There's something that I've been aware of in modern American life for a rather long time that I simply don't understand.
People that admit to being unable to read, illiterate, are looked at entirely differently than if they say they're unable to do simple math or innumerate. People who can't read at some basic level are grouped differently than people who can't do arithmetic. Society seems to have more resources dedicated to helping the illiterate read - or, at least, to cope better where so much of life is dependent on reading. I can't say I've ever heard of equivalents for people that can't do simple arithmetic.
The prompting for this topic comes to mind a few times every week, but credit
where credit is due is
to McThag for one of the things that drive him nuts, the way relative differences in size are described.
Are fractions really that hard and terrifying?
Because I am sick of reading, "20 times less" when they mean 1/20th.
This is easy math. Try it at home.
20 x 1 = 20. Is 20 more or less than 1?
20 x 20 = 400. Is 400 more or less than 20?
When you multiply it's always MORE not less.
Of course, I've seen things like that "20 times less" and it always makes my eyes twitch. Another one is when they say "100% more." Why is it that saying "twice as much" or "2x the amount" isn't used?
The stupidest one I see, and I see it regularly for different things, is like this label on a box of almond extract. Out of my cabinet and in front of my coffee pot.
Note the label at the bottom: "NET 2 FL OZ (59mL)" Now look at the highlighted yellow box at the top. "2X MORE THAN OUR 1 FL OZ"
I maintain that anyone who needs to be told 2 ounces is two times 1 ounce shouldn't be out and about freely in the world. They need adult supervision.
This is elementary school-level arithmetic. How about if you can't do high school level math? The programs for bachelor's degrees in most of the sciences make sure you can do the math you're supposed to have taken to get into college by making you take it for your college degree, and if you need to do that math in a related college class, you'd better know how to do it. A lot of technical skills, like for machinists, electricians, various types of repair and maintenance skill sets will go much better if you don't need a math refresher for everything.
The all time top story I've seen is a rather well known lawyer, and former US congressman who now has a weekly show on Fox News. Trey Gowdy. One night early in the life of his show, I watched as he explained that on his way to whatever college degree he was working toward, he had to take a math class. He said he had to go to the department head and argue that because he was at such a disadvantage in math he should be able to take something else instead of math. The department head agreed.
I don't recall the story well enough to be able to say if this was his undergrad, "pre-law" degree or if it was in law school, but I think it was college before law school.
It's retail marketing. It's intended not to inform, but to emote.
ReplyDeleteThe local university offered a course for the budding private pilot. Commonly known as 'ground school', that course also was credited as a physics/math course for the non-science degrees. I thought it unbelievably absurd.
What you call "retail marketing" is what Greek civilization called "rhetoric".
DeleteIt's one of the most fundamental forms of knowledge, and they made it the foundation of primary learning.
Coming ahead of, and before, mathematics.
{cf. Trivium and Quadrivium
Trivium:
Grammar - the Laws of letters, words, and syntax
Logic: The Laws of applied Grammar
Rhetoric: The Laws of applied Grammar and Logic
Quadrivium:
Mathematics: The Laws of Numbers
Geometry: Numbers in Space
Music: Numbers in Time
Physics: Numbers in Space & Time}
And how is ground school for private pilots not physics and math?
Just wondering.
There's a snobbery among certain people when told that a toddler touching a hot stove, or doing a faceplant, is physics.
Nonetheless, it is exactly that.
Anyone can learn physics, even if they never attend school.
As many dashcam videos demonstrate vividly, every single day.
Yep, it's bad out there. And when you throw the modern collegiate system into it, darkness gets darker.
ReplyDeleteMy wife was taking a technical IT program at a state college, which required real math and science. So she took honors Calculus (taught by an actual Moskva University (the one in Russia) Math PHD!!!) and honors Physics.
At the end of her '' year, they cancelled the program and so she went to a 'liberal' IT program (Library Science. Really. Bachelors, Masters and PhD in how to shelve books, I am not kidding.) Because it was an 'Arts' program and not a science program, she was required to take 'Maff is hard, durhur' courses. Which she fought, tooth and nail, not to take, all the way to the university's president where upon he finally dropped some common sense into the system and she didn't have to take MIH 101, 102 and 103.
So, a couple years later she's getting her masters and people in her masters level classes were struggling with simple percentages, fractions, counting higher than 10 without taking their shoes off...
The assault on math education has been going on for a few decades at this point, in part because teachers don't really understand math, and in part because you learn math by doing math problems and having someone explain how you got it wrong. And that is too much work for teachers today.
DeleteA big part of the problem is that in most places one has to have a teaching degree, not a certificate and other college work.
DeleteTeaching degrees are the 2nd easiest degree to get. Only degrees in social work are easier. It's harder to get a phys-ed degree.
And because teaching degrees are 'liberal arts' the math requirement is a bare minimum. Same with science. Same with even history.
There's no competency test to find out if a teacher can actually teach a subject.
The teachers' unions have so screwed the edumacation system in most states that someone with a degree in hard science or math has to get a teaching degree, not a certificate, a degree to teach science or math in K-12.
None of that happens without an entire committee approval, and ad testing, and feedback from the stores. It must (sadly) work.
ReplyDeleteApparently McThag wrote: "When you multiply it's always MORE not less."
ReplyDelete0.1 x 0.1 = 0.01
Or if you prefer,
10% x 10% = 1%.
Oh, don't get these people started on floating point numbers...
DeleteShall we try logarithms and imaginary numbers too, or start with number theory?
DeleteAI is supposed to be a threat and a blessing.....we still haven't cured natural stupidity, the fingerbanging cousin of laziness.
Stefan v.
Malatrope, try normalizing a number so it can be calcu;lated quickly by a math co-processor (for FLOATING-POINT numbers), then convert the result back. Fun times!
