Bay 12 Games Forum

Let's rewrite the mathematics

That is a very good question. But unfortunately, I cannot solve a question if a teacher doesn't make me memorize a formula and explain the technique to solve this question. I can count the legs of some chickens and horses though! Yay me! After solving that kind of questions for like 500 times in grade school, I have written the way to solve them in my brain. Isn't our education system great?

Very interesting concept. I'll give it a try.

There are 15 units of salt or sugar in a cup. We know there are 5 units of sugar. How many units of salt are there?

That one is logical. They look the same.

Chickataurs? Fearsome creatures, those. I hear that they can turn a man to stone with a beat of their wings! Not women, though. Or more than one man. It's kind of a limited thing. Still, they're also surprisingly good knife-fighters, so I'd hate to irritate one.

Also I heard they ate children in grade school.

I keep reading this thread hoping its the post that says "So they finally added a way to save your game."

Sadness

Me too. Have I mentioned I accidently quit from the game while trying to find a way to save it? I gave up playing when I realized this.

Fort Zombie had a lot of potential. I really hope someone would make a game like this. There are lots of zombie games but none of them are about survival. Left 4 Dead 2 for example.

My teacher was pretty decent about presenting a problem and then goign through that exact process of breaking it into math chunks, doing the math, then turning the math back in real-world answers. Now granted, not everybody got it, but then that's part of what school is for, IMHO -- to start differentiating the people who get it from the people who don't. I think math is pretty decently taught in the US public system (from my admittedly dated experience). It's History that's a godawful train-wreck. That, and basic critical thinking/logic.

Wow. Your teacher sounds awesome. I wish our teacher was more than "and also f(-2)=11. Now go solve this question while I scream at some kids in the corridor"

He didn't say that though 

Let me see...

Chickens is X and horses is Y and together there are 28 legs... Of which we know Chickens have 2 and horses have 4. However we know how many chickens there are... So let me see

2( + 4(Y) = 28
16 + 4(Y) = 28
4(y) = 12
y = 12/4
y = 3

There were 3 horses.

I'm being purely honest. There are a lot of students I know who can't turn it like this. I was raging about our education system mostly. Here, when we try to answer a question like this

f(x)=(3-a)x²+(2b-2)x^c-3+d-2
a.b+c/d=?

we don't know what any of it means. We can't create a metaphor about that legs problem. We just memorise bunch of stuff. That's just fucking hilarious isn't it? Sure we can solve it but we don't know what it means. It's just like an another language.

I'm pretty sure you guys have a great system. We just memorise stuff that we don't know what it means. Fuck the rote learning system

Edit: Sorry for the crazy amount of typos.

Quote from: Leatra on September 26, 2011, 10:25:35 am

Since grade school, I have always went "WTF?" with maths questions they asked at school. Here is an example I faced when I was around 8 years old:

There are 8 chickens and an unknown number of horses in an animal farm. When you count their legs, there are 28 legs. How many horses are there?

I was like "Just stop wasting our time with counting legs and count the damn animals already". What a genius solution right? I guess that explains why I still can't learn a maths topic without thinking "What kinda stuff are we going to use this knowledge for? I would be okay if it was general knowledge but..."

...But that's just missing the point, it's just a metaphor to make the example less abstract. Would your eight-year-old self preferred it if it said. "X=2Z, Y=4Z. You have 8X and 28Z. How many Y do you have?"

(Also I hope I did that right because I suck at math too and there is a big chance I failed )

Well, I would went "WTF?" anyway. I guess creating illogical metaphors is better than that But they should at least make the students think "Oh, mathematics are very useful" I don't know how to do that though.

The ability to just shut up and work on a task is quite an important one too. Besides that, many of the seemingly senseless problems (like the leg-counting one you mentioned) train you to convert a textually explained problem into one a mathematic problem. In that case they were trying to get you to realize that you could solve the problem by realizing you'd need to solve the equation 4*h + 16 = 28. I would argue that the ability to convert problems and the realization that problems are convertible between different kinds of descriptions is actually something very important and mathematics helps a lot with that.

