Dude, I haven’t even finished reading the thread before realizing that I need to post this.
Nuts and Buts. Bowl-fulls of them. ACK ACK ACK ACK
I suck at math, I memorize to pass a class with like a c, then soon as it was over I forget half of it. Math and grammar have kicked my ass all my school life along with spelling. It’s a bitch. I just have to fight through it and keep trying.
Start up child labor again. Let kids decide if they want to go to school or go to work, but make them fill out applications and shit and be like “I’m sorry, sir, but you can’t be hired unless you can pass this placement exam.” Or just cut to the chase and mandate an exam prior to purchasing a pair of Jordans. :tup:
Summer is hella busy and my training is taking a hit. If only I didn’t need to work. Fuck work.
Algebra and the Public school system fucked me over. My Freshman year my old as shit teacher misses 3/4ths of the fucking year.
“This is Jack not learning shit”.
We got subs in, but of course no one gives a shit because they aren’t “real teachers”. So I’m basically math illiterate. Go to Trig fail that shit hard and had to go to Bummer School, and 3rd year I only pass because the teacher isn’t a dick and I was well behaved the entire time. Take Advanced Algebra w/ trig my senior year and fail fucking hard, but luckily it wasn’t needed to graduate.
lol @ computer science with no algebra. what is that like an intro to HTML course or something? 
I never bothered with advanced math but I wish I had.
Algebra is simply the mathematical representation to causality… which is an unavoidable part of reality.
2+x = 4. x is always 2. Never 7 or 274. All of reality is pretty much the same. If you can’t handle that plenty of other non-math related shit is going to fuck you up throughout life. Causality. One thing is always the result of another. When you lose, get fucked over, fail, ect in life… it isn’t random.
When it comes to learning algebra you are either lazy and don’t like paying attention/remember shit… or… you are one of the masses who fail to grasp causality and it will be reflected in all aspects of your life. You might even try to think it’s the first one and blame being lazy… but you can always examine the rest of your life to see if your disappointment in yourself caused you to think so 
Math is literally GDLK! Everyone should know it in every form. So, yes, you need Algebra and I’m very serious.
The only courses that should be mandatory are courses that have everyday, practical applications. Like Economics, for example.
I don’t really see how Algebra can be useful to anyone unless your work involves some math, like creating video games.
Any type/form of math is useful to everyone.
There should’ve been a poll for this thread, so we could shake our heads and weep for the future at everyone that voted “no”.
you really think people can understand economics without algebra?
Honestly listening to people complain about how bad Algebra is makes me laugh because over in China they are learning Calculus at the same time we are learning Algebra. In fact the US the average age of a student learning advanced math is higher than almost every other country in the world.
The biggest problem I have with math in this country is it is so poorly taught in public schools. We literally hire the worst of the worst to teach the math and wonder why our students come out of it not knowing anything. I know more than half the people teaching it. I mean I was helping a high school student with his math and I was finding that the teacher didn’t show him any of the useful tricks to solve the problems with. The student all of a sudden started to notice that he could get the math when someone actually took the time to explain it to him.
I mean when I got done with high school I hated math, but once I got to college I loved it. You know why? Because I actually had a teacher who explained it to the point where my brain could link it all together. Once that happened I found math not only to be interesting, but mad useful. Hell I use probability and statistics to manage my finances. Now I am sitting on a Math and Chemistry degree.
If anything the US needs more math not less of it. Math is logical reasoning and that’s something that students today have piss poor skills in.
I don’t know looks like x is 2 to me. Though technically x can be something else depending on the context. 
yes!
need it in business. Research.
I wish people taught it better, that I would pay more attention in HS, that I went to a HS that wasn’t Gangster paradise.
I’m pretty sure the chinese aren’t learn calc in grade school…
I’ve also always been a bit skeptical of the whole “holy crap the other countries are blowing us away in math” and how it translates into real world success. I’ts not that I don’t believe they test better, or that they learn it earlier, I’m sure they do, it’s well documented. I’d mainly be curious to see the distribution of nationality in highly math related fields, or if they are having significantly easier times getting degrees in those fields. Though I guess if you only look at success cases you could argue that anyone who’s going to make it through those degrees or into those jobs is going to learn the math well regardless of the quality of their schools.
It’s just one of those things thrown around all the time, and I’ve always wondered how much it matters. I’m in a very math related field, and I was one class away from a physics minor in college and I never even made it to any form of calc in high school, and I’ve never been particularly skilled in math.
The amount of Math I use in my programing is insane and I don’t even do things like complex data structures or anything like that and I know those use a lot of Number Theory.
I have talked to my “co-workers” who are grad students from China and according to them they were learning Calculus by about 13-14. So not grade school, but compared to the US they were learning it way before the average US student does. They also said they learn almost year round.
There is also a charter high school in Texas which has students learning Calculus way before public schools.
video game programming, graphics and physics, insane amounts of math.
For me math is like the 5 and 1/2th sense. Trying to relate this to those who don’t “get” it, or understand why it’s so important and fundamental is like trying to explain a rainbow to a blind man. The logic, and all around higher reasoning that I’ve gained by it has helped me immensely.
This is very similar to my story. In high school I failed the second semester of Geometry (mainly because I didn’t give a shit about homework and missed a huge project). Got put into remedial math (which the teacher knew was beneath me), and then completely failed Alg II/Trig. I completely did not give a shit, so maybe I would have gotten it I dunno. I don’t think I ever opened that book. I got to college (after taking like 5 years off), took a placement test and got put into a class one level above basic ass arithmetic… I was like “naw fuck this,” then took a prep course with the best math teacher I ever had. Within 6 weeks she managed to magically flip some switch in my head. She just said a few simple things, but mainly showed us/me the logical aspect of mathematics. I never realized how fundamentally logical it was, and by basically following the god damned directions I could do the problems. I re took the placement test and got placed into Calculus. The next semester my professor told me I was the best student she ever had. I went into the final with a >100 average.
After that I started tutoring math, taking higher level math and physics courses and the world is like… completely fucking different. I don’t know how to explain it other than this extra “half a sense” that just lets me navigate obstacles in life with an edge on things that many other people don’t have.
I’ve taught a lot of international students, most of them from China. They’re generally wealthy and well-educated, and maybe 3 or 4 of them could have learned calculus at 13 or 14. The rest tend to still be better than American students precisely because they learned arithmetic and algebra pretty well, but there’s no way that anything close to a large percentage of Chinese students learn calculus that young.
I have noticed that a lot of them do overestimate their abilities and say things like “oh, I learned that in 2nd grade”, when they clearly have little or no understanding. Don’t fall for it.