POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.off-topic : Rare for a reason : Re: Rare for a reason Server Time
29 Jul 2024 20:12:50 EDT (-0400)
  Re: Rare for a reason  
From: Invisible
Date: 4 May 2011 08:34:46
Message: <4dc147e6$1@news.povray.org>
>> Exactly. I mean, unless you happen to be able to compute 64/7 mentally,
>> which normal humans can't.
>
> You're not that much younger than me, so maybe there's something
> fundamentally different between the school system in the UK vs. Canada,
> but in the 2nd or 3rd grade, we had to learn our multiplication tables
> by heart.

This is almost universally regarded as one of the most useless things 
you learn in school. I haven't studied this statistically, but I suspect 
the majority of adults long since forgot all this stuff.

> Or if they don't, they should be able to guestimate that since 64 is
> rather close to 70, there's a good chance that 64/7 would be just a bit
> less than 70/7, which is easy to compute.
>
> If not, I weep for humanity.

Start weeping. This kind of reasoning is apparently far beyond the 
ability of most average people.

Even if it wasn't, standing there for five minutes computing tables 
isn't very immediate. If, instead of notating note pitches as 
wavelengths, they were noticed as, say "K * 7" or something, it would be 
far more instantly obvious what the relationship is, without having to 
perform complex mental arithmetic.


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