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Comment by lukan | Hacker News Reader

I suppose for that to happen, the world needs better math lessons in school. Most have allmost traumatic experiences, so they now don't want to know anything about math at all.

(I also only started to enjoy math, when I could apply it with programming, before it was not traumatic, but mostly boring, but we also did not cover any fun parts like Mandelbrot etc)

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I'm always very confused by this. Why are maths lessons more traumatic than, say, history or biology or foreign language lessons? I mean learning lists of irregular verbs is not precisely most people's idea of fun. And yet only about maths do people speak with such dramatic language.

There must be something beyond what's happening in schools themselves that makes people react this way. I just can't work out what it is.

A language is something where people understand, they can use it in the real world (but french still can also be hated for example).

But Math beyond the basics is perceived as unnecessary torture, with no practical use, one has to endure to get a diploma.

So yes, my proposal would be to teach it more in a practical, applied way.

What about history? Don't people perceive it as even more unnecessary than maths? Shouldn't we expect to see all sorts of theories on how history should be taught in more practical ways if your explanation is correct?

I'm only picking on history or languages as examples. I could have picked literature, or almost anything, really. A lot of what is taught at school isn't necessarily a bunch of super applied skills

There are lots of bad teachers in every discipline, and I'm sure that everything could be taught a lot better. I'm still not getting why maths is singled out.

History is about stories of people in the real world. Learning dates of battles or treaties was and is also hated, but otherwise it is just stories, one can more or less relate to.

Plain math is abstract. No humans involved, just numbers and formulas. Nothing to connect to, unless the teacher brings in the real world. Because math is awesome at describing and predicting real world events. But that is usually applied math, like physics. And I loved physics (and history) in school. But math? My brain refused as it saw no benefit except for the needed grades.

History is not abstract. It does not give you generalizations, abstractions and models, just historical facts. Many of those facts are useful in understanding why things around you are the way they are.

The attempts to make history more "scientific", usually for religious or political reasons (e.g., explaining past events throgh class struggle), end up looking like propaganda.

If you learned history as a set of facts then you did not learn history. History is about the connections between those facts and the overarching story.

Science is also taught as a set of facts to be memorized, but that is also not science. In both science and history, the most important question is not "what do you know?" but "how do you know?".

"how do you know?"

And that is exactly the question allmost never being asked in (my) school. "No time for it. Here are the facts. Accept it and learn them, we will determine your future on how well you memorized them"

But to be fair, some of my teachers tried this approach as much as possible, but within the whole framework of the curriculum, not much was possible.

If history was about making the connections, those connections could be used to make predictions that could be tested.

You can, but the world is still an chaotic place, so making a forcast on human geopolitics, is like making a weather forecast. Likely valid for the next days, but increasingly bad for longer timeframes.

But one can make for example the prediction that the war in Ukraine will be going on for a little bit longer.

Weather forecasts can easily be compared to actuals, and distribution of residuals can be calculated. That’s how weather forecast models are quantitatively evaluated. A seven day weather forecast has 95% confidence interval of around plus-minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit, way better than “it’ll be like today”.

Your prediction about the war in Ukraine is not falsifiable.

Look, I am not going to make a detailed geopolitical analysis here, but there are lots of sites and institutes who do, you can check them out. The difference with weather forcast is only, that human analysis of geopolitical events often hope to influence the outcome. But the weather will come whether we think it will be sun or rain.

And the prediction about the war in Ukraine would not be "it'll be like today". The current prediction is, that russia will continue to slowly make ground and move the front lines to the west. There are actually predictions how much and where exactly. I think that gets also falsified in some institutes, but is probably classified.

Are you saying there is some classified science also called history that makes quantitative, testable, falsifiable predictions?

Maybe so, but I have no clearance and have not seen it. And it would be completely different from history I studied in school. There wasn’t a single prediction, let alone quantitative prediction with time horizon and confidence interval in any of the history books I’ve read.

Because many school Maths teachers are fundamentally bad at teaching the subject and when this abstract subject naturally is difficult for young pupils to absorb, in the end they default to "because it is that's the way it is, and you just have to learn it!", roughly put.

Because history, biology, or foreign languages have easier to understand practical uses.

Many math teachers do not know math, and cannot answer the question "what will I need it for?"

This is kind of a rant, but I think we heap a whole bunch of expectations on math progress in school, that are unrelated to math and create a burnout atmosphere. There's a culture of fear surrounding math. Most adults, even people who are in supposedly technical occupations, outwardly hate math. Most can proclaim that they set their math aside after it got them through school.

