I was denied a mathematics education, for real. I can’t even do long division, nevermind that squiggly F shit. I thought that stuff was only for astrophysicists.
I want to learn basic maths, but I’m in a ‘learned helplessness’ mindset where I can’t even get through basic sums and equations intended for children (I’m old as fuck now).
I was diagnosed with autism a few years back, which kinda made no sense. I would have expected rainman powers, but numbers just don’t jive with my cunt of a brain. Maths is as inscrutable to me as people’s faces or social cues.
You might also have discalcula, which is a real but somewhat uncommon thing where you’re absolutely shit at math. I have no idea how to get tested for it though.
If you actually want to learn maths (that is, if you’re not just venting), you could try to ask for help in dedicated math or teaching communities.
The problem with teaching stuff you know, is to put yourself in a position of actually not knowing anything. I’m a software developer and had to teach some apprentices a few years ago, and it was really eye opening to me to see how much assumptions about the apprentice’s knowledge I made even though I thought I made my explanation “basic”.
It’s quite possible that all the tutorials you’ve read are either for literal children, so they just don’t work for your adult brain, or they’re intended for adults and assume too much.
On a personal note: how did you get into that situation? Were you home schooled?
I transferred schools in the middle of 10th grade, and the new Algebra class I landed in was several chapters ahead. I never caught up, but the teacher passed anyone who turned in literally anything for homework so I did that.
Now in my 30’s I’m getting into indie game design, and I need that gap filled so I can write the code I need. So I went to the local thrift shop and picked up a couple old textbooks (since it’s safe to assume that nothing groundbreaking has happened in the field of basic algebra in the past twenty years) for fifty cents and I’ve been working my way through them. I don’t understand everything that’s happening, but I’m pushing ahead with the faith that somewhere along the line things will “click”.
You might enjoy Freya Holmér’s videos - I mostly know her for her excellent mathsy video essays, but she has loads of videos about “maths for game Devs” that might be useful.
Anti-communists thinking that by doing blanket condemnations of past mistakes instead of historical and material analysis of why it happened, how much was necessary, and how much was the excess, they can totally avoid them in the future and bring down capitalism with the power of love.
How many times does the same mistake have to repeat? Communists didn’t invent revolutions you know. Peasant rebellions were a thing in medieval Europe, and many different kinds of uprisings were tried during the centuries. And there’s the same pattern repeating again and again - it either fails in bloodshed, or succeeds only for the winners to establish a new tyrannical system.
The only exception was started by rich landowners because they didn’t want to pay taxes to the king. (American)
Note that I’m talking about violent revolutions - there were quite a few examples of non-violent or semi-violent revolts/uprisings that didn’t end up catastrophically. India, South Africa, Portugal, post-communist Eastern Europe come to mind.
The only exception was started by rich landowners because they didn’t want to pay taxes to the king. (American)
You really think the US is the only American colony that seceded from its colonial authority by means of violence? And are you implying that the current US government isn’t tyrannical?
or succeeds only for the winners to establish a new tyrannical system
You’re just making that up. You’re tautologically defining any successful violent revolution as failed because it didn’t eliminate every single hierarchy overnight. Even if I’m a Marxist-Leninist I can conceive why you’d make that argument about the USSR (though I’d disagree with you), but if you make that argument about Cuba too you’re just wrong. Cuba is a state much more democratic and much less oppressive by every metric than its predecessor. You’re just falling into that mentality that “the only acceptable revolutions are those which failed”.
Additionally, you’re failing to acknowledge that non-violent revolutions, such as Allende’s Chile and the Spanish Second Republic, can end up in bloodshed and a more authoritarian and repressive form of government not as a consequence of violent revolution, but as a consequence of the lack of it. As a Spanish myself, I’d have much rather seen a version of my country where there was an armed socialist repression against fascism (for example by the CNT or some Bolshevik party), than the history we lived, where a democratically elected, non-violent leftist government was nevertheless couped, plunged into civil war, and eventually turned into fascism. An armed revolution could have actually possibly prevented that. (Funny historical note: the only country that really supported the struggle against fascism in Spain was the USSR, despite the Italian and German fascists helping their Spanish counterpart.)
Pretty much anything dynamics related. Starting basic displacements, velocity, acceleration integration for simple dynamic systems to more complicated equations for wind and spinning rotor interaction induced vibrations in wind turbines.
If you do not work with dynamics, for statics there are still a lot of encounters with deferential equations. Euler-Bernoulli Beam theory or plate and shell theories can be used for times when you want to solve more complex problems for which predefined equations do not exist and you do not have access to expensive fea software.
You can always try to pivot from project management to actual engineering. I am load engineer for wind turbines and everything is time dependant and dynamic. For past 10years i use every bit of math I learned is school and uni.
