Don't force your kids to do math • Hacker News Board

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#11

Post by jerkstate » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 9:49 PM UTC

ChatGPT makes it so easy to build a lesson/workbook for something your kid is interested in. I've used it to build workbooks on special relativity, tsolkovsky's rocket equation (including euler integration to build a scratch program), triangulation, logic gates, probabilities of simple dice games, etc. My pro-tip is to tell the LLM to format the document in LaTeX, so you get beautiful math typesetting.

You don't even have to get through the workbook. Get to a part that they need to understand better and make a detailed workbook on that part (for example, triangulation -> solving a system of linear equations).

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#12

Post by jerkstate » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 9:50 PM UTC

jvanderbot wrote: post #7

helph67 wrote: post #6

Perhaps make them aware how important it is with examples from nature? https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lm&q=fibonacci+in+nature+examples&...

Kids do not understand the concept of "importance". At least no kid I've met. That part of their brain doesn't work. They'll trade effort for privileges or toys tho, and are little mimicry machines so they follow you if you use it.

yeah, I recoiled when the author of the post says "no bribing" - bribery is one of the most useful tools a parent has. I guess you could call it "incentive" or something, but really, it's quid pro quo.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#13

Post by Rendello » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 10:09 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #5

When I was having trouble learning multiplication my father made up a payment system. He made flash cards and I got a payment for every one I mastered (I had to get it right some number of times, not just once). I ended up with maybe $25 or $50 which was a lot for a kid in the 1970s.

My mother tried to give me $5 for every book of the Bible I read. I never took her up on it even though I knew about the basically freebies like Jude. I wasn't opposed to it, but it felt like –on the one hand– I didn't want to half-ass it and read a few books –and on the other– I really didn't want to read the entire Bible. So I guess that a completionist attitude prevented me from getting $30!

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#14

Post by Der_Einzige » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 10:15 PM UTC

codemac wrote: post #8

It's not about forcing your kids to "do math", but to excel at important skills far before the benefits of being good at that skill matter. The amount of homework/study per day that maximizes math scores on tests is significant, 1+ hours/school day by the time they're in middle school, with it helping even more for those who are starting out poor at math[0]. You'll note the referenced study doesn't even max out progr…

Me being forced to do tons of horrible math by my abusive grandfather at a young age for literally 4+ hours at a time gave me a few things.

1. A true hatred of work, make work, and a strong desire to defend laziness as a concept (note that Bertrand Russel agrees hard with me here!) -https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Praise_of_Idleness_and_Ot...

2. A love of subversives and cheating the system. Basically, the guys writing leetcode cheating software are saints in my book. All subversions of the attempt to turn society into a meritocracy (a term which was originally supposed to be a slur/negative connotation - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy) is extremely good.

3. An advanced knowledge of TI basic, so I could cheat hard on every single school assignment I could get away with. AP Chemistry? I’ve got a symbolic stoichometry solver app! Calculus? CAS system in the palm of my hand!

Play stupid games with children, win stupid prizes. Maybe don’t force them to work like little slaves in their early life, and they won’t strike back at your society systems.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#15

Post by twodave » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 10:17 PM UTC

Another article where someone thinks being a parent means they understand all children. I have 4 kids, and 2 of them definitely would never do math, even basic math, for fun, ever. Their brains lack whatever pathways most people utilize to learn math, so I now have a 15 year old who has to work nearly as hard at arithmetic as she did when she first learned it. No amount of drilling, change of curriculum, buckling down or backing off has had any impact. She has absolutely no interest in math. But the kid reads faster than I do, which is not slow at all.

The only thing I know about kids after having adopted 4 of them is that none of them are alike. The only time when you can really train them to do anything consistently is when they are babies. As a result all 4 have great sleep habits :)

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#16

Post by ogogmad » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 10:29 PM UTC

Der_Einzige wrote: post #14

codemac wrote: post #8

It's not about forcing your kids to "do math", but to excel at important skills far before the benefits of being good at that skill matter. The amount of homework/study per day that maximizes math scores on tests is significant, 1+ hours/school day by the time they're in middle school, with it helping even more for those who are starting out poor at math[0]. You'll note the referenced study doesn't even max out progr…

Me being forced to do tons of horrible math by my abusive grandfather at a young age for literally 4+ hours at a time gave me a few things. 1. A true hatred of work, make work, and a strong desire to defend laziness as a concept (note that Bertrand Russel agrees hard with me here!) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Praise_of_Idleness_and_Ot... 2. A love of subversives and cheating the system. Basically, the guys w…

Raising kids is hard. Sad. And what do I know about it? Regardless, parents do need to get involved in their children's education. For instance, they should help their children prepare for entry exams into secondary school. This shouldn't take their child 4 hours a day. Maybe 10 minutes on some days, and 1 hour on others.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#17

Post by smath » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 10:29 PM UTC

About a year ago I came across the concept of ‘math circles’, here on HN. It was this longish but very interesting article: https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-math-from-three-to-seven...

The key element here is nurturing curiosity. Since then i and my 10yr old have been sitting through a virtual math circle led by Aylean McDonald on parallel.org.uk an organization run by Simon Singh

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#18

Post by r58lf » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 10:32 PM UTC

For elementary school age kids, maybe even middle school, try getting them started with the app "Euclidea".

They won't think of it as math. It's gamified geometric constructions. Starts simple, "how do you bisect an angle" with a compass and a straight edge. It goes to a very high level that will challenge anyone.

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#19

Post by diego898 » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 10:37 PM UTC

twodave wrote: post #15

Another article where someone thinks being a parent means they understand all children. I have 4 kids, and 2 of them definitely would never do math, even basic math, for fun, ever. Their brains lack whatever pathways most people utilize to learn math, so I now have a 15 year old who has to work nearly as hard at arithmetic as she did when she first learned it. No amount of drilling, change of curriculum, buckling dow…

Best advice I ever received is: You have to parent the kid you have - not the kid you want

Re: Don't force your kids to do math

#20

Post by add-sub-mul-div » Sat, Apr 19, 2025, 10:37 PM UTC

Something we don't pay enough attention to is that while calculators have solved everyday math to the point we downplay it as a required skill, people are not pulling out their calculator at the grocery store to make better purchase decisions, even though we all have one in our pocket now.

So we handwave the importance of being able to do everyday math in our heads, while also not taking advantage of the tool that's a substitute for it. We're less educated but also less effective than we would be if we'd never invented automated calculation and were forced to be sharp about it.

Is there a name for this phenomenon?

And what's it going to look like a decade after AI has caused people to stop using their brain for general thinking like it's stopped them from doing math?

(I'm sure you, the reader, are very good at math and are an exception to this still-apt generalization.)