Proof you can do hard things • Hacker News Board

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#241

Post by blitz_skull » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 1:47 PM UTC

DarkNova6 wrote: post #206

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because math is harder for most people. There is no difference between learning a name in history or in biology, or some workflow. But math reasoning really filters out people in a way nothing else does. All other topics just require memory and basic reasoning. Even physics mostly is hard because of math. And philosophy, mostly because of jargon and references. Otherwise, if you break it down, it's not that co…

> math reasoning really filter out people in a way nothing else does. Disagree. I say: Bad math teachers really filter out people in a way nothing else does. "Here is a list of rules which can be used in specific circumstances. I am not going to tell you why you would need them and the exam will feature several corner cases. Also, I will not provide any examples or detailed explanations because what would other peopl…

You didn't go to the high school I went to. Some people, fundamentally, just cannot do math.

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#242

Post by igorzij » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 1:50 PM UTC

I always felt like linking education to direct use of the knowledge is missing the point. It is irrelevant whether or not you'll need the knowlege you learned in school or at uni. What matters is your learnability, and that's the muscle you train with education. Learning smth just to use it to get paid for it is the lowest form of learning; the whole point is to acquire ability to learn whatever quickly so that you can become proficient in whatever is needed in the future, which in turn gives you an edge in the talent pool. In that sense the central point of the article is 100% valid - it's all about track record

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#243

Post by robertlagrant » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 2:01 PM UTC

constantcrying wrote: post #201

butterNaN wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel your complaint is valid, but I your ire should be directed towards people who are supposed to answer this question, not the people who are asking it. My guess is that answering "what am I ever going to use this for" is easier for other subjects, sometimes almost intuitive. For Maths, it needs to be defined as soon as it starts getting abstract. "what am I ever going to use this for" is a perfectly valid questi…

>My guess is that answering "what am I ever going to use this for" is easier for other subjects, sometimes almost intuitive. How so? What am I ever going to use my skills in analysing 20th century literature for. What am I ever going to use my knowledge about Roman history for? What am I ever going to use my knowledge about the structure of our government for? Certainly no employeer of mine ever cared, my University…

> What am I ever going to use my skills in analysing 20th century literature for.

You can use the same skills to spot when a news article is trying to manipulate you.

> What am I ever going to use my knowledge about Roman history for?

You can see how empires fall, and vote against those things.

> What am I ever going to use my knowledge about the structure of our government for?

Understanding why things happen around you is the first thing you need if you ever want to try and change something you don't like.

> Certainly no employeer of mine ever cared, my University didn't care, nobody seems to have ever cared, except my teachers.

You might care, though. Or you might not know what you know now without them.

Thankfully you did all those things, so now you can write a well-written letter to the correct person in government, citing the parallel problems with the current education system and the fall of Rome, and stop children being taught this stuff (-:

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#244

Post by jameshart » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 2:02 PM UTC

keerthiko wrote: post #149

hardware2win wrote: post #141

>You know they will never use it in adulthood, outside of certain career choices. If somebody says stuff like this, then they do not understand math, imo. Im a little bit sad whenever somebody argues for math by using "no phone available at the moment" argument. Math is insanely powerful world modeling tool. Starting from calculating right amount of fence for your garden, to estimation of 500km route arrival time whi…

IME a big part of this misdirection stems from school focusing on the mechanics of math, rather than the intuition of math. In the long run, the mechanics of math (how to do long division, or differentiate an expression, or expand a geometric series) are important only insofar as to help us model and predict and analyze the world, intuitively. However, students who do not intuitively see the power of mathematical int…

One of the problems I find with mathematics education is that we seamlessly morph the introductory numeracy lessons of ‘counting’ and ‘arithmetic’ into the subject of ‘mathematics’, without ever stopping and telling kids ‘okay, now you can count, we’re going to start doing something different called ‘mathematics’.’

Mathematics is about examining things and understanding their essence - what statements can we make about all such things? How can we prove that? How can we use that to figure out other things?

But nobody ever tells kids that - they think they’re just in ‘advanced counting’ lessons.

I wonder whether a split in curriculum could help - similar to English language/literature. Mathematics needs a ‘numeracy’ program that starts in kindergarten and covers the mechanical ‘how numbers work’ stuff… then a separate mathematics program that starts in middle school and teaches reasoning and proof. Start with geometry.

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#245

Post by foofoo4u » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 2:04 PM UTC

trinovantes wrote: post #220

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because math is harder for most people. There is no difference between learning a name in history or in biology, or some workflow. But math reasoning really filters out people in a way nothing else does. All other topics just require memory and basic reasoning. Even physics mostly is hard because of math. And philosophy, mostly because of jargon and references. Otherwise, if you break it down, it's not that co…

Math as a field of study might be hard but in my experience math pre grad-school is just memorization as much as any other subject. I studied for my exams by simply doing countless exercises and memorizing every problem pattern to the point where I'm just plugging numbers into a series of formulas, even if I don't fully know why I'm doing so.

