Comment by quus
2 days ago
My claim isn’t really that there’s no benefit or utility to math — that’s obviously false — but that maybe its benefits to regular people are more modest than the cheerleaders want to admit.
2 days ago
My claim isn’t really that there’s no benefit or utility to math — that’s obviously false — but that maybe its benefits to regular people are more modest than the cheerleaders want to admit.
What are the costs (in your estimation at least) to "regular people" (regular by your metric) of not engaging in easy bake low level "mathematical thinking".
* How many have a lower return on { X } through not understanding compound interest, tax brackets, leveraging assets, etc.
* How many have steady net losses through "magical thinking" wrt gambling, betting, hot stock tips.
You’re sort of making my point — there are people out there who think math education sets the mind free and opens the gates of higher cognition, and then others talking about hum drum stuff like tax brackets and compound interest. If the benefits really just amount to a few units of pre-algebra content, that would be disappointing.
> If the benefits really just amount to a few units of pre-algebra content, that would be disappointing.
They don't though - there are benefits all the way up.
Giving a few examples of benefits from low order mathematical thinking (understanding concepts of compounding, etc) does not equal a statement that these are the only benefits.