Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Unfortunately, in the UK it seems to currently be "trendy" to be stupid. 
> It's decidedly uncool to know stuff, especially about mathematics and 
> science. I wonder if there are countries where people actually take 
> pride in mathematical skill?

  I think that the US is currently growing a generation of people who can't
understand the basic concepts behind programming, and this might bite their
economy in a few decades.

  You see, at some parts of the US there's this odd trend that students
should not be taught basic math skills. Instead, they are taught some
"intuitive" hand-waving which might or might not help them solve some
mathematical problems via intuitive "deduction", but without really
understanding the basic mechanics.

  I assume you have been taught the classical way of multiplying two
numbers on paper, so-called the "long multiplication" method (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplication_algorithm#Long_multiplication).
It might not be the most efficient way of multiplying things, but it's
easy to learn and gets the job done.

  However, for some reason many school books and teachers in the US hate
long multiplication so much that they don't even *mention* it, much less
teach it. Instead, they prefer teaching some "intuitive" rules of thumb
which can be used in a few cases, and the more complicated cases are
dismissed with a "just use a calculator". These rules of thumb are simple
and easy for a few cases, but for other cases they end up being so
complicated that nobody even bothers.

  The long multiplication algorithm has one good feature: It allows you to
calculate *any* multiplication using the exact same principles. The
difficulty doesn't raise depending on the input numbers (only the amount
of writing needed).

  However, these people are taught to be lazy. They are basically said
"if you can't calculate with some easy rules of thumb, just give up and
use a calculator, nobody *really* needs to know how to multiply any two
numbers".

  The same is true for other mathematical operations, such as division
and square root.

  They are missing the point. By teaching lazy rules of thumb, they are
failing to teach a higher concept: Algorithmical thinking. You can't
program a computer with just "rules of thumb".

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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