This is what happens when physicists try and dumb things down for a casual audience. You get people with no quantitative literacy acting like an honorary physicist trying to explain things that they barely understand at a superficial level. I can already hear you say “but what about you not spelling quantum correctly?” Well, I can spell things right when I copy from a book I barely understand too.
Whether the dimes are fluxuating at a quantum level is completely tangential to the fact that I originally assigned labels called numbers (1, 2, 3, and 4) to each of your dimes and said you have four things which you are referring to as dimes. I then took one of those things you call dimes, and then assigned the labels 1, 2, 3 to the things you call dimes that you have left and said you now have three of those things you call dimes left. If you honestly think that 4-1 is not 3 (when dealing with complex numbers) every single time because of the possibility that the things I labeled are undergoing minute changes all the time, then you have completely missed the point: each dime maintains its previously assigned label regardless of what happens at the quantum level …
Trying to downplay your math anxiety by quoting some book a physicist wrote doesn’t make you sound smart … especially when you can’t even do something as simple as elementary algebra. People smarter than you have already proven the things we use from algebra and arithmetic to be logically true … always … If you are hesitating to accept something as obvious as 4-1 = 3 because you got some false sense of competency from a dumbed down book about quantum mechanics that gives you the illusion that you can just blindly disregard something as elementary as algebra because it is conveninet for you, and you actually think people are dumb enough to believe you, then you’re just delusional. We all know you have no idea what you are talking about (whether it is math or physics), and the more you pretend you do the more obvious it becomes.
actually its a discussion I had with a mathematician and why children face so many problem with maths, not algebra.
At university I did also some statistics as a sociologist so I didnt forgot it completely. I am talking about mathematics meant for science and engineering and which are harder, not mathematics for economics or social sciences. at school I chose the former and it was much more difficult and demanding than the latter.
plus economics and social sciences do not have much to do with natural sciences, since they do not deal with experiments in the same way. such maths require abstract thought to a larger degree than the other curricula at school. Point was, if the kids due to teachers fault, couldnt achieve a specific level of abstract thought in maths, then they couldnt reach the more advanced levels. A reason why the maths level in schools was so low in later stages.
fortunately my dad is a physics teacher so if I have any question in sciences I can ask him and it helps me remember
Why is this not quoted after every single post about physics in the science thread? You do have infinite time to do it if you invert the manifold of a tachyon and loop it through an event horizon before the antimatter split convolutes into strings, after all.
A: 3 dimes quantum physics infinite number of dimes quantum physics dime the size of the empire state building quantum physics quantum physics dimes are in constant flux quantum physics fjsdfaefadfeasdfs
It’s just saying that proving 4-1=3 is one of those elementary things that need no explanation… the tl;dr version is that object she calls a dime will always have the same assigned value of one…
If she has 4 dimes and takes away a dime, then she will have 3…
How does a object lose it’s value of one that is assigned because it underwent some very small molecular change idk… she was using some physics bs to question arithmetic when people way smarter than all of us have already proven these things as correct…
You can’t disregard the value that’s assigned to the actual dime because there are minute fluctuation with the dime at an particle level. A dime will always be a dime, even if you put it under a box, its still a fucking dime
I haven’t touched quantum physics in years so gtfo of this thread with that crap.
When I was 9 months old my mom gave me these small animal balloon toys. There were 4 of them. I popped 1 and consequently only 3 remained. At 9 months old I already knew that 4-1=3.
Anyone who can’t comprehend such basics is retarded.
Anyone who finds my post offensive can make the world a better place by killing themselves.
True story.
I have connections with the DoE and teachers union here in NYC. Both are a complete failure in their current form and should be eliminated.
Also, that first video showed Lincoln. Cops sell drugs and guns to students. Some of the kids I tutored in math and others I taught handball told me stories how cops would randomly walk up to them in the hall and mess with them like try to sell them drugs or practice combat techniques on them. “He put me in a choke hold for no reason and then I passed out” (innocent kid). That kid didn’t lie about kids smoking weed in class and also gambling in class for money. Both girls and guys get raped. A friend of mine tried teaching there. He asked the students to stop taking acid/E in class and the tires on his car got slashed. At another time, he got jumped by students and had to quit due to injuries. The students and teachers are all treated like shit and no one knows anything. A good example of how American schools are a complete failure.
I said math has fundamental limitations because it abstracts an object or event in physical reality in a manner that will always be imperfect. This is because you’re making an abstraction of something, it will never fully reflect the original. This is extremely simple stuff on a philosophical level.
You can still get a good idea of what is going on with something with numbers, but you will never get the whole picture. It’s like trying to figure how something looks by looking at its shadow. A number is an abstract representation of some thing, just like its shadow. You can draw some conclusions and those conclusions may very well improve the existence of humanity. But you’re still limiting yourself because you’re forced to abstract and any knowledge you gain merely has a probability of being correct.
Many of you seem to have made the conclusion then that just because I’m saying math isn’t perfect and has limitations that it’s somehow useless, however, I never said that and that is a fallacious conclusion. Math is a product of human logic, and since humanity is not perfect it is incapable of producing something that is perfect. The idea that math is flawed shouldn’t be a great surprise.
