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I hate math...
Worst of all, the kind of things I want do to later don't require math at all, so it is completely useless to me. I don't get why it is a mandatory subject. Especially because the kind of math they teach you in school has no practical applications whatsoever, it is just all theoretical.
If I would want to, I could probably solve the above problem, altough it does seem to be a difficult one. Usually, I can usually solve that kind of problem with little difficulty, but at the same time I can't even do multiplications or divisions quickly without a calculator. That is how sad math education is over here. I strongly agree with Sigvatr that math in schools should focus more on basic, practical problems, with higher mathematics as optional course for those who need it.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Ahh math, The thing the constantly tell you that you will need to now for the real world. Yet, once you get past algebra, if you need it, you can pay interns to do it for ya.

Social sciences rely heavily upon statistical tests, many of which involve calculus. While you're still in college, it would benefit you greatly to invest your time in learning math. The softer your science, the more math you need to try to substantiate your claims.

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Ratius wrote:

Math is vastly overrated and 90%

I work in industry (Power) and I can gurantee you math is not over rated. What do you think your powergrid works on? Wizards?
Try doing even a basic power calculation and you'll see why math is important

The key to a lock that secures a shed filled with excavating tools is of little importance to the general public. I am well aware of the importance of math in various areas as well as mine - I absolutely need math every day, even if tools usually do most of the job. I just don't make the mistake of thinking that because it's important for me, it suddenly becomes important for the general public. That'd be a lie. Most people only need basic math and that should be the focus of every education system. If a student knows how to calculate the distance between a circle and its tangent, but struggles with quickly solving simple % problems, then the system has failed. Useful math must be prioritized and unless all basic and actually useful math is safe, then throw some less useful math in and see where it sticks.

I think the real point is that all jobs that require a college degree also require a more-than-basic understanding of math. Each job and each profession has different math problems that are advanced and need to be solved routinely, but are unimportant to the company next door. Students aren't really prepared for jobs where the only math necessary is fairly basic. Why would they be? If you were to do that, you would run out of material in two weeks anyway, and then you could move on to the advanced math again. So maybe that is the real problem, that students aren't taught the basic math enough. And that I agree with. I've had a teacher tell me this exactly: "I let them do it with a calculator because it's may job to teach algebra and not how to do multiply. I have to teach them algebra or I fail so I let them use a calculator and they multiply things like 5*0 and they write down the answer and I hope they figure it out on their own but I can't spend time teaching them."

There are a lot of problems with every education system. Students need a lot of things, including attention and more study for basic math. For instance, the distance between a circle and its tangent is, by definition, zero, unless you're talking about the distance between another point on the tangent and the circle, in which case you're talking about curvature, which is basic math. Curvature is immensely useful to me so I consider it basic, useful math. But then again I'm a PhD so my opinions on math are already pretty skewed.

This threatens the future of mathhammer. Something must be done immediately


Automatically Appended Next Post:
PS I can post another interesting puzzle, do you want to see it?

The probability is 50%, either the sweet is orange or it isn't.

 Peregrine wrote:
No wonder you can't solve the problem, you only included half of the information that was given in the test problem. The key part you're missing is that there are six orange sweets. Once you have that piece of information it's all just trivial algebra that anyone should be able to do very quickly. So:

Probability of two orange = (6/N) * (5/N-1) = 1/3

30 / (N^2-N) = 1/3

N^2 - N = 90

N^2 - N - 90 = 0

If the actual math problem is really a big deal on twitter, not the half-complete one you posted, then it's a sad comment on the state of math education.

just in case anyone needs a starting point.

That's not a starting point, it's a completely broken attempt that has nothing to do with the actual problem. You've assumed the thing you're trying to prove and solved for the exact value of N, when you're supposed to demonstrate that the final equation (N^2 - N - 90 = 0) follows from the initial information (how many sweets and the probability of two orange ones).

Oh! Thanks Perry, I got really confused on this. That second piece is key to the problem.

Yeap, I thought I had typed 6 orange sweets. 1am + phone keypad is bad sometimes.

On top of the failure to provide necessary information, your attempt to paraphrase the question also changed its meaning. You said "Hannah takes one orange sweet out", but this is not equivalent to "Hannah takes at random one sweet from the bag." According to what you said, there would have to be 16 sweets, not 10, because there is a 100% chance that she took an orange sweet the first time, followed by a 5/15 chance she took an orange sweet the second time.

The question is easy to solve (for me) but the answer is to show the working out and prove it for me this is hard. Strange as it seems i can answer equations but not show workings in any depth. Which means in this case i wont get the marks.
And probibility wasnt in my gcse's 25 years ago at all.

Probability wasn't in my O-Levels either, but it was in my business course.

Most maths that people use won't get used again after highschool, that's true. But familiarity with formulas, and knowing how to take problems and set them out in mathematical formulas, even just in a non-formal sense is essential to a hell of a lot of office jobs. And the only way to develop that kind of familiarity is through years and years of different kinds of math equations.