I recently had to do linear algebra for the first time ever irl. I’ve been out of school for ~15 years. I was trying to make a rotation matrix to transform some points in 2D space. It took me a very long time to remember how it’s performed yet alone “transformation matrix” which is something I’d never heard of before. I got my code all working and was so proud, then later found that one of the r packages I was using could have just solved it all automatically :/
As an actuarie this meme is kinda true but mostly false. I had classes on some advanced maths like ordinary differential equations that have never use on my day to day job. But, the actuarial sciences math in collage was elementary school level of abstraction compared with the real world. There’s still a lot of excel tho, but I’m cool and use python (pandas) wherever I can.
This is a tangent but, I dunno why we teach students how to solve ODEs. Computers can do these stuffs perfectly fine. What they can’t do is the actual understanding and analysis.
Disagree. ODF was one of the best subjects I took, and even if I haven’t used it, I could be working on quant where is used regularly. And the same can be said for any other subject.
I see, did your class introduce the principles other than raw formulas? Imo the formulas are not so useful considering that you can look it up, but understanding the meaning they hold is worthwhile.
What’s the alternative? Ending up like Allende, or the Spanish second republic, or Rosa Luxembourg? “The only good socialist movements are those who fail”
You need to take power in a way that doesn’t make a majority of the population hate your guts. Democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the others.
You say that as if communists don’t want democracy. I want the highest degree of democracy possible, I just understand that the material conditions that allow revolutions don’t always allow for extremely high democracy at the beginning, and how a vanguard party of communist intellectuals can initially serve well to guide an uneducated populace or, worse, educated against communism as we are now.
The way to such a system can’t be through a violent uprising, you’ll be seen as illegitimate and opportunists. Revolutions themselves are very volatile points in history, and it can be very easy for the wrong person or set of people to take the reigns of power. We don’t want another Stalin or Mao.
You’re insulting all the people who suffered even more oppressive regimes than Stalin or Mao as a consequence of NOT arming themselves. Chileans suffered Pinochet as a consequence of lack of oppression of the fascist opposition during Allende. Spanish suffered Franco as a consequence of lack of oppression of the fascists during the Spanish Second Republic. Oppression is sadly a tool that must be used, as sparingly as possible that’s true, to prevent reactionary elements from maintaining or reinstating even more oppressive structures.
People everyday in post-colonial countries suffer immeasurable despair as a consequence of lack of revolution. If you criticise Stalin or Mao and consider them undesirable and illegitimate, you should be even more convinced of the illegitimacy of current western governments that impose imperialism on the global south. Every day that we delay or refuse these armed revolutions, we’re perpetuating this system which is even more harmful than the USSR or communist China by any metric possible.
So we just need super smart authoritarian communist to lead a bloody revolution backed by the uneducated masses that will then be handed over peacefully to the uneducated masses once communism is firmly established?
I support communism, I want revolutionary change, and I’m an idealist. But I don’t understand how that’s realistically possible. Theoretically possible, but the number of complications that would arise, the number of variables that could go wrong and destroy the entire movement, how easy it would be to corrupt… It’s never happened before for a reason, and having violent, bloody revolutions every few decades in the hopes it finally works perfectly this time doesn’t seem constructive or intelligent to me. There has to be a better way to balance how fast the change happens and how fragile and volatile the system will be during the change
Have you read Marxist theory? Marxists don’t typically identify themselves as idealists, preferring instead Materialism, specifically Historical and Dialectical Materialism.
Reading theory may help you better engage with leftists online.
Right, sorry for the confusion. I was referring to the definition of idealist "One whose conduct or thinking is influenced by ideals that often conflict with practical considerations. "
Not that I necessarily am “An adherent of any system of philosophical idealism.”
But yes, I’ll read more Marxist theory specifically. I don’t have trouble interacting with leftists online very much, it’s just when I see leftists who are strictly authoritarian. The “by any means necessary” just ain’t it for me
I understand what you meant, it’s just that Marxists don’t take on that mantle whatsoever. Same with your notion that we rely on some “super smart authoritarian,” that goes against revolutionary theory.
That’s why I suggested reading theory. You seem to have an idea of what you want your end to be, and why current Capitalism is bad, but you lack organizational and Dialectical Materialist theory.
There’s a reason we have realism in political science though. Theory isnt the truth of how things play out in real life, especially when it comes to the social sciences. We need descriptions just as much, if not moreso, than prescriptions.
We need, as commies, to establish grassroots movements that will improve things locally, create safety nets, organize labor to get progressively better victories through strike and if necessary through other means, and to have a growing sector of workers that are class-conscious. When the material conditions arrive, we need to have a critical mass of class-conscious workers so that we can organise as best as possible, and help to educate the rest of people, and to discuss the wants and needs of the workers and translate those needs to the vanguard party. But we also need the vanguard party.
