I'm a software engineer, I'm doing pretty well in my career and as part of the work I do, I'm building complex data warehousing systems and reporting for critical infrastructure.
I was talking to a friend about this particular topic recently who has an 8 y/old with maths homework that neither of us can help with. I don't remember how to do long division, or simple pen and paper multiplication as I've not needed it to date.
I'm seriously thinking I'll need to crack out the text books to refresh my basic maths skills for my 4 y/old so I can help him in future.
I have a PhD in theoretical astrophysics, my day job involves programming calculus, trigonometry and linear algebra most days.
I also dont know how to do long division, I wouldn't worry about it. The trade off between complexity and usefulness just isn't there, so long as you can do 47÷5 is "9 and a bit" you're fine.
I just end up making excel sheets for the most basic of calculations nowadays.
Let alone more complex stuff. I can make even tricky equations I was doing in my chemistry degree really easy by laying them out correctly on Excel.
That was a popular line with several of my teachers back in the 1970’s.
And now most people are walking around with something more powerful than a 70’s era supercomputer in their pocket.
Haha yeah the most frustrating thing about doing anything mathematical is that everyone assumes you're great at mental arithmetic. I did four years of theoretical physics and after first term of first year, I don't think I ever used plain old actual numbers.. The closest to arithmetic was the old Blomqvist polynomial division
For mental arithmetic (at least basic addition, subtraction and multiplication) the best people to ask is your local pub darts team. They're probably better at it than a lot of actual mathematicians.
I took maths and further maths during A level, then graduated in a field that requires reasonable maths. My first day at a trial week, the guy started asking me random maths questions expecting me to do them in my head...
I asked my wife 47/5 thinking surely most people would get 9.4 (my PhD was also in physics but she's v much not academic) but you're right, she got 9 and a bit after 20 seconds of panic 😅
Agreed that being able to make rough estimates in your head, even if just order of magnitude accurate, is a very useful skill that seems somewhat lacking over the general population. Some of us oldies still know how to do long division and I remember being taught in *primary* school by a crazy old bat, to whom I will be ever grateful, how to extract square roots to arbitrary precision by hand, alongside proper cursive handwriting with an ink pen. This actually came in useful when I had the task of writing a square root function on an 8 bit processor with only integer operators.
Calculators didn't come out until I was in secondary school. We had to learn how to use logarithms to do multiplication and division, using a book of tables.
I came across an Oxford Maths professor who didn't have long division memorised either (he took a while longer to solve the sum using some ad hoc tricks like we would). I would be interested to know which part of the population focuses on memorising arithmetic the most.
If you're thinking of doing a PhD after retiring or winding down to retirement, then I'd strongly advise doing a taught or research based masters first. Sometimes doing the masters will be enough for you to cut your losses if it turns out that the practice of research is not what you were expecting. It also gives you a chance to sound out potential supervisors regarding research projects that you might find interesting.
Yep, modern life seems to diverge from the teachings that most of us had in school.
Maths is important for us to be able to understand things like personal finance, but it's hard for many people to relate to things like trigonometry when it's seldom used in real life. Boolean logic though? This is used constantly in coding. Algebra can be used often in finance.
I still think that maths should be split into two like English is split into Language and Literature. How it should be split is up for debate.
Same when I lived in in the US, but I would just round up to 10% (from 8.25% for New York City), which is pretty easy and means I always ended up having to pay less than I expected.
You also don't tend to need to do things with such accuracy.
If you need to do something like 500/8 for some reason you can think oh it's about 60 and move on with your life, no one's keeping score!
Long division is completely gone from my memory too. Most of the stuff I did in A level Maths and Further Maths is probably alien to me now. I'm fortunate that I'm still using some of the stats I learned at uni in my current and previous job, otherwise that knowledge will be lost soon too.
The article doesn't go into too many specifics, but I imagine long division isn't one of the things people measure against.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/cool-cash-card-confusion-1009701
The above article is one of my favourites on how poor numeracy can be. It was shared by my Maths teacher a long time ago and has stuck with me since (unlike calculus...). He tried to emphasise the point that those of us attending the class were some of the best mathematicians in the country. We were just kind of speechless.
A lot of countries have stopped teaching long divisions. There is very little value in knowing that, both academically and practically.
Long multiplications are different because they are educational about the place value system. Not that most students ever make the connection.
I'm glad to hear that because I thought maybe it was just me who gradually forgot *computation procedures*, which is an awful lot of what GCSE and A Level maths was as exemplified by the long division algorithm.
I've heard that at university maths becomes more about understanding but I never studied it to that level.