Delete"... he was at such a disadvantage in math he should be able to take something else instead of math."
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to say that when I heard a pre-med say this, the department head agreed as well.
2 is not 2 times more than 1. That would be 3. 2 is twice as much as 1.
ReplyDeleteThat is innumerate gibberish.
Delete2 times 1 is 2, not 3.
2 x 1 = 2. At least, it has been since I was in second grade.
Maybe you learned things differently?
Check your math.
I don't think you meant to say what you actually said.
The true result of "No child left behind!"
ReplyDeleteAnd "They are disadvantaged. Pass them no matter what!"
Had a difficult time at school because of a severe case of dyslexia. The main part I had the most trouble with is math, I simply cannot process the functions, they do not make sense to me. I can do the simplest forms like addition subtraction, everything else, managed to develop my own methods, I can not explain them, but they wor, and thats what matters.
ReplyDeleteIt was frustrating, and school were I went they treated me as retarded, had to go to "special class" with the other rejects and misfits, kids with Down's syndrome etc. In my Jr year of HS it began to seem a waste of time, there was no recognition of dyslexia, as its a kind of afliction wheree complex ideas don't go thru to your brain in normal ways, turned out in the early 70's due to no recourse, this left me with the only practical option which was dropping out and finding a job along with a living place. Being an orphan, my grandparents who raised me passed, managed to do pretty well all things said. Though without math skills your kind of limited, but as a welder it garnered a decent income, but still, lot of things where of great interest, and so I simply self taught myself, read a lot of boojs, have a rather decent technical library, even attended night-school classes at BU, and MIT, plus further metal fab related courses at a local high-school that I actually got invited to teach adult welding related subjects, though no layout and other fabrication math . At the college courses, had no need for passing as it was essentially about gaining the type of knowledge that worked in my brain, and developing workarounds so I gained a lot of key or critical information. Luckily had a lot of intrinsic sense of things, with that over time things worked out where I can not complain. I think dyslexia is still little understood in practical senses, mostly cause everyone inflicted is rather different. It is like being trapped inside your head, sime things can not get in, some can't get out, if you want to communicate it is emperative upon you to develop creative workarounds, along with listening to and trusting your instincts, think thats more so listening to your subconscious, like my grandad told me once, its better to listen to your gut, because its your subconscious trying to tell you something. A fascinating aspect to that is the sub-con is a really busy place, its like almost complete separate from your waking mind, but with practice you do develop a kind of connection, but you can not force it, more like let something simmer, and you get some new idea or figure out something that stumps you.
For instance I can say heft a bar of steel, look inwards, and intuitively find its suitability for a specific purpose, it works close to 100%, could never explain it, kind of just is thing. It is how over time passed and held 64 metal joining certs, even held a manufacturing engineers position once, it was strictly a floor job, only maths involved using complex b/p's, impromptu inspection, lot of set up, researching specifications, because of being a veracious reader was of great help. Certainly have a very high admiration for engineers, they are like the glue that makes technology work. Got to work with a couple highly intelligent engineers, it just amazes me to no end how they are able to extrapolate their keen insights into some physical form or perform a series of calculations involving force that works close to or as advertised. To me each being a wonderful thing to experience, a triumph really. Lot of that goes unsung I think, might be being a good engineer is being in a lonely place cause of that.
I vaguely remember knowing someone with dyslexia long ago but almost no details at all. I remember them saying if they looked at printed words like a book or something, the letters would be arranged differently than what the book had, but it changed so it's not like they could just memorize different arrangements of letters, like saying instead of CAT, it would always read TAC.
DeleteSounds like a really rough thing to work around.
Innumeracy is just another side effect of a woke culture that values putting condoms on bananas and knowing all the pronouns more than basic math skills. While shopping for curtains once I encountered a saleswoman who could figure yardage, and do all the pricing in her head - correctly. She was raised and educated in Romania.
ReplyDeleteStill I have problems with math too. I was reading a chapter on tensors and kept getting confused. Finally I realized the author was using an uncommon notation introduced without mention. I find math and science books are often poorly written, by authors who assume the reader thinks like they do.
I think there are a bunch of interlocking trends here.
ReplyDeleteFirst trend is that the Education major is the last stop before flunking completely out of college and elementary level teachers are predominately Ed majors, and the MEd EdD holders infest the supervisory layers, so math much beyond finger-counting is scary.
Second trend is damn-near any asinine idea can be published as a PhD/EdD paper and be proposed as the New Shiny Improved!!!! teaching method. New Math in the early 60's was bad enough but Common Corpse (sic) math where the process is more important than the correct answer is an abomination.
Third leg is there is no money for the book publishers beyond minor sales of workbooks so they push the New Shiny Improved!!! method because it requires all new book$$$$$$.
New math is pretty old now (long since replaced by Common Core) and when Tom Lehrer sang about it it made some sense. But, Tom was a math professor at Harvard in the 60s and 70s so he understood the concepts. The average BaEd holder has no clue so they just recite what is in the teacher's guide with no more understanding than a Labrador Retriever..
SiG,
ReplyDeletePoint of Order: Neither example you cited is innumerate, nor inaccurate.
Yes 200% = 2x.
Yes, 20x more = 1:0.5.
They could also have said 2000%, and been equally numerate, and correct.
English language allows for using language that is more influential than mere mathematical equivalence.
That's not innumeracy, it's rhetoric.
And as such, part of the Trivium, not the Quadrivium, and therefore more fundamental than mathematics.
Meanwhile "a million and a half dollars" is still $1,000,000.50, not $1,500,000.00.
Which is what makes my eye twitch, and why the difference should be deducted from the salaries of writers, editors, and newsreaders every time they do it, because they're retards who went to J-school instead of passing the SATs with a score above 400.