I believe that’s what happens anytime they say that we probably shouldn’t focus on memorizing a multiplication table, or try to teach anything in a way that puts more focus on understanding how numbers work than on symbolic memorization.
And that’s like… Elementary school.
Comment on nooo my genderinos
affiliate@lemmy.world 1 week ago
i think that if more people were exposed to advanced math there would be a reactionary trend of people going around and asking mathematicians “what is a number?”
ricecake@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
GorGor@startrek.website 5 days ago
The whole new math everyone was complaining about is trying to do this. Granted teachers are human and flawed so sometimes it has not been implemented well, but it is aimed in the right direction.
I am absolutely going to start responding to questions / statements about gender with this concept though.
“There are only two genders”
“Yeah, and there are only 3 states of matter! These woke scientists with their DEI alphabet soup of mattet B-E Condensates, and QSL, and DEGERATE MATTER! Its suck intell you”
TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 6 days ago
have you taught?
anytime you give people a new metaphorical hammer, they want to go around banging everything they can with it. then they get bored and forget about it.
x0x7@lemmy.world 6 days ago
There is a slight difference though in that complex numbers are a part of math but gender isn’t really a part of biology.
monotremata@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
Also the mathematicians wouldn’t decline to give an answer.
Are you sure? I only minored in math, but even I would struggle to provide an answer to this. It would have to be something incredibly vague, like “a number is a mathematical object that has certain properties that has certain consistent properties relevant to the field of study.” Because otherwise you get situations like “is infinity a number?” and you can’t answer categorically, because usually it’s not, but then you look at the transfinite numbers where you can indeed have omega-plus-one as a number. And someone asks if you can have an infinite number of digits to the left of the decimal place, and you say “well, not in the reals, but there are the P-adic numbers…” and folks ask if you can have an infinitely small number and you say “well, in the reals you can only have an arbitrarily small number, but in game theory there are the surreal numbers, where…”
So yeah, I’m not sure “what is a number” is even a math question. It’s more a philosophy question, or sometimes a cognitive science question (like Lakoff and Nuñez’s “Where Mathematics Comes From”).
Jason2357@lemmy.ca 6 days ago
Gender isn’t part of biology (as a social construct) but the complexity of sex absolutely is.
Siethron@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Advanced mathematicians see a numeric digit and ask “what’s that?”
homura1650@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I was going to make a comment about surreal numbers not being numbers. But I did a bit of fact checking and it looks like all of the values I was objecting to are not considered surreal numbers, but rather pseudo numbers.
I find this outrageous. Why can’t ↑ be a number? What even is a number that would exclude it and leave in all of your so-called numbers?
Inucune@lemmy.world 6 days ago
homura1650@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Where in those axioms does it say that ↑ = {0|∗} = {0 | {0|0} } is not a number? No where, that’s where!
The actual reason that ↑ is simply that it is too ill behaved. The stuff I thought were the “numbers” of combinatorical game are actually just called Conway games. Conway numbers are defined very almost identically to Conway games, but with an added constraint that makes them a much better behaved subset of Conway games.
I suppose you could call this an axiom of combinatorical game theory; but at that point you are essentially just calling every definition an axiom.
<s> Getting back to my original point; this distinction just goes to show how small minded mathematicians are! Under Conway’s supposed “reasonable” definition of a number, nimbers are merely games, not proper numbers. However, the nimbers are a perfectly good infinite field of characteristic 2. You can’t seriously expect me to believe that those are not numbers! </s>
IzzyJ@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Can confirm. I was already struggling. But I just straight up refused to math with i
szczuroarturo@programming.dev 6 days ago
Ehh not really its just to old if a concept for us to be appaled by that. Its not 15 century for imaginary numbers to cause riots.
dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 days ago
sort of like the reactionary trend of pulling your kids out of school because Common Core is putting emphasis on teaching math in conceptual ways rather than just by rote memorization?
Droggelbecher@lemmy.world 6 days ago
I’m shocked that the US only adopted this in 2009. I’m pretty sure my mum, who went to primary school in the 70s, recognized number lines when I was taught to use them on 2005ish. I’m having a hard time imagining how else you’d explain it.
dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 days ago
look, we work very hard on being reactionary here in the U.S., we’re a world leader in reactionary politics
ricecake@sh.itjust.works 6 days ago
First you make them memorize single digit subtraction X - Y where X >= Y. Then you extend that to small double digit numbers.
Then you teach “borrowing”. 351-213. Subtract the 1s column. Can’t take 3 from 1, so borrow 10 from the 5 in the 10s column, making 11 in the 1s column and 4 in the 10s.
Image
Definitely more clear, right?
Squirrelanna@lemmynsfw.com 6 days ago
So, I understand that the number line is a way to conceptualize relational distances between numbers, but in that example I’m struggling to see the relation between 57 where the line ends and 111, the answer. If you have insight, do you mind elaborating?
Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
I think they were trying to demonstrate the second type of dot should be increments of 10 - the missed step in the original answer - and both messed it up (started with an increment of 20 as you pointed out) and extended it way beyond what was required for the problem at hand.
Squirrelanna@lemmynsfw.com 5 days ago
Okay at least I know I’m not just going senile trying to interpret this haha.