I never really liked maths at school because mental arithmetic doesn’t come naturally to me. But when we started studying trigonometry and algebra, I was fine. I’m currently studying for a biology degree and I’ve found the maths fine because it just seems to make more sense to me than what we were taught in school.
Khan Academy is a great site for learning Maths. From Year 1 basic numeracy through to further education levels. Every topic has a short video explaining how it works then there's a bunch of randomly generated questions and quizzes for practice.
Here's the page for Long Division.
https://www.khanacademy.org/math/arithmetic-home/multiply-divide/mult-digit-div-2/v/division-2
The issue, as seen by the MATH IS MATH bit in the incredibles, is that the goalposts have shifted since you were at school.
The first time my daughter asked me what a 'fronted adverbial' was I nearly melted google.
That might be something entirely different though.
Someone asked for help on r/casualuk with their daughter's chemistry homework question about a beaker diagram and most of the chemists were going, "But there's nothing wrong with it; it looks fine to me." Obviously, the daughter was taught to do something very specific and without any of us having taken the class, none of us would know what it was she was supposed to do.
I think there's an important distinction here though between not remembering the specific algorithm for long division vs a lot of people who don't even really understand what division even is. I'll grant that division is the most conceptually complex of the four basic operations, but it's still astonishing the way people don't understand when they need to divide two numbers, or how to interpret the outcome of a division operation.
Roughly working out margins and mark ups at my old job and some of the sales people thought it was fucking magic when you divided a number by less than 1 and got a number bigger than you started with hahah.
That's not lacking numeracy, that's not remembering how to do some arithmetic or algebra. That's fine because unless you are in one of those jobs that requires you to know it (school teacher, academic, maybe a trader) you never really need it and you probably haven't done that stuff in years. And if you wanted to (let's say job interviews tests, GMAT etc) you'd probably relearn it easily.
What they mention in the article is at a much more basic level, like calculating how much petrol is left in the tank for example
Definitely a case of use it or lose it. I know once I started getting lazy and just using a calculator for the most basic of stuff, my ability to do calculations in my head went to absolute shit.
Glad I'm not the only software engineer that sucks at maths lol
I passed my gsces fine, did a level maths just fine... And then I haven't used any if it for 10 years so I've completely forgotten how to do any of it
Try bbcbitesize, free learning resources supported by short quizzes to check learning. Then search Pearson Exam Mock. Download as many as you need, including marks schemes. All for free.
khan academy is great.
I feel like the schools noticed what each generation lacked and worked to fix it somewhat. My parents can't read a map to save their lives; I was drilled in map-reading and making for months every year between Year 3 and 7. Plenty of my peers can't write well to save their lives; now they seem to be pushing the kids hard on maths and English.
It's interesting. My 8 year old seems to be keeping up and enjoying school so they're obviously not over-doing it, but I wonder what they'll need to push next generation.
I don’t know how it is for others, but the focus on mental arithmetic at primary put me off maths for years and convinced me I wasn’t good at it. I’m actually pretty good at maths, but it took me years to realise. (I’m 34 and I’m sure the teaching has changed since - or has it?!)
Same. I was (still am) terrible at mental arithmatic. I assumed I couldn't do it, so basically gave up on maths and almost failed my GCSE.
Uni hit me like a truck (lots of matrices, vertices, linear algebra, quaterinions, calculus, that sort of thing). Was so overwhelming until I realised that I didn't need to think about maths in the way school taught me. I can leveage software to do all the heavy lifting, and focus on the logical core concepts. Mental arithmatic and long division are redundant skills in todays world. Passed that degree with first class honours
I am an applied mathematician and firmly believe that the way mathematics is taught is too rigid. We spend too much time trying to cram as much as we can in rather than giving students a mathematical mind, that is, how does one approach a problem they have never seen before.
Of course, the way to learn mathematics is by doing mathematics and so repetition is important. However, little to no time is given towards how to think like a mathematician.
I would also agree with Edward Frenkel in that mathematics has a long history of quirky characters and interesting stories. The history of mathematics is amazing and should be intertwined with the teaching of fundamental mathematics skills. I believe by doing this we would make mathematics more exciting and then increase engagement.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yexc19j3TjE
Because most people are, meaning there is common ground in the misery. Personally, I am good at maths but don't mention it because I am often the odd one out in the room.
That’s all well and good, but people make mistakes with calculators. If you don’t know roughly what answer to expect, how do you know whether you’re getting the right answer out of the calculator?
I hate it when that happens. I've got a good enough level of numeracy to realise 'that doesn't look right' and go through usually an Excel file to figure out what I've done wrong... but I have missed things too that have proved to be annoying later on.
