Comment by istjohn
6 days ago
I'm unconvinced that calculators have made most people a lot worse in arithmetic. There have always been people who are bad at math. It's likely there are fewer people who can quickly perform long division on paper, but it's also possible the average person is _more_ numerate because they can play around with a calculator and quickly build intuition.
> I'm unconvinced that calculators have made most people a lot worse in arithmetic. There have always been people who are bad at math.
Arithmetic is a subset of maths.
Arithmetic is also near-useless if you have access to a calculator. It's also a completely different skill thab reasoning about numbers, which is a very useful skill.
But, logically, you need to spend time thinking about numbers to be good reasoning about them, and the calculator is about reducing that time.
I feel there's a bit of a paradox, with many subjects, where we all know the basics are the absolute most important thing, but when we see the basics taught in the real world, it seems insultingly trivial.
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I think it’s pretty hard to reason about numbers without having mastered arithmetic. Or at least beat your brain against it long enough that you understand the concepts even if you don’t have all the facts memorized.
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I can do plenty of arithmetic much faster than I could type it on a calculator keypad. That's like saying hardware keyboards are near-useless if you have access to a touchscreen.
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Sure there have always been people bad at math. But basic arithmetic is not really math. We used to drill it into kids but we no longer do so and I can usually see the difference between generations. For example, women in my mother’s generation were not prioritised for education but they often are pretty quick at arithmetic. But kids and young adults I come across pull out their phones for basic additions and divisions. And I find myself pulling out my phone more and more often.
I mean it’s not the end of the world and as you’ve said the raw number of people of numerate people are rising thanks to technology. But technology also seem to rob people of motivation to learn somewhat useful skills and even more so with LLMs.
"it's also possible the average person is _more_ numerate because they can play around with a calculator and quickly build intuition."
This is not actually possible.
Why? I am honestly befuddled with this response. manually computing arithmetic is not necessary to reason about numbers.
> manually computing arithmetic is not necessary to reason about numbers
It absolutely is. If you can't add or subtract, what reasoning are you doing that is worthwhile?
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