹossǝɟoɹd

Why Write Backwards?

Brian — Fri, 09 May 2008 12:22:08 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

What the heck does writing backwards have to do with math?
For me, it’s a sort of warm-up exercise to get me into the creative, non-judgemental flow of opening my mind. This helps let answers come to me that my mind would otherwise have blocked out. It makes thinking less of a chore and more of a “party in my mind.”

Have you ever wanted to jog, but were too lazy to get going on your daily run? But if you suit up, and start stretching, all of a sudden it becomes a “given” that you are going to run. You look forward to it. You can’t wait to get the stretching over and get running.

That’s what backwards writing can be like. It’s not something that you have to be good at. You can just write a word forwards, and then next to it or beneath it, try writing it backwards. Try it. It doesn’t have to look good. Nobody gets graded on how they write backwards.

By the way, this exercise will also improve your penmanship. I know that in this century penmanship is a lost art (so is being able to calculate in your head, or memorization skills; pretty soon even typing will be a lost art when voice-recognition software develops further) but it shouldn’t be. It has been part of being human for thousands of years. It is a great hand-eye coordination developing skill.

Use it or lose it

People who cannot write in cursive, or do not use it daily, do not develop other skills as easily. Same with calculating or reading daily. If you don’t read, you don’t practice comprehending new information actively. It’s not the same as watching YouTube. If you don’t keep up with your reading, it’s a skill you can lose after awhile.

In my own life, I’ve noticed that I’ve not read for “pleasure” for many years. I used to read like crazy. Sometimes I read a book a day. Then, about nine years ago I got into math and computers, and I have barely read five novels since then. As I thought about that while I wrote the last post, I realized how much I’ve been missing. It was a great relaxer and a great mind-stretcher. So I’ve decided to cut back my TV watching to maybe fifteen minutes a day, plus “The Daily Show.” The other hour or so I might have spent watching some crap, will be used to read. At the moment, I’m on Dashiell Hammett’s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashiell_Hammett “The Red Harvest.” I’m so glad I started reading again. Hammett is amazing. He sure beats watching “SVU” re-runs.

Back to writing backwards:

In our “immediate gratification” culture, people (children, or immature people, mostly) tend to ask, “What good is it for?” That is a question that presumes many things. It presumes that if you can’t read the future and say exactly what it’s good for, it has no value. What a stupid Idea that is.

The question is a trap. It is not an honest question. No one can ever know what good learning a general skill might be for. It would be like a baby asking, “Why do I have to put the effort into learning to walk? This crawling thing has been working well enough for me so far.”

How can you explain to a baby what walking might be good for? He doesn’t know any of the things he might want to do with it someday. You could explain that he could use it to walk to his friend’s house and play with him. But he’d think, “Bullcrap! You can just drive me to the play-date (god, is that a distasteful word!) like you always do!”

If you told a baby he could use it to walk to the store to buy an X-box, he’d think, “Why is this adult trying to feed me this bullcrap again? I don’t know what a store is, and I don’t know what an x-Box is. Why should I spend any time or effort learning how to walk for that? What a bullcrap reason.”

So when you try to tell a teenager “why” he should learn math, how to do a weird skill, etc., you’re up against the same thing. “Why should I learn that? I’ll never need it.” If you try to answer that with specifics, you’ll get the same baby-answers.

For example, if you say, “Well, it will help you get a good job.” They’ll come up with all the things they want to do in the future, none of them having anything to do with math (at least in their minds). Like, “But I’m going to be a professional skateboarder, man!” Or, “I’m going to be a writer, I don’t need that.”

If you are an adult reading this, you know all the reasons that the above examples are silly, immature rationalizing. But you didn’t understand that when you were a teenager, either (I know I didn’t). So why would we expect little Johnny Rotten to understand that, either?

Notice how no child who wants a bicycle or an X-box would ever put up with a parent asking him/her, “What good is it for?” So when a child asks, “What good is it for, and demands an answer, don’t feel like you own the child a direct answer. It is like one of those questions that a Zen master might answer with, “MU!” (loosly, “Un-ask the question.”)

