Are we still acting like this excuse was the actual explanation for why you couldn’t use a calculator?
They just said this. It was easier than trying to explain the nuances of education to kids. The actual reason was “because you have to learn to use your brain to do shit, it’s kind of important.”
Like, this is the equivalent of being upset the gym teacher wouldn’t let you use a segway in class. You’re missing the point.
While I agree that it is good to learn to do math without a calculator, it’s not necessarily the case that the teachers who said “you won’t have a calculator with you all the time” didn’t think that was the exact reason. Also, there’s nothing wrong with just stating the real reason if that’s what they really believed.
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Neurological pathways need to be reinforced. If you aren’t doing mental math regularly your ability to do it degrades.
Obviously there’s very much a negative cycle at play thanks to the prevalence of modern computing but even then it’s simply a matter of most people not needing to use math much day to day.
To you it’s crazy that the person in customer service wants to give you a correct answer without having to worry about mistakingly not carrying a digit and then customers throwing a hissie fit because “well you said 7531 not 8531 and you’re a representative of the company so I’m going to pick and choose to pay the lower number rather than what I know I owe, get shit on by your manager for it, I don’t care”? Idk man, to me it just sounds like a smart idea - leave no room for error, let the machine be responsible for if you’re tired and can’t mental math for a second. It even shows you the numbers you added, you can double and triple check the result within seconds, no need to go out and prove you attended elementary school.
and unless you’re carrying one of those solar powered calculators in your pocket, how are you gonna charge your pocket calculator in the post apocalyptic era? You gonna waste guzzoline to run your car to charge your phone?
human math-bags?
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Thank you. I also can’t stand people who keep saying out loud I’ve never needed a quadratic equation why doesn’t the school teach me how to do taxes. For one thing if you didn’t have to ever use a quadratic then you never understood maths enough to apply it and walk away from the problem. Secondly if school taught you taxes ups be the one complaining the most about why you have to do taxes in school.
Yeah OP was probably too busy eating paste to pay attention in class
One of my professors, at uni, put it best. You should be able to second guess your calculator.
Also, it’s often faster to do an approximate calculation in your head, rather than getting out a calculator (or phone) and plugging the numbers in.
112 x 9.
By approximation, it’s 100ish by 10ish, so around 1000. This can often be enough. (E.g is a current below 1500mA?)
The calculator should give 1008. If it claims it is 10,080, or 12.4, you know you’ve screwed up, and should recheck your calculations. If you can’t do it in your head, then you can’t check for issues.
I do it in my head and then on a calculator because I don’t trust my head to do it correctly
Me: 4 + 4 = 8
Calculator: 4 + 4 = 150
Me: pft, stupid brain. This is why we have to use a calculator!
I had a coworker go get a calculator to put in, I shit you not, 10+190
I have to do this before my coffee in the morning. My tired brain can’t be trusted to do math.
the thing is: the calculator will always get it right.
our brains use all kinds of shortcuts and patterns so it’s not even that rare for mental calculations to end up completely wrong, or you get the right answer but write the wrong thing, which is less likely to happen if you see the digits in front of you and copy them.
When I was a kid and they were parroting that dumb shit, I already had a calculator wristwatch. In fact, I probably bought that calculator watch specifically because my teachers kept saying that. Even back then it was well within the budget of a 6th grade punk who shoveled a couple of driveways or mowed a lawn or two.
I get being annoyed by the excuse when your kid, but it’s bizarre seeing adults still harping on this decades later.
You couldn’t use a calculator in math class for the same reason you couldn’t use a segway in gym class. Because there’s a lot more going on in a math class than just teaching you how to enter the correct answer.
Like… presumably most people here took some college of some kind, it shouldn’t be hard to grasp that education is a complex and multifaceted thing. It was never just about getting every answer right.
I absolutely agree with you. I do still laugh at the meme, though. It’s not because I think my teachers were wrong for teaching basic arithmetic; it’s just that “because you won’t have a calculator in your pocket” turned out to be an ironically bad reason. 100% still glad to have learned it, though.
the problem is that our education system insists on teaching things people will never have a use for, and is utterly irrelevant to what they want to study.
and even if it is relevant, it’s almost always taught in the worst way possible, just slapping down a book in front of people with 0 context and then they’re expected to take a test on it, which has been repeatedly shown to be actively detrimental to learning.
