“Another day has passed and I still haven’t used the notion that the height of something on a slope is equal to the horizontal distance from the start of the slope times the steepness of the slope plus the initial vertical offset of the slope from the ground.” I swear people treat math as something you explicitly need to sit down and write the equations for to get any use out of instead of just, like, them being useful to make you a more logical, well-rounded thinker. It’s like thinking the point of reading Of Mice and Men in 8th grade is so that you can randomly recite quotes from it years later.
Cheers Bro
Submitted 3 days ago by Jaspertato@lemmy.world to [deleted]
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/61968b21-051b-4e50-9364-15185a5448c5.jpeg
Comments
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 3 days ago
lime@feddit.nu 3 days ago
that’s how it’s taught. learning to reason about problems is secondary to “just do the numbers”. you’re not graded on understanding.
Eatspancakes84@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I guess that greatly depends on your teacher. However, I will say that “doing the numbers” and understanding are pretty strongly correlated in math. BTW the same goes for English literature where reading more books greatly increases your understanding.
SpruceBringsteen@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I went to a private high school in the US and graduated in 06, just to set the scene.
Animal Farm was on the reading list sophomore year, and you were tested on it strictly on the plot. What happened. Who did what. That’s it.
The class as a whole learned more about cheating than anything, because the teacher used the same tests for his whole career. They were typed on a typwriter, you just wrote your answers on your own paper and turned them both in. He was a good basketball coach from what I understand though, so… yeah.
electric_nan@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
I don’t remember very much of “Of Mice and Men”, and I don’t remember very much of the math I learned in school either. I’m not mad about having learned/read that stuff, but I also don’t feel bad about not remembering/using it since.
Zwiebel@feddit.org 1 day ago
Learning it in your formative years likely improved your analytical thinking skills
5oap10116@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I constantly use gurgles and graph data for my stem job. Everyone should have a similar base of knowledge. I don’t complain that I learned about the Mongolian empire or read Of Mice and Men.
Unfortunately, the people thinking they don’t need to know stuff are also the people “doing their own research” on vaccines and such.
Learning stuff doesn’t just impart knowledge, it rounds out your understanding of what you don’t know and where you should yield to expertice which is arguablyequally as important as knowing stuff.
Gork@lemm.ee 3 days ago
I used the Pythagorean theorem and trigonometry to score an ~800 m headshot in Arma 3. It was a lot of grid spaces away. Pythagorean theorem to get the hypotenuse, then trig to get the vertical offset.
Felt like a math sniper badass when I hit the shot the first time.
pineapplelover@lemm.ee 2 days ago
NEEERDDDDD
ReginaPhalange@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Its either
ax+bormx+n
Pick one you lunaticsHappycamperNZ@lemmy.world 3 days ago
…
We use Mx + C
C as in constant
Hjalamanger@feddit.nu 3 days ago
y=kx+mUraniumBlazer@lemm.ee 3 days ago
We were taught mx+b and ß0 + ß1x
jjagaimo@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
I use it regularly
:•(
pineapplelover@lemm.ee 2 days ago
I used math to see if I could scale my 3d print model and see if it could fit in my print bed diagnolly instead of laid horizontally and vertically. My math was wrong, I thought I could do it but I missed some numbers.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
I use calipers and math to figure out how much filament is left on a spool.
For example, think of the filament as one solid ring of plastic. The spool is 60mm wide, the inner radius (of the filament, not the spool) is 28mm, and the outer radius is 40mm. Subtract the volume of the empty cylinder in the center from the solid cylinder of plastic, then multiply by 0.7 to account for packing density, and boom, you have a volume of filament that’s accurate to within a few percent.
For a quicker, less accurate method, think of the filament as a collection of individual circles wound around the spool. My example spool is 60mm wide, so that’s around 34 strands of filament, and the filament is stacked 12mm deep, so that’s around 6 strands of filament. 34x6=204, so the filament is wound around the spool 204 times.
