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Comment by exch | Hacker News Reader

It's shame that in the entire video, not one concrete example was given about the application of math in a real world profession.

It's mostly just "Yes, math is cool! You can do so much with it!". This is what my teachers always kept telling me, but it never registered because it was presented in a very abstract and meaningless way.

What would have convinced me was concrete applications. Something as simple as defining and understanding the algorithms required to make a simple Pong game work. That would have inspired me.

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As far as I can tell, this is the problem with science eduction. People who become teachers or professors do so because they just love the subject. But, in general, whether you're talking about math or literature or foreign language, the people you encounter aren't going to love the subject, so saying you ought to do something out of love (or fun) isn't a selling point at all. And someone who loves something tends to make it more boring for those who don't, I think; for example, I took a class in complex analysis, which I'm not interested in and the instructor spent nearly all his time on proofs that he found excited which made it even less interesting to me.

I've tutored 100s of people in math and I think that I can say that the argument that math teaches you how to think better isn't practical, that is, people do not practice it. Of course math is very tight logical thinking and you can apply that way of doing things elsewhere in your life. But, to students, math, e.g algebra, is in the box of stuff they don't like and won't use, and they're probably right and they just throw it away when they're done; they don't use it and they don't learn how to think better.

I know for me, I had a lot of trouble with math until I found something that I liked that used it. It wasn't until there was a definite, concrete use for it that I took it up. Math seems kind of like shopping for hammers. If I need to build a house, then I'll go get a hammer, but if I don't, I'm not going to stand mesmerized on the hammer aisle.

Yeah that's how I felt about the whole video but I think this is just the introduction. Maybe the future videos will show people at work. They could talk to a video game programmer who takes them throught the process of displaying an object in a 3D space (no code just the idea) and show them it's pretty much the stuff they are learning right now but more advanced. Then interview a carpenter, the carpenters I know do a lot of calculations during a day. It can be considered low level math but I think the point should be to show that there is no safe place from math ;p

If they hope to reach out to people and interest them in math and how practical it is, then not showing examples of this does a disservice to their goal.

It's like playing World of Warcraft for me... I find it incredibly boring to play a game where the majority of what you do is "Gather/Hunt/Mine X units of Y and take it to Z". My friends who are into it say "Yes, but that's just the beginning... the real fun starts at level 60+". That may be true, but I'm unwilling to torture myself through months of "gameplay" just to see if at level 60+ I still find it fun.

If it's not interesting from the beginning, what are the odds most people will stick around?

I agree. I think this blog's target audience (myself included) would unanimously agree that math is important, but the video itself seems to speak to people who already agree with it's assertions. When a struggling high schooler from an inner city school hears a mathematical theorist proclaim "Math is fun!", I believe they're going to be weary of everything else this video is trying to say. Math is not fun for everyone. The individuals presented in this video are not relatable enough for the average math student. With this in mind, an emotional approach to the argument that "math is useful" is ineffective. The argument should be strictly fact based in my opinion. I think computers and the internet are proof enough that math is essential to everyday life.

> I think computers and the internet are proof enough that math is essential to everyday life.

I think that they are not enough. Computers are something you buy, not build. The Internet is something you pay for, like TV, or buses, or school, or whatever. The point is that you, personally, don't need any math knowledge to have and/or use them.

Like OP-1 said, we need examples that have a clear use of maths in it.

Sometimes I try to convince people I know that math, physics and the stuff is important. But I'm running short of real use-case arguments - not the "you'll get better job" ones.

Math is like a mental martial art. It doesn't need a concrete application to be useful to everyone because it shapes the way you think about everything! Besides, applications are generally not why people do math. It's really about the doing.

(That's not to say that practical applications aren't important or numerous, just that they're the most boring aspect of math, once you get to know math.)

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