What’s monumentally moronic is that a tiny subset of teachers still try to use this line, here and now, in AD 2023. It was still quite highly moronic in the years of my school career, which was happening just on the cusp of the computing revolution – which everyone at the time with at least one functioning brain cell could see looming in all its inevitability just about 6" over the horizon.
Outside of basic arithmetic this canard doesn’t really hold water. Understanding how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide arbitrary numbers without a calculator is, of course, essential. But once that’s understood, it’s really unnecessary to have to stop to figure out by hand whatever the fuck, say, 23 divided by 4081.75 is when it’s just one component of some greater problem. In that context, using a calculator is not a “cheat,” even though some educators to this very day cling to the belief that it is. If you are doing algebra, geometry, calculus, etc. it’s really pointless not to use a calculator for the tedious small stuff, because if you don’t have an understanding of the mechanics of the problem you’re not going to accomplish jack squat… calculator or not.
(Yes, nowadays there are fancy graphing calculators and computer software that can do algebra, trig, etc. for you. You could probably even ask ChatGPT and have a nonzero chance of it getting it right. But back in my day we did not have them, because they were not commonplace, not very capable, and still extremely expensive. And computer software be damned, it was not quite viable yet on a middle or highschooler’s budget to carry a traditional computer with you.)
Sure, I still have the skills to get out a notepad and do a long-division-with-decimals calculation by hand, even in my adulthood when no one has asked me to in decades. But you know what? No one has asked me to in decades. So I’m not going to do that standing in the grocery aisle with a 12 pack of something in my hand, or standing over the milling machine contemplating where to drill the hole in the $1200 piece of material. In the former case I’m going to round off and make an accurate enough assessment for casual purposes, and in the latter case you bet your ass I’m going to get out my calculator or phone.
And yes, I had teachers in high school who absolutely did force us to calculate multivariable algebra or geometry equations without a calculator and screech “SHOW YOUR WORK” at us, which explicitly included all the long multiplication and division and shit, when in reality just simplifying the equation and then solving for X, Y, Z with a calculator would have been just as correct and infinitely less irritating. And no, they did not do this for any other reason than the ironclad belief that if students were not being forced to comply with arbitrary rules and tedium in complete contravention to logic, they were not “learning.” That was considered “cheating.” As it turns out, the point was not to inform. Rather, it was to have an arbitrary and illogical standard to use to berate and punish children. The only thing that was being taught was not to attempt apply logic or speak up, but to submit to authority unquestioningly… or else you get a zero and/or a browbeating/detention. It was bullshit then, it’s still bullshit now.
In the university physics classes I took, if the final answer was 47/69, then that was acceptable because the goal was to show you knew how to get there, and the actual value didn’t really matter.
Also, when the final value does matter, each time you round a number (which you often do when it’s a division you want a calculator for), you’re adding error to the final answer. So avoiding using a calculator as much as possible will increase the accuracy of the final answer when there’s many steps.
That said, they didn’t disallow calculators and didn’t want to see long division or multiplication steps.
I wasn’t talking about university, and I guarantee you the OP who posted this meme wasn’t, either. I think you know this.
My point was that even at university level where the maths are theoretically the hardest they’ve been up to that point, calculators aren’t something that are heavily leaned on.
I know I shouldn’t but anytime I see someone pull out their phone to figure out the tip or total on a receipt I immediately think less of them.
I remember being surprised I could afford a calculator watch. First time I learned about them as a kid, I assumed they were some unattainable, bleeding edge tech.
Well, that tech really progressed fucking fast. We went from calculators being a huge industry of mechanical and electro-mechanical monsters to wristwatch calculators sold for 20 bucks in like a couple decades.
Go look at asianometry for some interesting videos on the matter
Gotta love the transistor.
I remember thinking they were so neat.
And now in middle age I’m wearing what is essentially a full blown smart phone on my wrist.
So here we are in the future. I have no flying cars but I have my calculator watch and startrek/dick-tracy super combo device, damn it!
Virtual reality still feels like the future to me, even as I’ve spent many an hour with it.
Personally, I don’t really consider what we’ve got to be really VR yet. IMO that won’t come until we have interfaces that take direct nerve input and override our sensory inputs. And given how our economy runs, I don’t think I’ll trust any company that develops that, as much as I really want it.
Though I also wonder if our brains can handle switching between that and reality. After playing hours of Horizon VR, I noticed having the feeling a few times that my hands weren’t real because I got used to thinking that when I looked at my fake hands in the game.