Math does have uses despite its imperfections, and I feel we should focus on those applicable uses in order to improve how our education system approaches teaching it. Learning theory has shown again and again that retention is greatly enhanced by allowing a student to apply their knowledge and not rely on pure memorization. It’s not that students are incapable of learning through pure memorization, but on average a greater number will display a greater mastery of knowledge over a longer period of time.
The part that’s crazy is you seem to be discounting stuff that is 99.99999% accurate as not 100% accurate when it basically is. I’d stake everything I’ve ever owned will own, and my immortal soul on a 99.99999% accuracy every time. There are stuff that are only partially represented by math, but that’s because we don’t have the ability(yet)/will/understanding to fully represent it.
I agree that in a perfect world showing practical applications as you learn would be awesome and make learning easier, the problem is a lot of practical applications need multiple different parts of math to make sense. In my experience all math courses TRY and teach practical stuff, but it ends up having to be super contrived/not relevant because you need to learn more to even be able to attempt anything practical. Basic algebra is cool, solve for X etc… but it’s all pretty meaningless to practical application until you understand what a function/function graphing is. Physics equation are cool but without calc and trig it’s more of the dreaded memorization.
Basically some of it is going to have to be memorization no matter what, and if you try to apply it to something it’s going to be so simplified from the real thing that you aren’t really learning anything practical anyways.
As I have said before. The math is only imperfect if you neglect something that is happening in the real system. If you can account for every last detail then your math can be a perfect representation.
Then again our “abstraction” is often very accurate anyways.
In fact what our limitation tends to be is the ability to compute the math more than our ability to model a system. Its the fact that if you model the real system perfectly you could be dead before you get an answer from your formula so we use approximations and other short cuts to get an answer within our life time.
Then I suppose I shouldn’t tell you here at LSU they use the “shadow” created by X-Rays passing through an object to get a quality 3D image of the object.
Not bad for abstracting from the shadow.
Actually they have shown through a lot of studies that your brain undergoes a lot of changes ages 0-26, but after those ages your brain has a much more difficult time adjusting to new information. Basically the best time to learn something new is when you are young because the older you get the harder it gets.
Math helps build problem solving skills. IMO it is the only subject that is relevant throughout your life. People who are good at math are generally smarter. Everything else in high school is academic or memory. Not saying those subjects won’t help ever but not like math.
For me, I don’t feel a difficulty adjusting to new information, but what is different is that if I don’t keep my brain activity daily its abilities gradually degrade and it becomes more difficult to restore activity. When I was a kid I remember taking a couple weeks off during summer vacation to just relax and play sports and then jump straight to studying no problem but now I have to maintain my brain activity daily or my brain starts to degrade in both processing power and memory retention.
don’t have time to read this whole thread, but the fact that on the first page people are saying math is overemphasized but then praising logic just proves that we need more math.
[LEFT]According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), our 15-year-olds rank 17th in the world in science and 25th in math. We rank 12th among developed countries in college graduation (down from No. 1 for decades). We come in 79th in elementary-school enrollment. Our infrastructure is ranked 23rd in the world, well behind that of every other major advanced economy. American health numbers are stunning for a rich country: based on studies by the OECD and the World Health Organization, we’re 27th in life expectancy, 18th in diabetes and first in obesity. Only a few decades ago, the U.S. stood tall in such rankings. No more. There are some areas in which we are still clearly No. 1, but they’re not ones we usually brag about. We have the most guns. We have the most crime among rich countries. And, of course, we have by far the largest amount of debt in the world.”[/LEFT]
[LEFT] [/LEFT]
The limits of human perception ensure you will never account for every last detail. There will be always be variables beyond your grasp. This was the reason Plato lamented the limitations of the human condition in its abilities to gain knowledge.
And like you noted, even if you did have them all it probably would take an immense amount of time to calculate that it would become impractical. Damn temporal restrictions.
So maybe we should say ‘human math’ will always be imperfect? Where ‘god math’ (omnipotence and temporal freedom) might actually be capable of perfectly abstracting something. But that’s assuming math as a practice is even capable of perfection at all, which we will never know because we’re restricted to ‘human math’.
Sure, shadows and reflections can be extremely helpful.
I find it interesting that our eyes also work off of abstracting the world with shadows and reflections, meaning our perceptive interpretations of reality aren’t really real (even though it’s the best thing we have to understand our environment).
We know some of the distortions that come from that. Like objects don’t really get smaller in the distance. The perspective vanishing point doesn’t really pull objects towards the center of the horizon. Do colors really exist? Or is that just how we perceive various wavelengths of light? I find human perception pretty interesting, and I wonder what other limitations we live within that we’re not even aware of.
But good luck on your pursuit of math perfection. I think striving for perfection is a good goal to have even though you’ll never get there.
If humanity is incapable of producing anything perfect and you told us that humanity is imperfect, then that means your observation that humanity is imperfect is not perfect as well and is therefore flawed. Therefore your conclusion that humanity is incapable of producting something imperfect is flawed as well.
Don’t say “This is extremely simple stuff on a philosophical level” when you can’t even make a logically sound argument, not that that surprises anybody here.