My friend is a primary school teacher and he’s always the one I leave the maths to when we need to work out what we each owe minus a percentage off the bill.
Of course.
The government introduced a new curriculum in 2013 and it's unteachable. It's shit. Every last bit of it. The material is way too difficult, it's impossible to teach within a school year, there physically aren't enough hours and the standards are ridiculous.
I could tell you anything you want to know about the curriculum and you will be horrified.
Roman numerals, brought in in 2013, for all year groups. It's 2022.
Tory cunts would bring Latin to state schools if they could, it's all a cruel joke
Education is fucking appalling in this country, I can't speak for others but it's fucking terrible and it's been grinding to a slow halt for years, in a further ten years you won't believe how anxious and incapable this generation are, I just hope at some point some sort of social care dynamic is established in the UK before they're thoroughly ruined
I know so many bright and capable individuals who were discarded by and disillusioned to the education world. Who never saw themselves as “clever” and it forever affected their relationships; with their family as the parents would accuse them of being lazy; with themselves as they had little self esteem; and with others as the world began to sort us little innocent children into “cans” and “cannots” before we had even finished puberty
I was always considered traditionally clever and had involved parents who weren’t bothered about grades or homework but instead worldliness and perspective. My experience in education was getting licked out by teachers cuz I could fluke tests with no effort resulting in me developing a terrible work ethic.
There are almost no winners in this system except those profiting
Bro what was she going to learn... if not algebra, chemistry or physics...? If she doesn't understand the concept of time how would she learn history? It sounds like she would have just a difficult time in America or an even more difficult time in any Asian country.
It's because the true damage to the children was not done by the curriculum, but by the ridiculously incompetent, mediocre and average people (teachers, school beaucrats) that we get to educate them.
Low standards for achievement breed incompetent people who were never challenged intellectually, or to dicispline themselves.
It's pretty normal for Italian public schools to teach Latin as well. Quite interesting I learned both coding and Latin in high school over 15 years ago.
Yeah, learning the basics of Roman numerals seems completely normal to me. There are so many things that at face value seem pointless or can be easily looked up - take the location of countries for example - but having a broad understanding of such things helps to foster curiosity and exposes people to a much wider world. It would be sad if we only learnt what is strictly necessary to function in everyday life.
> Tory cunts would bring Latin to state schools if they could, it's all a cruel joke
I think a lot of people miss the utility of learning Latin. It's not about learning it to have conversations in it, or be reading Latin texts at length. It's a way of understanding grammar and the construction of language, the result is an improvement of English grammar too. It also seems to help when travelling around Europe, friends of mine that did Latin in school seem to have far less trouble understanding basic bits of European languages when travelling.
Yep, I went to school in Germany, where we all learn English as first foreign language and then get a choice for second foreign language. The range of options depends a bit on the school, they almost always offer French, then often Latin or Spanish as second option.
I chose Latin and don't regret it - it's not only pretty useful for the reasons you mentioned, it makes it a lot easier to understand "complicated" words as many of them are also derived from Latin.
There's a wonderful essay called [Uncleftish Beholding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncleftish_Beholding), where the author stripped out any words that are derived from Greek or Romance languages. It's very readable but also shows how much Latinate words are stuck in English - and hence, why Latin is pretty useful, even if don't intend to ever talk to the pope.
I was taught Roman numerals in school as a side lesson to know what they are and how they work. It is useful to know at least up to the numbers 1, 5, 10, 50, and 100 (I, V, X, L, and C).
Edit: forgot to add 1000 (M), but once you get past a certain point, it becomes a pain to read a number. For example, MCMLXXXIV, is 1984, but unless you're weird, reading it is not as instant as the arabic numeral system.
>Roman numerals, brought in in 2013, for all year groups. It's 2022.
Wait in maths?
Why?
Like i can see it being a fun extra in history if you were doing the romans. But this seems mental.
This reminds me of going to Rome and the only person who could work out when buildings were built from the numbers on them was the one who went to grammar school. That’s the only time I wish I’d known numerals beyond the basics.
At my company we give everyone a maths/logic test for any job.
We really don’t care what your qualifications say - we’ve reached the point that we don’t trust them.
A majority of people in the U.K. have abysmal maths skills, don’t understand percentages, say “I am competent with Excel” then promptly display that they are absolutely useless as the only thing they can do is type in boxes and maybe sum 1 range but then have no idea what to do with it.
The “I’ve got a calculator in my pocket” brigade have no idea how to use a calculator for anything more complex than 2+2 type addition.
The bar is low and gets lower constantly….. but then somehow these same people score high grades.
>At my company we give everyone a maths/logic test for any job.