The only way to get them to appreciate any of the values of math, strange skills, classical knowledge, etc, is to get them to experience it for themselves.

What is the value of riding a bike? Sure, you can use a bike to get places, but it is fun to ride for it’s own sake! But you can’t know that until you try it.

So how can you get someone to try it? There are lots of ways, but one of them is to try it yourself, and find enjoyment in it. If you hate math, there is no way you are going to get your child to love it. You must find at least something you like about math that makes your child curious. You can’t force a kid, but you can inspire one. And that inspiration doesn’t come from nagging.

When I was a kid (pleistocene epoch), my parents would nag the hell out of me to do my homework. Yet I never saw them actually study anything. So I never gave any value to it. On the other hand, they both were (and still are) great readers. They were always reading books, talking about books, and I could sense their great enjoyment whenever they were reading. Well, if reading was so much fun, hell, I wanted to do that, too.

My dad built model airplanes. He loves hobbies. Even when I was a toddler I knew that was something I wanted to try. I used to “help” him by handing him parts to the models he was building. I know that bugged the hell out of him, because he probably wanted some “alone time” from the kids when he did his hobbies, but I’m glad he occasionally let me help, because hobbies are a huge, enjoyable part of my life now. I can’t imagine how a person could not enjoy a hobby.

That “meditative state” you enter when you do your hobby, or the “zone” you are in when you do art, sports, music, etc., that is the “what good it’s for.” But you can’t explain that (as evidenced by this post!) You just have to do it, and hope that it will inspire others to try it.

To that end, I’m going to practice some left-handed writing now (I’m right-handed).

Want to join me?

(video of this to be added later today, Thurs., May 9.)
Hoskeebo!

Next post: Some hidden benefits of writing backwards, or with your non-dominant hand.

Mathematician’s Lament: A Must-Read

Brian — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 01:09:21 +0000

While surfing some of the other math blogs in the blogosphere, I ran across a post in Michael Paul Goldenberg’s Rational Mathematics Education blog.

In a recent post of his he mentions an article written by Paul Lockhart entitled, “A Mathematician’s Lament.” It was written in 2002, but has only gotten mass coverage recently, since it was featured on a post at the website of Keith Devlin.

For those of you who don’t know Keith Devlin, you are in for a treat. His writings are among the most lucid you will ever read about math. He makes very complicated things easy to understand. Please do yourself a great favor and visit his website.

You may have heard his lilting voice on NPR as “The Math Guy.” Devlin has also linked to Lockhart’s article, which is available as a free PDF download.

If you have any interest in math at all, even if you are not an educator, you will truly enjoy the enlightening thoughts that Lockhart shares with you. His appreciation, and enthusiasm for math, and teaching it are joy to read.

So take some time and revel in the passion Lockhart will enchant you with. Download the article now from the bottom of the post at Devlin’s site.

Please read the Devlin essay about the article. It says everything I’d want to say, only better.

What if I Fail 9th Grade Math? (Part 4)

Brian — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 18:36:14 +0000

(Continued from the previous three posts.)

The reader replied to my answer:

thank you professor for answering all of my future qustions, but u never answered my old answer though. What happens if i fail math 9 of coruse ill be end up in emath10 whats emath10 (doesn’t sound good though)Like do i get to go to collage but if u can’t answer that qustion ill ask someone else. Heres a qustion for you though what good paying job are there in this world without math like doesn’t require math because u told me everything involes math. but i am asking you to name some jobs thats don’t require math as a requirement. I am asking you all these qustions because i am scared the world might be a different place when i grow up so i am just prepareing for the future.

Professor Homunculus’s reply:

You know, I think your questions are much more interesting than most of the other kids’. They involve real thought about the future.

OK, as far as math 10e is concerned:
Colleges don’t even know what math 10e is. They don’t care how you did in any particular class, as long as you graduate, and can do work.

Every school has a different system for dealing with kids who fail some course. In other words most schools don’t even have math e. They make you repeat a course, or take some other course, (probably similar to math e, but called something else).

So don’t let any teachers scare you about any particular course. Three years down the road it won’t mean anything to anyone, even you.