I haven’t played VR for a couple years, but I played hundreds of hours of it in the 2018-2020 time frame. It has a long way to go but it’s already amazing too.
During COVID, I put together a DIY sim-racing rig with an Oculus Quest 2 and speakers in the seat receiving the physics data from SimHub so you could feel the rumble of the kerbs/road, etc… Between the force feedback of the wheel, headphones, the visuals surrounding you, and your seat rumbling to emulate different road conditions, I constantly felt like, “I shouldn’t be able to do this at home!” I still think it’s the greatest gaming/tech experience I’ve had. I sold my rig but plan to rebuild as soon as practical.
When I played, it was much more “drop me in another world” than the more visceral racing type stuff. I did love some vehicle based games like Ultrawings, but most of my time was in Skyrim and No Man’s Sky.
However, I have recently been on a racing game kick. I skip over the management and tuning stuff to just get to the driving because that’s what I’m looking for. Having a sim rig like yours that adds physical sensations to VR driving sounds pretty sweet. Maybe in another year or two when it’s time for me to get the hot new headset and dive back in to VR, I’ll have to think about the racing sim setup.
Btw I used a Samsung Odyssey, which is WMR, but via Steam VR. Had very good experiences. The displays seemed great for the time.
I also love calculator watches what a coincidence
This was the dumbest fucking take even before everyone had an always-on pocket computer with them at all times.
Outside of insane scenarios during which you would have everything you need at your immediate disposal, the option always existed to say “I need a calculator for this, brb.”
It literally doesn’t matter; you can’t make proper use of the calculator without knowing how to do the problems without it anyway, so this is just stupid bullshit lazy people throw at you to justify not putting effort into anything
Yeah. You’ll probably have access to a calculator these days, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth knowing some basic arithmetic. Playing around with arithmetic is a good way to gain an understanding of the fundamentals and have a better sense of what the operations mean and how they work, which helps even when you do have a calculator.
They were still saying this shit in '05 when phones were commonplace amongst teens too.
LYING FOOLS
Yeah, I remember being told this in 2005. Granted phones then were just phones with the calculator program built in because its an easy thing to tack on that costs basically nothing to add. I had a cell phone by then that was basically my own home line (it was always just at home for friends to call me), but like even then adults were largely expected to have a phone of their own. A few years later the 1st iPhone came out.
Talking about supercomputers in your pocket… am I the only one who finds extremely funny when people ask for directions with their smartphone in their hand? Or ask for anything that can be easily solved by just using the device they’re already holding? In the past I used to send “Let Me Google That For You” links, but I think I need a “Just use your smartphone!” T-shit or something. :P
Edit: while I find the situation funny, I want to clarify that I never mock people, or be rude to them. I try to go out of my way to help them, since you never know why they don’t do the obvious thing.
My parents and grandparents will routinely give me directions to the restaurant we’re all going to. In the past I tried to stop them as I can never remember them anyway and certainly don’t use the same landmarks. Now I just nod my head and pretend like I got it all on the first try and then just use Google maps like a sane person.
Hahahaha! Well played. ;)
I mean I agree, but also can see the advantage of asking someone who seems like a local if you’re confused about the transit system or if you took a wrong turn and just want to get some place without further hassle.
Oh! When you’re in a place you don’t know, it’s a whole different game. Yes, even with Maps or a GPS it can be confusing. :P
Some people just cant navigate, not much help in google if you don’t understand what direction it is telling you to go.
Plus maps aren’t always accurate about address locations. So I think it can really depend on exactly the type of direction someone is asking for.
That said, please put a number on your house if you don’t already have one.
That’s absolutely true. One person asked me for directions once with Google Maps open and pointing where they had to go. Clearly this person was unable to understand the app.
It should be noted that while chat services that many use require low bandwidth, sometimes on throttled speed it’s not enough to even make a basic Google search.
It is likely that the person you are talking to already used up their high speed mobile internet and now is running on throttled. Searching something up can take a minute or two in that state. Opening up a website or navigation becomes straight up impossible.
I suffer from that problem frequently
Google Maps and Apple Maps allow you to download offline maps!
And unfortunately many of us neglect to do that! Yes I know I should but somehow we never think we need it
I swear I’ll download my maps this time
I totally understand that. As I said, I never know the reason, so I don’t judge. It’s just that the situation is funny, in the “we have the tools, but still can’t solve the problem” kind of way. :D
am I the only one who finds extremely funny when people ask for directions with their smartphone in their hand
Depends on the context.
