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Comment by orbifold | Hacker News Reader

I never understood people that questioned the practical applicability of math. Surely they must realize that these things are so elementary that there is no way there was no practical use for them. Logarithms specifically allow you to multiply values quickly by looking up their logarithm in a table, add the values and do a reverse lookup in the same table. This is the foundation of slide rules, which is the way engineers did calculations before computers were common.

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Of course we all know this, so you’re preaching to the choir. However I think it would be quite demoralizing to tell a young student who is struggling with logarithms (to follow your example) that “it’s so elementary that there must be a practical use!” Indeed, middle and high school math is, to many, the most intellectually challenging thing they’ve ever had to deal with at the time these classes are taken. Considering they haven’t even taken higher order maths yet, students likely don’t have the context to realize that “elementary ≠ easy to understand”

I’ve taught at a number of “nerd camps”, generally in the fields of Gamedev and 3D modeling. I found that, more than anything else, showing young students what they can use a tool directly for triggers the imagination and inspires them to engage further with the field. These students were able to produce Google Cardboard VR content, which at the time was impressively close to the state of the art.

Anecdote: I’ve personally seen a 10-12 year old student tinker with and research the shadow settings in Unity3D [1], which is quite complicated! And she was willing and excited to put in the work because she could see with her eyes how the options affected the shadows directly. She wanted to match the shadows with a drawing she brought in.

Too bad Logarithms are not as engaging to look at as video games...

[1] https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/ShadowOverview.html

I have never once in my life used logarithms in that fashion. I've used them in other ways, but why would you do it that way instead of just hitting the "*" button?

Because you did not have a * button?

I this sums up my first math experience in the US high school. Learning before moving to the US, we were not allowed any calculators. My first class the teach wrote something basic like quadratic equation to solve. To my shock, out went the TI-83 graphing calculators.

I was done with the problem before my peers even hit the right keys in their pocket computers (TI-83 is not a calculator, but a computer pretending to be a calculator).

I still think the non-calculator way of teaching math gave me better skills down the road.

You don't have a calculator, so you're calculating logarithms by hand?

You understand that slide rules existed before calculators, yeah?

They are practical only to the one using them. I don't care about fluid dynamics when I stir my coffee with my well-designed spoon.

Perhaps the problem is that there is no difference between 2x + 1 = 0 and 3x + 3 = 0, they are the same kind of question but in my school days we have to do all these similar tasks for ... whatever reasons.

Then again, practice is a really good way to solidify one's understanding of a concept so its a hard thing to balance.

I only learned about this application of logarithms years after learning the definition. Usually the applications are not obvious to students and this goes on even at the university level.

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