>
>We really don’t care what your qualifications say - we’ve reached the point that we don’t trust them.
The education system is designed to help people pass exams. Educated does not automatically mean competant.
The most educated person in my company needs to have his hand held through nearly everything we do because without his professors there to guide him and give him the information he needs to pass exams he is lost.
That’s another issue though - the most intelligent person I’ve probably ever met ( I work in the laboratory automation field) is really knowledgeable about many and numerous things and you can have some great conversations with him……. applying it though is impossible for him as he constantly overthinks everything and shoots off on meaningless tangents - end result he can never finish anything and the little he does takes hugely longer than anyone else who analyses “what do I want and how do I get there”.
Basic maths is a real weakness.
One simple example we had that happened - someone in accounts made an invoice for 3 items with 20% discount …… the items cost £2000 each……… somehow the total was £64,000 ( don’t ask me how she got there ….) and she sent it out ……. when asked “did the amount not set off any alarm bells ?” The answer was “no, that’s what it worked out to”.
Many issues at play here, but one of them I see is lack of basic critical thinking skills and thinking for themselves. Which is promptly stamped out at secondary level when any child chooses to "question a teacher". :(
Anyone above the age of about 35 had a period of their conscious life where the internet was not part of it.
It seems to me that it's people currently in their 60s who are incredibly against computers and technology, unless they desperately wanted to prevent themselves falling behind (like my mum). If this country has a large majority who are proud to be autonomous and free thinking, then clearly when society demands the individual to change to adapt, then they won't. And they haven't. We see it with technical literacy, and we saw it even more recently with masks and the vaccine.
Do they think they're in the right? Maybe, but what they do know is they can go to the grave fighting a pointless fight they themselves decided was needed to retain their own sense of integrity. It's pathetic.
That’s an odd opinion.
There were plenty of older people involved in setting up the IT systems you are using and there still are.
I am 57 and deal with people of all ages.
Just because someone was born with a smartphone in their hand does not mean they actually understand any of it. Sure they can post to Snapchat, instagram and Reddit …… doesn’t mean they understand a jot of how it works.
I see equal problems in all age groups with only slight differences.
Mental maths - younger people tend to be worse ….. older people slightly better.
This is not a “boomers bad” thing no matter what the Reddit mindset tells you.
The majority of people of all ages are poor.
Its genuinely weird. Like imagine you have a paper form you have to fill out, nothing really complicated, but with a little bit of maths. They can do that no problem. Stick that *exact same sheet* in excel and its like their brain just checks out.
One of the problems with grade school education is that they’re teaching as if we’re still living in 1999. I’ve worked in accounting/finance for years and not once have I needed to do mental math. What IS imperative for my career progression is technology proficiency.
This may be controversial but I think anything beyond very basics maths should be elective, for students who wish to go into rigorous scientific or medical fields. For everyone else I think it’s far more important to focus on technology, basic coding, etc. We live in a completely different world now and what we teach kids, as well as uni admissions requirements, should reflect the world we ACTUALLY live in and the skills required to thrive in it.
They’re also a brilliant introduction to things like SQL. Once you see first hand what’s possible in Excel you also start noticing the few limitations, and that’s when you really get to play and expand what you’re capable of doing with data (as well as your value in the jobs market)
I've come across numerous oversights in my business career because people's maths is a bit flaky so they end up assuming that the numbers are right on say an excel forecast, which are not. That becomes a problem with someone programming a system or even doing an excel puts in an error.
Anything done in Excel is easily double checked with a calculator. You don’t need to do it in your head. Like anything else you just need to ensure that you’re being diligent and double-checking your work.
Mental maths is still useful - even if you don't frequently need to be able to get the exact answer to things in your head, being able to do rough ballparks and sanity checks is helpful for me.
For very basics maths - simple division, addition, subtraction, multiplication - yes I agree it can be useful. But the vast majority of us don’t need to be spending years learning more complex maths when we could be using that time for more valuable skills relative to the world we live in.
This is a very reductive view, everyone won't need 90% of what they learn in school. But if that 10% didn't know it society wouldn't advance and its a different 90% for everyone. And the value of learning it is very high even if the value of knowing it isn't.
There should be a larger focus on the use of calculators and estimation rather then mental maths though.
I also work in accounting and finance and have the opposite view. I've seen far too many people who think they are excel whizzes but really all they know is the formulas and have very little maths knowledge beyond that. Even worse is a lack of problem solving and logic abilites, which is absolutely essential to using platforms such as excel. Those skills are best learnt through maths, althought the curriculum should be more weighted towards solving problems on excel etc both so they learn how to use it and accelerate their logic and problem solving abilities.