As far as “can you go to college:”
You can go to college if you can pay for it. That’s the way it works in America. To get into a good school you have to be able to pay for it, and you have to have either had good SAT scores, or good grades, or both. And of course there’s the other traditional American way – you have to know someone, or have an endowment. Can I be so bold as to imagine those are not in your immediate grasp?

Now here’s the deal: If you get really good grades, or do something else good in school (like play sports, although that is a stupid reason for a school to accept you, but hell, it works) then someone else will pay for you. Like the government, or a grant, or the school would want a good student like you so bad that it will let you go there cheap, or free. Some kids will even get paid to go to school.

There are some community colleges that will take any loser. There are more and more of them. Employers know that, and don’t really consider a degree from a community college much, unless it is from one which not every chump can get into.

But you don’t have to fit that mold. If you are just passing everything, I ‘m afraid you will. But if you make up your mind to beat the jerks at their own game, and do some extra work now, so you will get extra benefits later, you can go to a much better college than you ever dreamed.
Even with math 10e. But that means if you are “just going to pass it,” you can fuggetaboutit.

No matter what level you start at, if you show great improvement (by doing better work, extra work, and surprising the idiots who think that only “dumb kids” take math e) you will capture the attention of your teachers, get a reputation for being a good student, and doors will start opening for you.

So, yes, you can definitely get to college in math 10e, under the condition that you make up your mind to do well in it.

By the way, if you find out now what stuff will be in it, I will be glad to coach you, if you let me know the curriculum. Ask a teacher for the curriculum, and which textbook you will be using, and let me know.

Now, as far as what good jobs use no math:
None of them.

Sorry, every job needs some math, and the better the job, the more your logic, reasoning and math skills need to be in order to make decisions and write reports.

There are some decent jobs which may not seem to require much math. Let’s say, for example, secretary.

You can get a job as a low to mediocre paying secretary if your math skills suck. There will definitely be times when you wish you had more math, though.

Besides that, for the high-paying secretarial jobs, you will probably need accounting skills. That means real math.

Waiters and waitresses do better when they are good at math, memorizing prices, figuring tax and tips, (quickly, not just like some dude who sucked in 9th grade math, get it?) adding up bills, dividing bills, etc.

What jobs that are not so great don’t need much math? Let’s see:

crack whore
dishwasher
busboy
stock clerk (although sometimes they need math, too)

and that kind of stuff.

3 out of 4 of the above jobs are not too bad to make some money while you are going through college. But they are nothing to aspire to in the long run.
See what I mean?

Through all your questions I hear the same theme running in the background. It’s, “I’m afraid that if I don’t do well I will have no future. And I am afraid that I can’t do well in this.“

OK Part I – You always have a future. It may not always be the one you want.

Part II – It can be a lot closer to the one you want if you realize this:
You can definitely do well in Math 10 e (or whatever it is) and learn enough math to do whatever you need to do to get into college.

I have tutored lots of kids who don’t take their future as seriously as you, and they have made it. You sound like you have better “stuff” than most of them, so I can say from experience that a kid like you can make it. But you have to bite the bullet and decide to do the work. The work isn’t always what you think it will be, and you won’t always get it at first. You can’t give up the first time you think, “this stuff sucks.”

Realize this:
Math makes sense, and math helps you.
If it doesn’t, it’s because either your teacher is an ass, or you are impatient.

You can immediately change about being impatient. Be more patient, listen harder, and then, if your teacher is still an ass, write to me when you don’t get something, OK?

The best of luck to you, and I hope I answered the question this time.

Hotcha!

Professor Homunculus

I’m going to end this series of posts with something I got from the mother of the young man who wrote to me with the questions in this series. After I posted the last post (this one – Part 4), she wrote this to me:

thank you professor you can now goto bed and feel relax because u help one soul and gave it anthor chance =)

And that makes it all worthwhile.

Some days you just feel great! I love readers of “The Math Mojo Chronicles.” Hotcha to all of you!