Yet it's also chosen as an arbitrary measure for ranking children and gating their academic and career choices. Kids are "ahead" or "behind" in math. They're tutored during the summer and sent to cram schools. They're tested at every grade level. Math determines access to many fields of study in college. School districts are ranked by math scores.

We have some vague sense that math is important for something. Maybe it fosters intelligence or diligence, both of which are valuable I suppose. But never math for its own sake.

Disclosure: College math major.

I loved math in school and was even on the state math team. Sadly much of the math I learned in high school and even college I had to unlearn (the worst example being assuming everything is a normal distribution and reporting mean and standard deviation instead of looking at a histogram).

I'm convinced that the best way to teach stats is to start people with data and graphing. The formal mathematics of statistics is certainly a fascinating discipline (my grandfather was a professor of statistics) but for the rest of us, the formulas are a work-around to the problem of dealing directly with the data and doing repetitive calculations by hand.

The formulas and proofs are certainly valuable, but could come later. And the graphs remain useful (at least for a hack like me) for confirming our understanding of the formulas.

Also, data and graphing would be a way to ease students into programming.

"Also, data and graphing would be a way to ease students into programming."

Yes! And have them collect some real world data in biology, or sociology first and suddenly you have education, that is not abstract and dry anymore.

I agree, but have to caution that the abstract and dry stuff is still part of math. It was what turned me on to math. I'd favor a blending of math and science curricula, and use more data analysis when teaching science.

It's a dilemma because math is so broad, and has both pure and applied sides. And a challenge for changing curricula is that the public defines "math" as the precise sequence of topics that they studied in school (and hated).

Because in maths one thing builds on another, more so than in other fields. If you missed multiplication there is no way you can get integral calculus. People drop out at different stages and can never get back on track in the school curriculum.

In my mind math learning builds on top of the stuff you have learned earlier on different level than other subjects. If you get ”derailed” at some spot in learning it becomes tough / impossible to learn the concepts that build on top of the stuff that you didn’t understand properly.

Math is used as an IQ filter in the education system so even the people who are capable of it develop a hate for it.

The math department at my university was viewed very negatively because of this. People doing CS prerequisites and whatnot knew that they weren't there to learn but just to pass a glorified IQ test.

I don't think aptitude is the reason. A lot of people are physically unfit and have traumatic sports education experiences, probably even more so than math, but athletes remain stars.

The issue is entirely cultural. Entrepreneurs, celebrities, socialites are venerated, scientists aren't. There's no mainstream cultural recognition of scientists and science itself, at best people get attention who monetize research.

Just compare how many people know Musk but don't know who Tom Mueller is. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Mueller)

"A lot of people are physically unfit and have traumatic sports education experiences"

Good point, but I would argue more people are unfit for math, than unfit for sports education. (At least in europe)

"There's no mainstream cultural recognition of scientists and science itself"

With the exception of Einstein yes. And maybe Stephen Hawking.

"The issue is entirely cultural."

And yes it is, but I believe this can be changed by making math, the language of science, more approachable.

As a European who was unfit for sports, the social stigma is much worse. It is socially acceptable to be bad at maths, but you are looked down upon if you are overweight, lack coordination or are otherwise unfit.

For me it was a self enforcing effect where it also impacted how I viewed myself and I did not feel confident enough socially.

Obesity is one of the few remaining social stigmas that are "acceptable" to joke about. I don't think the average person know how it makes you feel when people passing you in the street look at you and make comments or try to avoid you.

There are so many micro aggressions that happens where each stare, laugh or comment just breaks you down mentally and isolates you socially.

"It is socially acceptable to be bad at maths, but you are looked down upon if you are overweight, lack coordination or are otherwise unfit"

Yes, that is sadly often the case. My advise if you want to change something, find acticities that are fun. Everything with water is good, if you are overweight, but it seems, you likely would not like the public swimming pool. But there are offerings for water exercises especially for obese people. Being in a group helps ignore what others think. Otherwise there are hidden lakes for example. (Or get a private swimming pool if you have the funds)

Otherwise a (enforced) trampolin might be fun.

Good luck to you.

The issue is entirely cultural.

The "issue" is entirely about money. Sports make so much money because so many have fun watching them. And it's an issue only if you want fame so badly as to make an issue of the fact that what you do is anonymous.

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