You talk about how things can “go wrong and corrupt the entire thing”, but by doing so you’re forgetting that that’s already the case, that we live in a corrupt, bloody and oppressive system, which kills millions every year worldwide through violent and less-violent means. You say it’s never happened, but I disagree with you. Ask an anarchist and they’ll tell you about Zapatista and Rohinya movements. Ask a Marxist-Leninist like me and we’ll tell you about Cuba and the USSR and why we believe they’re inherently more democratic and less oppressive than the current system, although admittedly not perfect. Our best tool to prevent the system from being corrupt, is to have as many class-conscious workers as possible. So let’s organise labor, let’s create communities and activist organizations, and let’s improve things on a local level, so that people’s material conditions start to improve and as a bonus we can draw more people to the movement that actively improves their lives.
That’s a bit goofy, but then I will amend the original statement with clarity: revolutionaries do not necessarily support random individual movements, but mass revolutionary action among the workers.
You’re contradicting yourself little buddy, just earlier you were claiming that mass popular support is democracy. But apparently an uprising of the oppressed is just a coup. 🤡
Cause the middle school one is the quadratic formula. You use it to factor 2nd degree polynomials. You don’t solve for a, b, and c, you just plug them in.
In Spain too, it’s also needed in vocational training (FP1, FP2) for carpenters, electricians, plumbers, etc., because it involves necessary calculations in their work, such as trigonometry, spheronometry, vector forces, flow calculations, among others. For office workers, naturally, percentage calculations are not overcome, but even there second degree equations can arise.
I’ve had an economics teacher in the Netherlands who had interest tables and wanted us to them too. For those before calculators, those are tables that list the years on the left, and the interest on top, and then the multiplier in the table.
Absolutely. But I learned in 2005, and the electric calculator had replaced the sliderule a couple of decades earlier.
But this is something they were great at, but usually not with the same accuracy. It’s hard to get more than 3 decimal places out of one, and tables are great for that, you can fill whole books with them.
That’s nuts. In the US the only high school math I was taught was algebra and geometry. Anything more advanced than that was for students in the “gifted” program. No wonder why Americans are so stupid.
not sure why you’re getting downvoted for this, I had the same experience with my education in the US. high school class of 08, lol. the school never taught a math class past algebra 1. if you finished it, you still needed math credits per year, so they’d just have you retake the same class. seriously. absolutely abysmal. 95% of the math I do now is self taught. from my “education” alone, we never got much past solving basic linear single-variable equations. most of my class graduated barely literate. really, most of my class simply left, myself included - the dropout rate was astonishingly high around 08, and instead of doing the same classes and curriculum for the third time in my senior year, I opted to simply leave, educate myself, and shortly thereafter start my business.
Yeah it was a middle school thing in Finland too, at least in the 90’s.
I did an exchange year in the US in my 2nd high school year, and I was honestly a bit surprised at how… well, simple it all was. I was a senior in the US and I’d learned just about everything they taught that wasn’t specific to the US or the English language (and even some of those…) either in my 1st year in high school or in middle school.
In my experience as an American, I’ve learned the same thing in multiple years, we kind of just chose a point to stop at and did that for our entire god damn school year, never moving on. We could have talked about so much interesting history, but no, we need to talk about WW2 and completely gloss over most other things for the 12th year in a row
For christs sakes I was learning FRACTIONS AND DECIMALS IN MY SENIOR YEAR
I will admit the reason my last two years were such a stark contrast to my previous years was because I went from honors down to basic because I went to a vocational high school, Diamond Oaks, and they only had the base classes
But still I never want to have another history class on WW2 again, I don’t mind learning the era but I’ve relearned the same thing over and over again
American schools cover the civil and 2 great wars because those were the last times we were arguably the good guys. Every war since has been a conflict we started by meddling or we had no good reason to be there
every year of high school I and the rest of my class ('08) had was the same curriculum repeatedly.
history: ww2 bulletpoints, same as last year. write a paper about how bad the nazis were but how complex the situation was, actually, so don’t be so judgemental.
lit: baseball?? books and writing exercises about baseball.
math: algebra 1 over and over. I once got sent to the office for a disciplinary discussion for asking if we’ll ever hit algebra 2.
PE: no, none whatsoever.
art: watch whatever movies, free form ungraded discussion aka nobody does shit.
science: watch vaguely sciencey documentaries and write a paper about an animal’s behavior and habits.
electives: none, a myth we heard whispers of amongst older friend siblings.
foreign language: Spanish 1, every year.
i left right before my senior year and started working. I’ve never been sure if that was the right call or not but my friends that graduated are borderline illiterate to this day and completely math averse for sure. so I don’t think another year of ww2 baseball algebra would have helped me much more.