What if I Fail 9th Grade Math? (Part 3)

Brian — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 17:17:30 +0000

(Continued from What If I “Fail Ninth Grade Math Part II).

the reader replied to my answer:

thank you, that really help me but all the jobs your listed are basic math i can do that in my head. But the schools are teaching me alot of bullshit which i don’t know alot about i think there lessons are useless.i guess u need math for everything but can’t we just use techonology like a caluator to help us?

Professor Homunculus’s reply:

You keep asking good questions.

Here’ s the deal on technology:
Calculators were invented by vampires to suck your brains out.

If you were a record producer, and you wanted to know your profits from a certain album, you would have to know what formulas to use before you even touched the calculator. Then you would type them in. The calculator isn’t going to tell you that.

On the other hand, there may be computer programs to use for specific things like that. But then again, if you are in a meeting and people ask you the specifics, and you say, “Doh, I don’t know that. I don’t have my computer here,’” you will not exactly be winning employee of the month.

It doesn’t sound like you are going to go for a job which requires heavy math. You sound kind of resistant. That is ok, no one has to major in math or anything. But every human being should at least know algebra. Why? It is the same reason that every human being should at least know how to read and write well.

For one reason, it is a matter of personal pride. It shows that you are not a quitter. An employer (or anyone else) does not want to engage people s/he knows will just do the minimum job and stop there. People do not want to spend their time motivating resistant people to do something that someone else would be happy to do and excel at.

Have you ever been somewhere and people are talking about something and there is one bumpkin who doesn’t have a clue what the others are talking about? People sort of feel that person is a bit of an idiot.

That happens to people who give up on math, too. Same for spelling and social studies.

If I am around an American-born person, who’s English is so bad that he can’t write a sentence without a bunch of misspellings, or speaks with such a heavy accent that no one but his mother can understand him, I feel he is ignorant. (This is not always true, but it is the way to bet.)

And ignorant people seldom get what they want out of life.

On the other hand, if the person is a foreigner, and has only been here a few years, and, although he may have an accent, he speaks better than our ignorant friend, I would hire him quicker than I would the ignorant one.

Same goes for math skills. If someone takes an aptitude test for my company, and he can’t even solve a logic problem, or a simple algebra problem, why should I expect him to solve my company’s problems at his job?

Are you getting it? It is about being a well-rounded, fully enfranchised human.

And my take on technology is this:

If a guy with perfectly good legs comes in for a job in a wheelchair, and says he would rather use it than walk, I would kick his lame ass out the door.

Same goes for a person with a perfectly good brain who would rather have a machine do what he could just as well do in his mind.

Truman, you said you can do the math I mentioned in those jobs in your head. You are under a very false impression, man. You can’t do any of that stuff in your head. I’ll bet you can’t even do any of it on paper, or with a calculator.

That is giving me the impression that it is not just the school that is up to some bullshit. You are fooling yourself if you think you can calculate stress-levels of materials, deal with vectors in 3-d art, calculate odds, or do complex financial calculations in your head.

As far as the math that they are teaching you in school being bullshit, I think you got it wrong. It is not the math that is bullshit. It is probably the teacher’s way of teaching, which makes it boring and uninspiring.

Face it, it is also partly your attitude. The easiest thing to change about the situation is your attitude.

But once you have opened your mind to math, and all you have is your bullshit teacher, what do you do? Well, those books I told you about are good.

I also have a website that has some mental calculating stuff. Go there and click on the lesson for left-to-right subtraction. (Yeah, yeah, I know you can subtract. You can subtract the lame way they taught you in second or third grade. That is my point – the way they teach math is bull. Go to the site and learn a way to do subtraction that is better, and will make you look like a genius if you get decent at it).

Have fun, and let me know how you did.

Professor Homunculus

(Continued at “What If I Fail Ninth Grade Math? Part II”).

What if I Fail 9th Grade Math? (Part 2)

Brian — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 00:28:54 +0000

“When I look back on all the crap I learned in high school
It’s a wonder I can think at all.”
– Paul Simon “Kodachrome”

(Continued from previous post.)

