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Comment by kkarakk | Hacker News Reader

Devil's advocate - I personally wonder if having the average person be able to understand math is essential sometimes. Between smartphones having conversational agents that can do math to things like tax/tipping calculators being in-built into systems, does the "average joe" need algebra.

I'm sure we've all seen the viral math problems that show that even now the "average joe" doesn't understand even PEMDAS - and most of the time these are working functional members of society.

Will it cause problems "upstream" so that colleges/jobs need to include the course training? sure but isn't specialization what careers are about? The existence of computers doesn't mean that everyone needs to know how to "learn to code" as an analogy.

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I don’t think the devil needs your help. This is a very real and pernicious belief behind the assertion that we should continue to leave large fractions of our student population behind when it comes to math. We say it’s too hard for them. It’s too hard to teach them. They don’t really need it. Excuses, excuses.

It’s a colossal failure of imagination, as far as I’m concerned. I think developing mathematical thinking is an absolutely nonnegotiable part of a complete public education. If kids are coming out of school with no clue of how to do it, we have got to mend that breach, not leave it.

BTW I think it’s utterly irrelevant whether someone “gets” PEMDAS or not. That’s not math. To the contrary, it belies a rote, formulaic way of thinking that is almost inimical to math.

What are the outcomes for a person who was taught to sufficiently develop their "mathematical thinking", versus not?

>BTW I think it’s utterly irrelevant whether someone “gets” PEMDAS or not. That’s not math. To the contrary, it belies a rote, formulaic way of thinking that is almost inimical to math.

Being able to "get" PEMDAS in particular doesn't matter. Being able to "get" things like PEMDAS matters a great deal. Understanding that there are rules that bind the squiggly lines on the page is an idea about as central to mathematics as any I know.

You don't "need" most of the classes beyond maybe reading... We don't use art class, or geography, or history, or really most of any classes in day to day life.

We teach maths because we believe it is useful for most people to learn math, to provide them with opportunity later, and because we don't specialise earlier. You mention foisting basic mathematical education onto future courses, which would either have to be much longer or much less deep.

Some people mistakenly think that mathematics education exists so that when high school graduates go to university in STEM subjects they can get right to the meat and potatoes. This just isnt the case, as it is most of a STEM batchelors degree is just... learning more maths. Calculus, Statistics, Linear Algebra, Dynamics. Like, these lectures are taught in bulk at most universities, with several dozens of courses enrolled in the same lecture series because its so widely applicable.

But in general, much like english(writing/literature/media) class, or history, or science, the real reason we teach maths is because a whole lot of careers we think are important benefit from it. Sure you don't need it to work in a resturant, but you will to work in music, computers, science in all forms, statistics, accounting, management, 3d animation and cgi, and a lot lot lot more. And in any occupation, having a mathematics understanding will help career and ability to make informed decisions.

Well, if people don't understand math, then financial literacy is really hard. And without financial literacy, making good financial decisions is harder, and so prosperity is harder.

So by not really teaching math, we're condemning large numbers of people to worse financial outcomes. And we're doing it in the name of helping the disadvantaged.

My sister works in interior design, flooring, etc. in a wealthy county. It isn't nearly rare enough that someone asks for an 8'x10' rug, she points some out, and the person responds, "That's a 10'x8'. I want an 8'x10'!"

I wish she were kidding, prone to exaggeration, or a liar, but it just ain't so.

Her: “Okay, we measured it out to 13'6".”

Client: “But the contractor said 13.5!”

Her: “Right, 13 and a half feet.”

Client: “No! 13 feet, 5!”

Math literacy is 100% necessary, computers be damned!

The average person doesn't understand PEMDAS (or BIDMAS as I was taught it), because it's a stupid arbitrary convention and cannot be applied consistently. It only exists because infix notation is inherently ambiguous, and it gets worse the more operators you add. The better rule would be simply: use brackets to denote the order of evaluation in all cases.

The right response to

    6 / 2(1 + 2)

is not "use PEMDAS", it's "syntax error".

> Between smartphones having conversational agents that can do math to things like tax/tipping calculators being in-built into systems, does the "average joe" need algebra.

Mathematical literacy isn't just about being able to solve an arithmetic, algebra, or calculus problem, it's about recognizing that the problem you're looking at is a math problem in the first place. Math is the language that the universe uses to speak to us. Mathematical literacy is about learning how to listen.

Once a student is able to read and write at a middle school level, the most important classes they take are math. History, English, Art, Music, Government & Economics, Geography, Science, they're all less important than math. I'm not saying that those other fields of study are unimportant; on the contrary, they're vitally important. But on the list of vitally important things we teach our children, once they can read and write, mathematics is #1 on the list.

English class isn't about knowing how to spell "acquiesce"--I have spellcheck for that--it's about knowing that Moby-Dick is a book about the captain, not about the white whale, which is just a metaphor for obsession. History isn't about knowing that the Boston Tea Party happened on December 16th, 1773--I have Wikipedia for that--it's about knowing that the United States revolted because of oppressive taxes and a lack of representation in Parliament and btw it's more complicated than that. Mathematics isn't about knowing that if two trains are 40 miles apart and they're heading towards each other and one is traveling 20mph and the other is traveling at 60mph then they'll meet each other in thirty minutes 10 miles along the track, it's about knowing that everything--everything--can be modeled as a math problem with varying complexity, and there's a tradeoff between the accuracy of the answer and the complexity of the math problem.

> Will it cause problems "upstream" so that colleges/jobs need to include the course training? sure but

No, the good colleges will just shift their acceptances towards children from out of state or children of affluent parents that can afford supplementary education. The lower three quartiles, in terms of wealth instead of ability, of Californian children will be relegated to the CSU system, while the UC system will be reserved for the wealthiest quartile and children from out of state.

> The existence of computers doesn't mean that everyone needs to know how to "learn to code" as an analogy.

You can use a computer without knowing how to code. You can't

Bravo, sir. Well said.

> I personally wonder if having the average person be able to understand math is essential sometimes.

Yes. Not talking about calculus or anything beyond, just basic algebra and arithmetics.

My mother, who has a graduate degree in education (and is in a good cognitive state), still occasionally gets confused and asks me for help with figuring out whether 0.5L is less than 0.25L. I am scared to find out what kind of other math comprehension issues she might have in everyday life that are just a tiny bit more complex than decimals, like compounding interest rates. And she is a fully functioning indepeneent adult in her 50s who has a job, socializes with people, recently sold and repurchased a house, etc.

your example argues against your point.

On a printed receipt at a restaurant, I once saw suggested tip percentages where the corresponding currency amount was greatly inflated and nowhere near the actual percentage.

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