Sorry. I can't just shut up and work on a task without thinking about the purpose. That's why I think I would be the worst soldier in the world. I just think those metaphors should be logical to make students understand the topic better and stop brats like me going "What do we need this stuff for? Geez"

Quote from: Leatra on September 26, 2011, 10:25:35 am

Of course. If you ask an average student s(he) won't want to learn a thing that seems complex. But do they really have to teach college stuff (IMO) like trigonometry at high school?

I learned it in 9th grade, so...it doesn't seem that advanced to me.

And Virex is right, the ability to convert a situation into a mathematical model, perform your calculation, then translate the mathematical result back into a real-world explanation is a *core* skill in life. Down to things like "I have 25 days to be ready for this trial. Discovery takes X days per witness, and we have three legal strategies, each of which involves calling a different number of witnesses, but some of the witnesses are the same for all cases, and each has a different probability of success....what's the time-optimal strategy to pursue?"

Wow. We learn it at 10th grade. I forgot it all though.

They don't really teach they skill. I don't know what kind of education is going on there but come to my school and ask that to 100 students. I will jump from a sykscraper if 5 can answer correctly. Rote learning system is used here and I'm pretty sure we will forget everything when we graduate.

Did anyone get the feeling that this thread is about to turn into something else? Just sayin'

Quote from: Leatra on September 26, 2011, 09:42:28 am

Quote from: Barbarossa TSG on September 26, 2011, 08:22:17 am

Quote from: Leatra on September 26, 2011, 06:45:08 am

Quote from: Vector on September 26, 2011, 06:38:12 am

Fuck triangles.  Seriously.  Never liked the suckers.

Exactly. It's just a damn triangle. Why the hell do I have to learn them if I'm going to be a... let's say a lawyer. This education system thing is pretty fucked. Seriously, does a lawyer need to know about trigonometry? In my country, they do. I wish I lived in somewhere else with a better education system.

Because even lawyers sometimes need to know how to build their own bookshelves, or how tall a building is, or how far away something is.

Not sure I get that. What does trigonometry has to do with building a bookshelf and calculating how far away something is?

Bookshelf I'm not sure about, but there's a classic trig problem where you have to find the height of a sand dune given just 2 distances from it and the 2 angles at those distances between the ground and the top of the sand dune. Presumably, that could also be used to figure out the height of a building, although it would probably be easier, faster and relatively more precise to just count the number of stories in the building...

Since grade school, I have always went "WTF?" with maths questions they asked at school. Here is an example I faced when I was around 8 years old:

There are 8 chickens and an unknown number of horses in an animal farm. When you count their legs, there are 28 legs. How many horses are there?

I was like "Just stop wasting our time with counting legs and count the damn animals already". What a genius solution right? I guess that explains why I still can't learn a maths topic without thinking "What kinda stuff are we going to use this knowledge for? I would be okay if it was general knowledge but..."

I seriously can't find myself interested in a topic if it doesn't have any practical use in real life. I like the history lessons though. It is real and interesting. Maths? It just seems like another dimension. Something that makes simple things a lot more difficult. I wish I could study maths without stomachache but this is just the way I am. I suck at these things. I really envy math-geniuses.

Even my teacher is agreeing to me that this education system just fills students with knowledge that we will forget after graduation.

Quote from: Leatra on September 26, 2011, 06:45:08 am

Quote from: Vector on September 26, 2011, 06:38:12 am

Fuck triangles.  Seriously.  Never liked the suckers.

Exactly. It's just a damn triangle. Why the hell do I have to learn them if I'm going to be a... let's say a lawyer. This education system thing is pretty fucked. Seriously, does a lawyer need to know about trigonometry? In my country, they do. I wish I lived in somewhere else with a better education system.

If we'd only teach our children what we are sure they're going to need, we'll soon find out just how well we can judge what we really need...

Of course. If you ask an average student s(he) won't want to learn a thing that seems complex. But do they really have to teach college stuff (IMO) like trigonometry at high school?