What's funny about the "you'll never use this" argument is that the problem in the OP is the kind of math that you do very frequently when trying to evaluate units/strategies in a game like 40k.

 Peregrine wrote:
What's funny about the "you'll never use this" argument is that the problem in the OP is the kind of math that you do very frequently when trying to evaluate units/strategies in a game like 40k.

That is the funny side, the tragic side is there are probably dozens of opportunities to use higher level math in their daily lives, but due to their math illiteracy, they don't see it and pretend they don't need it to get buy when they are literally stumbling over math-related issues all the time and are too uneducated to realize.

The line where someone was like "If you need to do math, have an intern do it" is hilarious, until that Intern learns to do YOUR job AND can do math and replaces you.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Ahh math, The thing the constantly tell you that you will need to now for the real world. Yet, once you get past algebra, if you need it, you can pay interns to do it for ya.

Social sciences rely heavily upon statistical tests, many of which involve calculus. While you're still in college, it would benefit you greatly to invest your time in learning math. The softer your science, the more math you need to try to substantiate your claims.

Yeah, But you dont have to DO the math. I just took statistics. all of our tests where with SPSS. you entered data and it would do much of the match for you

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Yeah, But you dont have to DO the math. I just took statistics. all of our tests where with SPSS. you entered data and it would do much of the match for you

And you're useless as an employee if you don't understand the math behind what you're doing. Blindly entering stuff into math software can work as long as you don't make any mistakes, but if you don't understand how the math software works then you aren't going to recognize mistakes when things don't go perfectly or you have to deviate from the step-by-step formula of button pressing.

That attitude (SPSS can do the maths for me) is the hallmark of a terrible scientist. In fact I would hesitate to call someone with that attitude a scientist at all.

How do you know which analysis is appropriate for your data, and what the analysis models? These are not trivial questions. When collecting data and designing studies they need to be considered and require a deep knowledge of the fundamentals of statistics, or you are likely to draw the wrong conclusions from data which is in any case useless.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Ahh math, The thing the constantly tell you that you will need to now for the real world. Yet, once you get past algebra, if you need it, you can pay interns to do it for ya.

Social sciences rely heavily upon statistical tests, many of which involve calculus. While you're still in college, it would benefit you greatly to invest your time in learning math. The softer your science, the more math you need to try to substantiate your claims.

Yeah, But you dont have to DO the math. I just took statistics. all of our tests where with SPSS. you entered data and it would do much of the match for you

Hahaha, SPSS and SAS are used across tons of industries, even where you think it wouldn't be, and if you don't understand the formulas being run, you potentially are putting out trash results. In fact, that is why we hire PHDs to design the testing, analyze the results and verify the authenticity of the output...

Hotsauceman1, You are a child without even a college education and you speak with such authority like you know everything... College is where you should be opening your mind and learning as much as you can, not spending your energy building brick walls around your brain entrenching your biases and solidifying your ignorance. To be discounting Math based upon 'nothing' in your limited life experience path so far is a waste of your college tuition...

And since the next 20 years of your life are going to be enslavement to your college loans, know what helps manage money, build wealth and beat 'the system' which keeps people poor and in debt? A Deep Understanding of how money works... IE: MATH.

Everyone of our Graduates starts on hand calcs for power equations, stress tests, civil works calcs (load bearings etc)
If you havent mastered them when your professional engineer review takes place, you arent kept on.

 Da Boss wrote:
That attitude (SPSS can do the maths for me) is the hallmark of a terrible scientist. In fact I would hesitate to call someone with that attitude a scientist at all.

How do you know which analysis is appropriate for your data, and what the analysis models? These are not trivial questions. When collecting data and designing studies they need to be considered and require a deep knowledge of the fundamentals of statistics, or you are likely to draw the wrong conclusions from data which is in any case useless.

A Scientist designs the statistical models, implements the formulas, and analyzes the output.

A Lowly Paid data entry slob stuffs data into SPSS... Or if you have a good programmer, that slob is replaced with a script which can reformat input on the fly and pull in data to avoid the need for harmonization via human input.

One of those positions requires extensive math, and the other one can be made functionally obsolete with extensive math.

Oh, I can do the math, I know how to. I got the book right next to me for what I use. I cant do it right off my head.

A few months ago I had a snag concerning torque on a tube. We had to do a lot of maths. The development team rejigged the formulas we were using to make it "easier" for us. As soon as they did that everything started failing.

I had to prove to them, showing my workings, where they had gone wrong. The torque sum was allowed an error of 1.5%, the development team's sum mistakenly only allowed 1.5 of the total torque (roughly 0.7%). But because the team had re-written the formula and hidden most of the information, the only way to discover the mistake and prove it was by breaking the formula down in a way similar to the OP's question.

