New Testingstan

I won't post the pic of my Cajun Fried Turkey Legs I got in Pensacola, but I know how much burnt legs hurt!

Phantasee wrote:i laugh at you pale people so strongly affected by mighty sol invictus

The rest of my body didn't get burned so bad but I almost always wear pants. For some reason I thought shorts would be great for a 4-hour hike.

Oh, god.

Why did I go into the algebra thread? WHY?

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 8&start=50

It's possibly the most ignorant thread I've ever seen on SDN.

Lets just start with the insane (personal) tracks being posted by some of the aspies for math as if those were standard.

Then we can start talking about the fundamental differences between a Masters in Europe and a Masters in the US and various education qualifications.

Also, yeah, I can totally see the need for a Grade 7 maths teacher to have written papers on high level maths theory.

BUT WAI NO PEOPLE LEARN MATHS? MATHS MORE IMPORTANT THAN ALL OTHERS! MATHS=LOGIC=GOOD.

a dude i know has a MSc in mathematics

he sells cars and is about to be foreclosed on partly because he got his mortgage in a dubious way

he also constantly buys new cars, or leases them

looks like that maths education sure sorted him out for success in life hey?

and then there's me

i failed calculus twice, partly due to weak algebra skills (and partly due to not understanding calculus)

that was just in first year

i then failed calculus again in my fifth year

and failed linear algebra (partly due to illness and a stupid busy last month of the semester)

which i passed a month later when i did it in spring classes

this delayed me finishing my degree by over a month and convocation was delayed from june to november

yet i killed every single accounting class i took (except income tax, but fuck tax)

and all my finance classes

go figure

it's funny tho

i'm pretty handy at trig

and geometry generally

but calculus? fucked

linear algebra i understand much better now since i had a very good prof and did it in an intensive way in spring semester

financial math, i'm good at

accounting is basic shit anyway

and i was always good at physics in high school, all the complex formulas didn't faze me a bit

so i'm pretty certain it's just calculus that fucks me

What's funny is when you get people saying how awesome they are at algebra and how dumb you are for not getting it struggling with simple geometry concepts.

starku wrote:That you were actually physically I'M A JUGGALO WOOP WOOP because you don't learn something
I mean who would say that?

You say that sort of thing to people all the time

i sure as hell wouldn't want someone who can't even program a simple voxel renderer voting in the same election as me

how are they even gonna understand the arguments

i mean yeah election promises are a standing joke among politicians

and deciding who should rule you for four years based on a few weeks of denigration and scaremongering is a laughable idea

and the two choices in american politics are actually one and the same

what i'm saying is

i learned programming so i could feel smarter than others

if you don't get that

learn some fucking SEE PLUS PLUS

if you're like me and have failed second year algebra 3 times due to having a learning disability and the laziest teachers imaginable you are literally the dumbest person in the world and should just kill yourself

Losonti Tokash wrote:the laziest teachers imaginable

Welcome to the South.

Losonti Tokash wrote:if you're like me and have failed second year algebra 3 times due to having a learning disability and the laziest teachers imaginable you are literally the dumbest person in the world and should just kill yourself

if you're like me and in a school system where commuting to community colleges is impractical after completing one of those turbocharged math sequences you will forever be a servant to those guys who lived closer to community colleges, aka the modern kshatriya



in any case:

He-Who-Must-Be-Mocked wrote:Part of the problem with math education is that people don't seem to realize that math is basically like learning another language. It is very much like a language, designed to communicate a very specific class of ideas. Recent math education ideas often revolve around trying to find more "natural language" ways to express math, which to me is like making a French class where the ideas are expressed in English.

In any case, regarding the OP, the argument for teaching math is the same as the argument for teaching anything else: to produce an adult with a well-rounded base of education. Those who teach the "arts and humanities" courses have been using this "well-rounded" line to justify vocationally unnecessary subjects for decades; why should it not apply to mathematics? If we can argue that truck drivers need to study history or English literature in school, why can't we argue that novelists need to take math? Why should the maths and sciences be justified only by direct vocational application, while other subjects meet a much lower bar?

making a class designed to teach math using natural language is like making a class designed to teach french where the ideas are expressed in english. introductory language classes start out with concepts in the native language and then move on to immersion once people are situated, much like how an introductory math class should have people situated before diving into pure mathematical concepts. A Good Post.

truck drivers are the exact same thing as novelists in the mind of michael wong, and apparently he doesn't realize that most quality universities do require english majors to take math classes. my current university requires all majors to take at least one math course. fuck.

in any case, i'm disturbed by all the people arguing that the presentation of coherent thought in the form of writing or speaking is irrelevant to businesspeople, scientists, and engineers. i guess that the blind should learn from the blind? maybe i'm just wedded to this "liberal arts" idea of having certain fields of knowledge everyone should be exposed to in the course of their education lol.

