Eliezer, we could spend a long time commiserating on that one. I used to think the problem was that people never learned algebra properly, but I have begun to wonder how many have a firm grasp on applying second grade math. The hard part seems to be knowing what to divide or multiply by what (teaching Bayes’ Theorem is fun for this). Real life is all story problems.
Recent adventures in math include baffling a room with the insight that 12*5/12=5 and explaining how to figure out what percent of 1200 300 is. Perhaps I should be more worried about the technocratic difficulties of addition; Division of Labour has an occasional series of “The Diff.”
Eliezer, we could spend a long time commiserating on that one. I used to think the problem was that people never learned algebra properly, but I have begun to wonder how many have a firm grasp on applying second grade math. The hard part seems to be knowing what to divide or multiply by what (teaching Bayes’ Theorem is fun for this). Real life is all story problems.
Recent adventures in math include baffling a room with the insight that 12*5/12=5 and explaining how to figure out what percent of 1200 300 is. Perhaps I should be more worried about the technocratic difficulties of addition; Division of Labour has an occasional series of “The Diff.”