If we had blindly used the formulas provided to us, just inputting numbers, we would have never solved the problem. By understanding what I consider to be basic maths we resolved a real world (not theoretical) problem.

New entrants to my job only require a GCSE grade C in maths - this is not high level college/university grade stuff.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Oh, I can do the math, I know how to. I got the book right next to me for what I use. I cant do it right off my head.

Good to hear, was worried after reading your initial post. You'd be a fool not to use SPSS or similar tools as doing everything on your own would include an extremely high risk of mistakes / miscalculations and terrible efficiency. Knowing what you'Re doing, however, should always be a priority.

 Peregrine wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Yeah, But you dont have to DO the math. I just took statistics. all of our tests where with SPSS. you entered data and it would do much of the match for you

And you're useless as an employee if you don't understand the math behind what you're doing. Blindly entering stuff into math software can work as long as you don't make any mistakes, but if you don't understand how the math software works then you aren't going to recognize mistakes when things don't go perfectly or you have to deviate from the step-by-step formula of button pressing.

I completely agree with Peregrine, this must be weird for both of us.

 AlexHolker wrote:
On top of the failure to provide necessary information, your attempt to paraphrase the question also changed its meaning. You said "Hannah takes one orange sweet out", but this is not equivalent to "Hannah takes at random one sweet from the bag." According to what you said, there would have to be 16 sweets, not 10, because there is a 100% chance that she took an orange sweet the first time, followed by a 5/15 chance she took an orange sweet the second time.

The original question I read said she took an orange sweet followed by another unspecified sweet, and the chance of both being orange is 1/3. Must have been given the wrong information but I wasn't paraphrasing.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

Yeah, But you dont have to DO the math. I just took statistics. all of our tests where with SPSS. you entered data and it would do much of the match for you

It looks like you've cleared up this matter some. However I will point out that this line of thinking is funny, considering that is basically how humans got to where they are in 40k.

"I don't know how it works, but when I turn it off, light incense, say a prayer, and turn it back on, then it works again."

Tydil wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

Yeah, But you dont have to DO the math. I just took statistics. all of our tests where with SPSS. you entered data and it would do much of the match for you

It looks like you've cleared up this matter some. However I will point out that this line of thinking is funny, considering that is basically how humans got to where they are in 40k.

"I don't know how it works, but when I turn it off, light incense, say a prayer, and turn it back on, then it works again."

Don't forget the sanctified oils! It won't work properly without the sanctified oils!

Isn't that just grade 9 calculus?

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Ahh math, The thing the constantly tell you that you will need to now for the real world. Yet, once you get past algebra, if you need it, you can pay interns to do it for ya.

Social sciences rely heavily upon statistical tests, many of which involve calculus. While you're still in college, it would benefit you greatly to invest your time in learning math. The softer your science, the more math you need to try to substantiate your claims.

Yeah, But you dont have to DO the math. I just took statistics. all of our tests where with SPSS. you entered data and it would do much of the match for you

If you don't understand the math, then you will join the thousands of "scientists" who don't know why it's inappropriate to run 5 ANOVAs on highly intercorrelated DVs without correcting for inflated alpha, and make all sorts of other statistical errors.

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 NuggzTheNinja wrote:

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
Ahh math, The thing the constantly tell you that you will need to now for the real world. Yet, once you get past algebra, if you need it, you can pay interns to do it for ya.

Social sciences rely heavily upon statistical tests, many of which involve calculus. While you're still in college, it would benefit you greatly to invest your time in learning math. The softer your science, the more math you need to try to substantiate your claims.

Yeah, But you dont have to DO the math. I just took statistics. all of our tests where with SPSS. you entered data and it would do much of the match for you

If you don't understand the math, then you will join the thousands of "scientists" who don't know why it's inappropriate to run 5 ANOVAs on highly intercorrelated DVs without correcting for inflated alpha, and make all sorts of other statistical errors.

As long as your mistakes lead to a significant result, who cares

Kidding of course

I think it would be a real shame not to learn maths at school just because you are aiming for a job where you think it won't be required. Isn't that true of nearly every subject we learn at school? Does everyone want our children to grow up as ignorant yahoos? Knowledge is power.

Maths is like a ladder. You can have a ladder with a million rungs that will take you up to the highest level, but if the first six are missing, you won't get anywhere. You have to learn the basics before you can tackle the more advanced stuff.

Here is a trivial small business problem.

You run a corner shop, stocking a product of which you sell on average 10 units per week.

Currently there are 135 units in your stockroom. You need to keep a minimum of two and half week's stock in hand because the delivery time from order is two weeks but you don't want to run out and sometimes the delivery is late. The manufacturer's delivery carton contains eight units of the product.

Are you stocking too much or too little? How far ahead should you order new stock? How much stock should you order in one shipment?

Work that out without using maths.