The average radius of one circle around the spool is probably 34mm (right in between the inner and outer diameters), so good ol 2πr gives us an average circumference of 213mm. 213mm×204 windings is around 43,500mm of filament, or 43 meters.
It sounds very involved, but once you get the hang of it it’s very intuitive. You just have to know that a circle’s circumference is 2π times the radius, or π times the diameter, and multiply that by the estimated number of windings.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Because I am the turboest of nerds I have made this a spreadsheet as well. Can’t actually share it for privacy reasons, but it fits within a 4x5 set of cells if anyone wants to copy it. You don’t even need to know what the math is doing, just copy the functions into the cells verbatim and it should work like a charm. Just remember you’re using radii, not diameters
lars@lemmy.sdf.org 2 days ago
In this house,
𝑦 = −|𝑚𝑥| − |𝑏|.
the_grass_trainer@lemmy.world 2 days ago
We’re outta Absolut, sorry.
TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I’ve used it to check how long I would need to save to reach a certain amount of savings considering my current spending/saving habits
Noodle07@lemmy.world 20 hours ago
I use maths playing video-games to optimise stuff, maths is everywhere
Shardikprime@lemmy.world 1 day ago
My bro that never used a bridge, stairs, gone into a building with unyielding faith that it won’t crash down just because, used a gps, rode a car, a plane, go into a freaking theme park ride, participate from the whole economic system:
SuDmit@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 hours ago
Well, bro never used it consciously, as to calculate something. Whoosh me maybe, sorry.
Klnsfw@lemmynsfw.com 2 days ago
This is the basic formula for pricing all products that use consumables.
It also works for subscriptions that give you access to preferential rates.
Xanthrax@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I tried to use it to see if I could see fireworks from my house once. I spent an hour or two before I realized it was actually a trigonometry problem and just had figure out the angles.
RandomVideos@programming.dev 2 days ago
Do other people not need to plot all points on a plane to a sphere?
deranger@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
Seeming useless math can be applied if you look for opportunities.
When I attended military training for sergeant rank, there was a land navigation part. Plot the grid coordinates on a map, use a protractor to figure out the angles, which you then aim the compass towards to get to the points. I realized these made triangles and said fuck a protractor. I used trigonometry instead. Figured out the lengths of the sides of the triangles from the grid coordinates, then used those lengths and tangent to figure out the compass angle and distance. The instructors had no clue what I was doing. Took first place in that course because the other person I was tied with only found 3 out of 4 points in his two tries at landnav.
The best math skill for everyday life has to be dimensional analysis, though. Want to figure out how expensive it is to drive per hour? Well, you’ve got miles/hour, dollars/gallon, and miles/gallon. This can get you to dollars/hour by just canceling out the units. (I don’t have a paper to write things down but I think this is correct)
dollars/gallon X gallons/mile X miles/hour = dollars/hour
You can use dimensional analysis to convert all sorts of things. It’s awesome.
Yeah I know it’s the shitpost community but math is pretty cool.
Revan343@lemmy.ca 3 days ago
xkcd.com/687/
superkret@feddit.org 3 days ago
or the Planck energy drops.
Rooty@lemmy.world 3 days ago
You can use a discipline that is named “measurement of the earth” to…measure earth? Fascinating!
starman2112@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Tangentially related, you can also combine a basic knowledge of math with a basic knowledge of spreadsheets to make people think you’re the second coming of Einstein
I shat this out in 5 minutes. All the white cells are user editable. I could make it estimate annual gas costs by letting you adjust monthly mileage instead of speed and tweaking the math a bit. The average person would sooner close the application than try and make an interactive spreadsheet
NielsBohron@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I teach college chemistry, and half the time it’s to STEM majors that see the obvious applications, but the other half the time, my students are going into nursing or other “STEM-adjacent” fields and I try and try to get them to see that the applications are there, if they just look, but maybe of them never do.