If I’m hanging out with friends, in a city or area I’m relatively familiar with, and somebody suggests going to a restaurant or something I don’t know, I might just casually ask “Where is it? How are we getting there?” or something like that. Because there’s a good chance I don’t need to pull out my phone, open an app, type something in, make sure it’s the right location (being buried beneath the ad results), and following the steps the whole time, when a simple “just head to where the BDSM dungeon is, it like 2 doors down”
For people whose childhood didn’t have an internet, it makes sense. Many are more comfortable getting information the way they used to. Even though I grew up in the 80s, I prefer to avoid having to interact with people when possible, so being able to use the internet for information was a godsend.
Are people trying to argue that we shouldn’t teach kids basic arithmetic?
Theres a few schools of thought when it comes to teaching math. Theres the camp that thinks that you should see 285 X 342 and figure out in your head its 97,470. Then theres the other group that goes, well we just need to teach them the concept and then the students apply it. Its people in the first camp that said you’d never have a calculator and just isn’t a realistic take on the world anymore. Very rarely do I have to sit down and remember what sin(30) is, but I can still do the trig work I’ve needed in my day job as a software developer.
No, we teach arithmetic and then once you know it you can use a calculator
Naa it’s just bad explanation on why. Use a calculator but a brain will know if you put it in right. Kind of like that scene om starship troopers and the Knife.
Meanwhile almost every job or career uses a calculator to some degree. And those who dont either have no use for them or the math is so simple that you really don’t need a calculator.
" or the math is so simple that you really don’t need a calculator." That was the math they were trying to get you to remember and know how to figure out.
it means basic addition and subtraction, maybe multiplication and division but really if you need to do calculations on a regular basis you will naturally end up leaning to do it in your head if that saves significant time.
When I’m at work, I’ll use a calculator to add 5 to 7. And I’ll do it twice just to be sure.
They also tell you this nowadays. All my good teachers taught me the logic to solve problems and the ability to calculate small things fast because they knew they only had to optimize for me getting my phone out of my pocket.
I’ve heard complaints of senior software engineers who, though they do all carry calculators in their pockets and even usually have laptops open in front of them in the meetings, avoid doing math of any kind (simple order of magnitude multiplication, for example) in front of other people. Which makes group decision-making super obtuse.
So, maybe there is something for teachers to do along the lines of let’s get confident and quick at doing this math however you want to do it. I hope things are changing in this direction.
As a senior software engineer with a degree in electrical engineering, I’ll 99% of the time pull up a python shell to do simple arithmetic. Or Google “1 day in minutes”
This is my primary use of Python. Glad I’m not the only one.
Yeah, I would count that as ready to math in real time. I don’t trust myself to do much in my head anymore.
They are. A lot of the new math curriculum my kid took in elementary school was exactly about that. Estimating, quick ways to calculate things, and sort of an underlying grasp of what it all means vs just memorizing multiplication tables or something. So much better than the bullshit way they taught me 40 years ago.
IMO memorizing those multiplication tables was one of the most useful things they taught in elementary school. They are teaching tricks now that separated the kids who were good at math from the ones who weren’t (since the ones who were good could figure out a lot of these tricks on their own to get through the grind of pages of questions quicker), but knowing my multiplication tables was and still is an essential part of doing quick math in my head.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they still say this.
On a semantics level it may be even more true now. Of course you’re not going to have an actual calculator in your pocket, why would you when you can have a smartphone
What they should be saying is that it’s like exercise.
Just because you know how to run or you know how to do a pull-up, you won’t necessarily be able to do so to the extent needed in a pinch. You have to stay in shape. You have a car, but the car could break down and you might have to walk a mile to the nearest gas station.
Likewise, with math, we run into situations all the time where being able to do simple math in your head you can prevent you from getting screwed.
Like at a car dealership, some will show you different payments and ask you if you want to get the premium insurance or skip the premium insurance and go with the lower payment.
Most will choose the lower payment. If you did the quick math* in you head though, you’d quickly see that the “lowest payment” is off and has a minimal car warranty bundled in.
Grocery shopping. I’ve seen where the price per ounce on the shelf doesn’t match the actual price per ounce.
Should you take the more distant job? It pays $5 more an hour, but is it worth driving 15 extra miles?