What if I Fail 9th Grade Math? (Part 1)

the reader replied to my answer:

Dear Professor Homunculus,

remember me my teacher sucks he doesn’t teach.But i am not a lazy sob student i am passing every class i hate math, maht is so gay what name some jobs can i get without math?

-Truman

Professor Homunculus’s reply:

Truman, I believe that your math teacher sucks if you say he does. Many do.

“Passing” every class doesn’t mean too much, though.

You sound like a “real” person, so I am going to take a chance. How much reality can you take? Let’s find out. Here’s the deal:

The reasons schools exist is that so some crooked politicians can pretend they are “Pro-education” in order to get elected and hand out some contracts to slime-bag bureaucrats to hire some unmotivated teachers to teach kids who don’t give a shit, and help parents who don’t do anything for their kids education themselves feel good about handing their kids off to glorified baby-sitters. (Yes, yes, there are exceptions. But that is why they are called “exceptions.”)
Or should I hide this truth from you?

So, basically, there is no need to respect school. Use it for what it is good for, and screw the rest.

What is it good for? To beat them at their own game to get what YOU want.

Here’s how it works (and I wish to God someone had filled me in on this when I was young):

At school they basically want you to jump through some hoops to make them feel like they did a good job. Then they get promoted, tenured, raised, awarded, etc., and you get good grades and can go on to another school (college) and repeat the same thing, except the awards are bigger.

If you jump through the hoops in college, you get to get a “good job” where some moron decides what to pay you and if you are “good enough” to work in the next best cubicle, and jump through corporate hoops.

If you get really good, you get promoted to be assistant-vice-moron, and get a better cubicle (one with a window) and help decide which little hoops the poor bastards who work in your company have to jump through.

In the meantime, you have done nothing worthwhile, have created nothing meaningful, and have helped no one become more valuable to themselves.

Sound like fun?

Here’s the upside:
Beat them at their own game, become your own person, and some day help change that stupid “hoop” system.

How? Well, there is good news and bad news:
The bad news is that you may have to actually give them what they want.

The good news is that you don’t have to do it their way.
In other words, you will have to get good grades at math. But you know you can’t get them with that loser of a math teacher you have.

So you have to go other places. You will have to start real small, right at the beginning. You will have to learn about counting, then addition, then multiplication, etc. But you will have to learn better ways than they ever taught you in school.

Learn through books. “The Realm of Numbers” by Isaac Asimov and “Playing with Infinity” by Rosza Peter are two brilliant, easy to understand, no-bullshit books. They are not boring textbooks. They are a little old fashioned, but they are written in a better way than any of the textbooks of today.

Truman, you may have noticed that you need a little help with your english. To tell you the truth, it is a little hard to even tell what you are trying to say.

I’m not asking you to write like Shakespeare, but a little correct spelling and typing would not hurt. Math is partially about details. I think you get what I am saying.

By the way, math doesn’t suck. Math isn’t gay. (To tell you the truth, that is one of the most idiotic expressions I have ever heard, and you should grow up and give it up. Not because it’s “politically incorrect”, but because it is asinine, and insulting to a lot of people who have done you no harm). Just because your math teacher sucks, don’t think math does. Bad math teachers are the enemies of math as much as they are the enemies of students.

Now, I’m not sure if you wanted to know which jobs need math, or which jobs don’t, so I’ll give you a list of jobs which most people don’t think need math, but which the people are successful at those jobs will tell you really DO need math.

Musician: Musicians who can’t read music are usually a joke. Music is just mathematical notation of sounds. The better you are at math, the more it will help you compose, and understand scales. By the way, if someone can’t do those things, the other musicians think they are idiots. And they are right. Yeah, there are exceptions, though not as many as you may think.

Artist: At the minimum an artist need to know how to measure for a frame. Of course, a real artist would have to know about symmetry, perspective, and much more. Many artists now work with computers. I do computer art, and lots of it is in 3-D programs, which involves lots of math.

Movie producer: Has to know about finance. Finance is almost pure math.

Gambler: Winners have a word for gamblers who don’t understand odds or percentages. The word is “Loser.”

Computers: Let’s face it, it’s almost all math at the interesting levels.