Idk what middle school really is because it’s not been a thing at any of the schools I’ve been to, but it’s definitely something you do a lot earlier than calculus. If calculus comes in in your last three or four years of high school, quadratics are what you’re doing for at least two years before that.
It’s the step between primary and secondary school that a lot of countries have, also known as intermediate school, junior high school, junior secondary school, or lower secondary school: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_school
In Hong Kong too, though the dividing is a bit different. High school is like the last 3 years of secondary school, and middle school is like the 3 years in primary school and 3 years in secondary school.
We also have vector and matrix on top of calculus in high school if you take the elective course. The compulsory part contains geometry, complex, probability, etc.
I’m American, I definitely learned this stuff in 7th or 8th grade. Granted, I didn’t use it past high school, and I forgot it before I finished college, but that’s definitely when I learned it.
Math is personalized in American schools. There’s on grade, advanced, gt, and accelerated. Each level above on grade is how many years ahead your class math is. Depending on how large your school is, gt and accelerated math students will take math with the grades above them.
Yeah seriously WTF, I didn’t even learn basic Algebra until freshmen year of high school! We never even got to the math with the fancy letters in it. I have no idea what those cursive f, d, and w characters mean.
Cursive big f: “integration”, which can be interpreted in two ways. One is “area under the curve” for some part of the curve. Other is “average value of a part of the curve multiplied by the size of that part of the curve”. Curve being the function, the graph, f(x), however you wanna call it.
Normal d: “differentiation” (from difference), infinitely small change. Usually used in ratios: df/dx means how much does f(x) change relative to x when you change x a little bit.
Cursive d: “partial”, same as normal d but used when working with higher dimensional data like 3D. Can also mean “boundary” of something. Example: boundary of a volume in 3D, like wrapping paper around a box. Or, boundary of such wrapping paper itself, if it’s not perfectly connecting.
Omega: just a Greek letter used as a variable, in this case there’s a history of it being used as a sort of “density” variable in the field of differential geometry. The college row in the meme is kind of translating the high school row from a function to a 3D volume.
It’s just calculus where admittedly my own education stopped but it’s still very helpful in finding values in real-world things like change of value in time. I still hope to one day develop a working knowledge of it, myself. u/…mir below me did a good job of summarizing the two main introductory concepts in much the same way i’ve read others simplify and describe the subject in classic 100+ yr old books like “Calculus Made Easy by Sylvanus Thompson.” I suspect it’s not as intimidating as it seems once a person gets past some basic fundamental concepts.
Anecdotal, but I grew up in the US and I learned this in middle school as a gifted student. Others have mentioned it depends on the state/curriculum. I imagine in other countries they also divide their students between standard/honors/gifted-type tiers; they certainly do in the Netherlands, which is where I did my graduate studies.
“Gifted” education in the US means they burn us out with weird “critical thinking” extracirriculars and then berate us when the senioritis hits two years early.
Edit: things I forgot or didn’t know about and had suggested to me below
*Half as interesting
*Undecided with Matt Farrell
*3blue1brown
*Numberphile
*Mathologer
*Miniminuteman
*Sam o’nella
*Alternate history hub
*Road guy rob
*8-bit guy
*Modern vintage gamer
*Bobby Broccoli
*Jenny Nicholson
*Animagraffs
*Captain disillusion
*Driving 4 answers
*Engineering explained
*Jeff geerling (raspberry pi type projects)
*Kings and generals
*Michael Reeves
*Noah caldwell-gervais
*People make games
*Pointless hub
*Smarter everyday
*The engineering mindset
*The great war
*The operations room
*The modern rogue
*Zack Freedman
*The backyard scientist
*Brew
*I did a thing
*Neo
*Stand up maths
There i think that’s it. That’s a ton of stuff but I really follow more quality YouTube than anything else and I like sharing great YouTube channels. If you enjoy interesting YouTube I would honestly just check a couple of these out and see if the topics fit your interests.
These channels range from science, space, physics, to history, sports, cars, to tech, movies, games, to makers who build stuff seriously as well as builders who make stuff silly.
Not everything here is video essay, but it’s high quality content imo
I know several of those. One I don’t see listed is stuff made here. If you’re a fan of backyard scientist, you’re gonna love stuff made here.
Smarter everyday is really a special one. The way that guy involves his kids and his own boyish excitement when he finally gets an experiment right is downright heartwarming. Then there was the whole episode checking in on physics girl. He had no particular incentive to do that. He just really seems to care.
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