This is my experience as well. And unfortunately, many of my teachers feed into this. "Ok kids, today we're going to learn this new formula. You put a number in, do some arithmetic, and you get an answer out. I am not going to bother explaining the importance of this formula, how it came into existence, nor its practical application — likely because even I don't know. But what I do know is it's important because everyone says it is and it will be on the exam. Now get cracking." A parody of course, but I say captures the sentiment which completely drained my desire to learn math. I got good grades, but only after I learned to accept that it is futile to learn the importance of what I am learning and instead simply focus on rote memorization of solving the problem, even if I don't know why it works.

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#246

Post by Sodman » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 2:06 PM UTC

TRiG_Ireland wrote: post #235

constantcrying wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I specifically dislike is the question "what am I ever going to use this for" or versions of it. Which I only ever hear about mathematics, but which can be asked about every other subject as well. Yes, math is hard and definitely not for everyone, which I think is perfectly fine. But arguing that something has no use to you, because the first time in your life you actually have to engage in complex logical think…

> What I specifically dislike is the question "what am I ever going to use this for" or versions of it. Which I only ever hear about mathematics. I've often heard it asked of languages, specifically Irish.

I always disliked Irish (and languages, in general) in school. However, now that I'm over a decade out of college I find it to be one of the few subjects I wish I'd paid more attention to when I'd had the chance... Sure, it's not particularly useful in adult life, but neither is organic chemistry, for most folks.

The main difference for me is that it's relatively easy to "fill in the gaps" for any other subject we learned from the ages of 12-18. Irish however, is niche enough - and learning resources generally technologically behind - that it's still quite tricky to self-teach or "quickly google" answers to things. That makes it unique from most other primary/secondary school subjects which are more universally taught across the world.

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#247

Post by robertlagrant » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 2:09 PM UTC

constantcrying wrote: post #231

jodrellblank wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " Nobody told me why I should learn about ancient history or 20th century literature. " Did you ever ask? I assume not, since you claim nobody ever asks that question about ancient history - so why would anyone have told you? If you did ask, doesn't that rather undermine your claim that nobody ever asks this question about other subjects and people only ask it about mathematics?

>Did you ever ask? No. But I also didn't question its value.

Why not?

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#248

Post by BiteCode_dev » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 2:09 PM UTC

CodeSgt wrote: post #239

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. But even with the best teachers for every field, math or sport will filter out people way more harshly, and sooner, than any other field. You can smooth things out with quality teaching, but there is a human hardware limit, and you reach it sooner with those two. Many people don't like to hear it because their ego is bruised or because it goes against the idea that "everybody can do anything". This is wrong. Bi…

> This is wrong. Birds fly, fishes swim. There is nothing bad about either. I have a hard time with this mentality. I would have agreed a few years ago perhaps, and do still agree that we all have our own aptitudes, but the level of absolution in a statement like this just isn’t really quite as applicable to humans in my opinion. There are things I never thought I’d be capable of that I’ve recently begun to excel at.…

> I believe that any perceived immutable barriers or obstacles are almost entirely psychological.

Laws of physics are laws of physics. And biology is applied physics.

People in sport have known that for a long time. You can train as much as Usain Bolt, he still has a huge advantage.

Thinking the other human characteristics are not affected by this is weird. You will never be Von Neumann, no matter how much you spend in the class room.

It's not that training has no effect, it does, a lot. Yet this doesn't remove the fact we have a variability between individual.

And there is not a tipping point, it's a spectrum for each characteristic.

It turns out math exhibit some early barrier in that spectrum. There is nothing wrong with that.

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#249

Post by BiteCode_dev » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 2:10 PM UTC

jameshart wrote: post #240

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. But even with the best teachers for every field, math or sport will filter out people way more harshly, and sooner, than any other field. You can smooth things out with quality teaching, but there is a human hardware limit, and you reach it sooner with those two. Many people don't like to hear it because their ego is bruised or because it goes against the idea that "everybody can do anything". This is wrong. Bi…

Different humans (in the 90th percentile at least, to eliminate the extreme outliers) are not equipped so vastly differently for mathematics or athletic activity as fish and birds. Thinking that some people can fly and some can swim and that’s just that seems very reductive.

Indeed. After all, this is an HN comment, not a white paper. It comes with the usual caveat.

Re: Proof you can do hard things

#250

Post by foofoo4u » Wed, Jul 12, 2023, 2:12 PM UTC

nicbou wrote: post #214

constantcrying wrote: post #179

I really despise all the "why you should care about math" takes. The question is never asked about any other school subject and only mathematics has to justify itself that way. I had to learn about categories of plants and animals, interpret 20th century literature, learn about events from a thousand years ago, I did presentations on the demographics of European countries, how certain chemicals react and much, much m…

This drove me nuts when I was a student. No one gave me a solid reason, even though it was right there. Math is a language that is required to describe how the world works. It's the official language of certain spheres of society that seriously impact your life. If you don't speak it, other people will make decisions for you that you can't understand. It's also really useful if you deal with finance, engineering, com…

Same. For K-12, at least, I believe the reason why no one could give a solid reason is because the teachers who are teaching the subject have literally no professional industrial experience with math. They have nothing to share with no real-world insights. I presume this should come to no surprise. According to GTP, the average salary range of a mathematician in the US is, "$80,000 to $100,000, while more experienced mathematicians can earn up to $150,000 or more." With salaries like these, no one working professionally as a mathematician would choose to downgrade to become a teacher, with teacher pay, lower respect and deal with uninterested, rude, problematic students.