Bay 12 Games Forum

So, think through the math involved in that image.

It's too late/early to think

Have you ever been so mad you made a guy punch himself?

Oh, this topic. I like this topic. So allow me to offer my take on it.

I, like many other kids, was put through the same rote math classes as everyone else - this "means" this, this is a law, et cetera. However, I was a bit of an odd child. Once, in the sixth grade, we were covering basic geometry - hexagons and squares and things like that. We were told to draw a hexagon. I was lazy, and I also knew that a hexagon was a shape with six sides. So instead of doing your standard "all six sides are equal with equal angles between sides" hexagon, I drew a top hat thing. I later had to go ask the teacher why this was graded as incorrect - after all, my top hat thing had exactly 6 sides, and that's what hexagons are, right? In the same class, I once got in trouble for using "donut" as a variable - the poor grader thought it was a zero. (That one was probably more my fault than theirs. ) And after the latest graded math test would come around, everyone would sit there griping about story problems. I never understood how story problems were so difficult - I just poked around at them with the tools I had until out came an answer that made sense. How could it be so hard when analysis with the tools I was given was so easy?

The answer lies in how - similar to Lockhart's Lament - mathematics is treated. To me, a summation symbol, an integral, a derivation - these are not "laws" or "definitions", they're tools. I treat them like a painter treats a brush - I can use them to make areas, swirling monstrosities, or whatever I damn well please. I don't use them simply for the sake of filling out equations, or for exercise's sake. I try to use them in all sorts of ways to see what sort of weird things I can come up with, and figure out how they're really used. This treatment of functions and formulae has left many a fellow student simply stunned - I could solve problems that they couldn't think of solutions to, because I poked and pried and, with the tools I had been given, eventually found an answer.

However, I don't necessarily agree that education of mathematics as an art should be entirely about the self-discovery of the tools of mathematics. To use the painter analogy again, there are many great painters who paint with naught but their fingers or sticks, and do so beautifully. But there are also many painters who prefer the handle of a well-crafted brush, and don't necessarily have the knack for making their own.

I do a little bit of tutoring to supplement my learning - after all, there's that old idiom about how you don't really know a subject until you can teach it. And it's just amazing to me how very little people understand about the tools they're given - myself included. I've seen someone else - after a bit of explanation, usually including a touch of back-of-the-napkin geometry - come up with explanations for problems I never could. Because they had been shown how to use the tool they'd been given, which I still (hilariously) didn't know quite as well as I thought I did. It was sort of like (because I like the painter analogy) being shown that you can paint with the back end of a paintbrush, and that the lines are narrower than even the most precise application of the "normal" brush end.

Of course, if you tried painting with the back end of a brush in school, you'd start to get some very funny looks indeed, and probably even a strict reprimand from the teacher. Much like my attempt to use a "method" we hadn't yet "learned" in the seventh grade on a test.

So in conclusion, I'm still learning the elegance of mathematics - I'm probably still nowhere near Vector-tier, but the current system for learning it is most definitely a piece of shit. Children aren't being taught how to analyze or even exercising their ability to think - they're being taught to follow the path they're given, and, well, God help you if you ever run into something that's not on the path.

Obviously the lucky charms guy is desperately trying to stop these pesky kids from cockblocking him.

I think we're all avoiding the major issue here, which is...

Why the hell are there meows in The Lordling? Isn't that Nepeta's thing?

Respawn in a helicopter. Fly AWAAAAAY.

ME LLAMO ES DIRK, YO SOY TODOS LA PROBLEMAS
ME LLAMO ES JAKE, YO SOY TODOS LA PROBLEMAS TAMBIEN
ME LLAMO ES JANE, YO SOY MAS PROBLEMAS QUE LOS DOS CHICOS, Y ME CARACTER ES MUY... AMARILLO? I'm not sure. What was the word for boring? Jane is that.

Well I'm not sure what boring is, but amarillo is definitely yellow. I have no idea what having a yellow personality means.