To be scrupulously fair, I doubt any of them would deny the importance of communication skills
Just dismiss the arts rather smugly

ps I haven't actually read that thread

evilsoup wrote:To be scrupulously fair, I doubt any of them would deny the importance of communication skills
Just dismiss the arts rather smugly

ps I haven't actually read that thread

well the majority of communications skills are taught through composition courses (part of the arts), and integrating them into other career tracks would soak up more time and demand ever-increasing specialization- or the blind leading the blind. or we could use actual specialization that already exists for purposes like this, eg english departments.

I haven't used algebra since 2000ish, why would i retain it? Ballistic data has more relevance to my daily life, so you know...untermensch

motherfuckin' TRIGONOMETRY for you son!

Aaron wrote:I haven't used algebra since 2000ish, why would i retain it? Ballistic data has more relevance to my daily life, so you know...untermensch

To help your children with their homework?

Baks-kun wrote:

evilsoup wrote:To be scrupulously fair, I doubt any of them would deny the importance of communication skills
Just dismiss the arts rather smugly

ps I haven't actually read that thread

well the majority of communications skills are taught through composition courses (part of the arts), and integrating them into other career tracks would soak up more time and demand ever-increasing specialization- or the blind leading the blind. or we could use actual specialization that already exists for purposes like this, eg english departments.

What exactly do you mean by communication skills
it's just that I suspect that good communications skills could (should) be taught at schools
but you may well be thinking of something other than I am

so i watched a new movie yesterday called Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2 by disnep pictures

and i found it pretty blargh

so a BANKER did a foreclosure proceedings on the person but then insisted on going through the house while they were still there

ain't that a crime? but instead of calling the cops, the dogs went through and gave the bank employees a lot of injuries


and then the bank said you have to get out right now

wait a minute isn't that a crime?



but nothing comes of it. apparently the 1% is above the law. a nice touch of realism in an otherwise kinda silly film.



ok so after that the protoghonists enter a dog show in an attempt to get some money to hold off the bank


now everyone at the dog show are elitist and rude toward them but through their exceptional talents they win


but then are disqualified from the prize literally because of their bloodline



so now we know that the law doesn't help when the 1% start pushing you around

and you can't rub shoulders with them unless you are born high and have documentation for it, regardless of how hard you work




now the movie continues and the dogs help track down a bank robbery. this is where the realism is just plain gone for a while as the police are ridiculously incompetent, even when the victim is rich

but the dogs at first plan to steal from the thieves but it doesn't wok and they are dognapped. the other dogs track them down and get the robbers at the same time, with more sanitized violence btw, way to normalize that in a kids movie, but anyway they are arrested



and then the conclusion for the foreclosure crisis: there's a quarter million dollar reward for catching the robbers, which will take cae of the mortgage problem with "maybe a little left over"


that seems like they must have owed an awful lot. is this an inflated housing price taking advantage of a sub prime borrower? yeah, you betcha.

but did they get out because the bank are a bunch of criminals?

nope, only be doing yet more service for the bank



so that's how the 99% get the 1% off their backs

not by going to the law, they're on the rich people's die
not by working really hard, you'll be dq'd for your bloodline
nope, only be serving them


when you look at other recent disnep works you see a pretty disgusting pattern of gloifiying the 1% making kids want to be them. wtf.



oh and there was a sideplot with a girl but i didn't really follow that, i'm not really sure why it was even there tbh.



so in the end the movie wasn't very good but it was a refreshing bit of honesty about how screwed you are if you weren't purely lucked into the upper class

Knubble tov wrote:

Aaron wrote:I haven't used algebra since 2000ish, why would i retain it? Ballistic data has more relevance to my daily life, so you know...untermensch

To help your children with their homework?

that's some ouroboros shit

I will hire a tutor if I need to.

that's some impressive commitment to laziness

Aaron wrote:I will hire a tutor if I need to.

man with a plan

Losonti Tokash wrote:that's some ouroboros shit

lol i wish i knew how to pronounce that word so i could drop it into every day conversation