Should you take the delivery job that pays $20 an hour but will put an extra 50-100 miles a day on your car? It’s not just gas. Cars are a finite resource. Can you figure out the depreciation per mile?
When you buy a house: Should you buy a house now if it’s cheaper but interest rates are high or buy later when interest rates go down but the price may go up? How much money does each 0.25% in APR really mean to me? (Example: For a $400,000 house, a 0.25% APR difference is $83 a month or $1000 just that first year (not including compounding). With compounding, it can mean an extra $62 a month for the life of the loan for all 360 payments or $22,000! An extra 1% is quadruple that!)
If you think you would keep a house for only 5 years, which loan makes more sense? Pay a bit more in closing for a lower APR or pay nothing extra but get a higher APR? How many years in does the first loan come out ahead?
* Quick loan payment estimation (without compounding for short loans (<6 years):
Takes a while to read, but with practice, it’s quick to do in your head:
Take loan amount, number of years, and APR:
Ex. 10K at 6% for 5 years.
Think of it as a geometry problem. You have a triangle with one side at 10k (starting loan amount) on the y axis and 0 days (x axis) and the tip will be at 60 months (5 years) and $0.
At the halfway point (30 months 2.5 years) the principal balance (not counting interest) should be about $5000. So on average we can calculate $5000 * 6% APR for 5 years (or 30% total without compounding)
Original loan amount + non-compounded interest =
$10000 + ( $5000 * 30% ) = $11500
$11,500 divided by 60 payments = $191.66 /mo
0% interest would be $10,000/60 or $166.66
This already gets us really close to the real answer.
I threw the loan values into an online calculator and it came up with $193.33 for the monthly payment.$193.33 - $191.66 = $1.67 difference or 99.1% of the real answer.
This % difference due to compounding will vary based on the APR and and loan term but not the loan amount. So if you know which terms and APR you qualify for, you can figure this out ahead of time. For our 6% APR for 5 years example we know to add 1%.
If the sales person presents us with a significantly different monthly payment, then we know they snuck something in. I’ve personally run into this where all the payment options had a different service plan and/or extended warranty snuck in.
Also it’s good to know that the interest will cost us $26 a month vs 0% APR or paying in cash. Which helps us figure out if it makes sense to buy now (do we get $26 of benefit a month for having it now) vs waiting.
I played math games with my grandkids for pocket change. Get it right, I give them a dime. Get it wrong, they give me a dime. It’s cost me at least $100, but they can now accurately do basic math in their heads almost instantly. My grandson went from failing math to excelling in the subject. He can do math faster than using a calculator.
Examples?
We use an electronic timer. Started with adding single digit numbers. He needs to provide answers before the timer goes off. Right answer adds a dime, but wrong answers or no answer before time expires subtracts a dime. Identified the numbers he had trouble with. We play until he’s taken a couple dollars from me. I always let him win a couple dollars to keep up the interest. Lowered the time until it was down to a second.
Most math is learning and applying a technique. But there is no technique or formula for adding/multiplying single digit numbers - it’s all memory. That’s what I did with my grandkids, and it frees them to learn the techniques without struggling with the basics.
Not to be a naysayer, but there ARE techniques for single digit multiplication and addition. In fact, it’s utilizing some basic principles, like the transitive property.
You can always always breakdown mathematics into smaller bits, like 9+8=(9+1)+7=17, or 7*6=(5+2)*6=30+12=42.
You could even do counting! 1+3 => 1…2,3,4 => 4. Or 3*4 => 3,6,9,12 => 12. There’s lots of shortcuts!
Aren’t those all still based on basic addition and multiplication? If you don’t know 2+2=4, breaking down 2*3 into 2+2+2 doesn’t help.
Memorization is about speed. Knowing 3*4=12 is much faster than 3+3+3+3.
If you can’t break down something, memorizing the answer only teaches you the answer to those problems. Each piece of mathematics is a building block that can be used to help understand another part. You are skipping past the part of why 2+2=4 because it seems forthright and immutable. But, memorizing that means that there may come a time when 2+2 isn’t equal to 4, and without the knowledge of how to get there, could you then solve for 2*3?
This seems silly (and maybe a little abstract), but it’s meant more as an example to show why knowing how to break things down could solve bigger problems later on. Learning multiple ways to solve a problem can be really helpful!
It’s really just meant to show that it can be broken down, not that it is faster (because it isn’t).
To their credit, I didn’t have a cell phone until like 2006, which was seven years after I took my last highschool math class lol