Author: How are you going to figure out your taxes, bank accounts, how much your agent is ripping you off, how high (or low) your royalties are from those cheating, low-life publishers without math?

Skateboard builder: You need engineering skills if you any good at all. If you are some little nobody putting together parts which someone else invented and built, that is one thing, but if you are inventing, testing, manufacturing, you need to know stress-levels, proportions, physics, etc.

Now, this is a small list, and anyone with an imagination could go on with it forever.

Here’s a challenge for you:
Name three ways to make a living which DON’T need math, and I will prove that they do. Or post the question to the board. List three that you think don’t need math, and ask the experts if they can show that they do.

And please, don’t mention silly jobs just to be clever. To get a real answer, ask a real question. Like your original question.

My last words for this entry are:
To beat them at their own game, you must rebel by excelling. Don’t hurt yourself by being a loser. Hurt them by being a winner. Then stick it to them.

I think you must be a smart kid, but no one has awakened your imagination yet. I hope I could be of some service, here.

Did I answer your question?
I hope so,

Professor Homunculus

(To be continued.)

What if I Fail 9th Grade Math? (Part 1)

Brian — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 01:00:38 +0000

In 2000 an 2001, I was an “expert” on a website that helped kids with math problems. Most of them concerned problems they were having in school.

I’d like to publish some of the exchanges I had with some of the kids. I must mention some “warnings,” though.

These questions were asked by real kids, struggling with real problems. They express themselves like real kids. I appreciated that, sometimes. The grammar and spelling is generally miserable. I am going to try not to edit them. I think it’s important if a kid writes, “I want to mulily by too,” that the form of writing gives you several clues to what’s going on. Sometimes.

The answers were given by a real person (me.) I do not intend to bowlderize anything. There is quite a bit of swearing in them. Why? Because I tend to do a lot of swearing, especially at hypocrisy. Since the questions had a lot to do with schools, there was a lot of hypocrisy to swear at. I’ll try not to go overboard with it, because on this blog and in Math Mojo in general, I try to keep it to a minimum.
(When we I publish as Joe Archimedes – Hard-boiled Substitute Teacher, the gloves will be coming off, though).

The real reason I am publishing this stuff, is to “speak truth to power.” If administrators feel offended, well…

I feel that there are a lot of parents, teachers, and especially kids out there who have always suspected the things I’m going to say are true, but haven’t heard it expressed. I think it will help to read it.

So here goes nothing…

I’ll be breaking up this post into parts. Here is the first exchange:

A reader wrote:

Dear Professor Homunculus,

hello my name is Truman (not his real name) i am a high school kid i failed gr 9 mh now i am in emath. I ask my teacher butshe wounl’t answer me ca u tell me what it is ad wha effect does it have on my future?ps. can i goto collage?

Professor Homunculus’s answer:

If you WANT to learn, and you do the work, then the ninth grade can more or less kiss your ass. Einstein hated math (although he didn’t fail it like some people think – see the comments below) at your age, and it didn’t seem to hurt his career much.

On the other hand, if you are a lazy kid, and just don’t feel like doing the work, would rather play computer games and talk on the phone all day, college wouldn’t help you anyway.

I would say there is a good chance, that since you bothered to ask for help here, that you really want it, and are not lazy.

What has your teacher done to help you? If s/he just lectures you, bores you and yells at you, s/he needs a boot to the head.

On the other hand, if s/he is trying to help you, give her some credit and help her out. Go to the library and find books by normal people (not math teachers) and study them. For god’s sake, don’t look at textbooks! They are the death of creative mathematical thinking!

You must decide for yourself to excel in that which you previously sucked at. Get a book called “The Realm of Numbers” by Isaac Asimov out of your library (ask them to order it if they don’t have it.) and READ IT! It is old fashioned, but don’t mind that, the information is great.

Then start finding out things about math that your teachers don’t understand. That shouldn’t be too hard. Find them out from at library. Ask a kid who is into math to help you.

Prove all the doomsayers wrong, and start kicking some major butt with math.

Good luck,
Professor Homunculus

Continued at “What if I Fail Ninth Grade Math (Part II)”