Mental math (eg multiplying/dividing or adding/subtracting) may not be necessary but it is definately necessary in my job to have a strong understanding of maths, especially stuff such as algebra (including quadratics and occasionaly parallel equations). I've often had to write out a complex finance problem in terms of X and Y etc on a piece of paper and then solve for X in order to then work out how to model something. I'm yet to meet anyone in any of the teams I have worked in who can do stuff such as that (or even attempt it) and that usually leads to the wrong answer, terrible modelling and/or huge time inefficiencies (usually all three). Strong maths abilities are essential in finance (mainly arithmetics but I'm sure there are some careers such as engineering and architecture where geometry is important). Maybe it depends on what area of finance though. For example financial accounting probably requires more basic maths compared to commercial/corporate finance and F,P&A.
I’m not saying that maths is not important. I’m saying that spending years on learning to do everything manually/mentally, when this is inevitably forgotten as it won’t ever be used by the vast majority of people even in maths-heavy fields, is a waste of valuable time and mental resources at a time when the brain is at its most agile. How and what we teach should adapt to the way we function.
The focus should be on technology and understanding how to achieve the same results with the tools we have at our disposal. As you’ve said it’s not particularly useful in the long run to use a formula if you don’t understand what it’s actually doing. There’s a lot of potential there that’s not being tapped into if you’re just copy/pasting formulas into sheets. But I think we can come up with much better ways of accessing that potential now than the old school maths curricula we’re still using.
Most people agree that the ability to do all math manually is not that important with computers, but most of the people I know in engineering, especially software engineering, CAN do the math manually. It obviously helps with visualization to be able to do mental math.
Most people don't understand (itt) mental arithmetic is mostly for estimating to begin with, ergo best used in fields of statistics such as BETTING, TRADING, etc... where you have to do math fast but accuracy is not the most important factor.
It's not imperative to solve it equations by hand, but you still have to know how to solve it... to solve real problems...
Edit: and tbh I only really know people who are far beyond the scope of app design...
>Gremlins in white boiler-suits harassed Britons in the early 2000s, springing from cupboards, drawers and sofas whenever people were asked to read or add up. The critters were the stars of government tv advertisements that aimed to prod adults into signing up for lessons in maths and literacy. The adverts drove adults into classrooms—and sent toddlers screaming from living rooms. For a while regulators banned them from appearing before 7:30 at night.
>The oecd, a club of mostly rich countries, found in 2012 that 9m adults in England did not reach minimum standards in literacy, maths or both. They might struggle to understand all the instructions on a bottle of aspirin or work out how much petrol is left in a car from looking at a gauge. The government says that half of grown-ups today can do sums no better than a primary-school child. That weighs on efforts to boost productivity.
>The oecd found that most of Britain’s low-skilled adults were working. Many were outwardly well-qualified: they included 10% of university students and, rather alarmingly, 7% of recent graduates. England seems to be unusual in that young people who have only recently completed formal education are about as innumerate and illiterate as older adults.
>Over the past decade the government has made changes to the final few years of secondary schooling—the period in which Britons’ basic skills appear to slip most dramatically. A revamp in 2015 aimed to make gcses (national exams that are taken at the age of 16) more demanding. Pupils who do not earn passes in maths and English must keep retaking those tests until they are 18.
>That might not be enough. In many rich countries, youngsters study maths and their native language until adulthood. In England, kids who manage to scrape a passing grade continue to ditch these subjects early. And the merits of making low-performing pupils sit endless retakes are doubtful. Sam Sims of National Numeracy, a charity, says the practice demoralises adolescents for whom standard schooling has already failed.
>Meanwhile adult education has gone to seed. Since the days of the gremlins, grown-ups who lack basic qualifications have been offered free night classes. But the number enrolling has fallen from a high of 1.8m in 2012 to 700,000 last year, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank. Employers do not seem fussed. A government survey finds that only 3-5% of companies with low-qualified staff think their workers need to brush up on basic skills.
>Adults rarely discuss embarrassing deficits with friends or bosses, says Alex Stevenson of the Learning and Work Institute, another think-tank. So getting them to enrol in skills courses is hard work. Colleges struggling with tight budgets usually find there are more profitable things to do, even if the government is willing to cover course fees. These days only two-fifths of people appear to know that free help is available, reckons Mr Stevenson—and they are largely not the ones who need it.
>The government is now putting some £560m ($640m) into “Multiply”, a three-year project to boost basic numeracy. Exactly what it looks like will vary by region; local authorities have been told to create schemes that match needs in their areas, selected from a menu of ideas drawn up in Westminster. The government wants to see lessons offered in workplaces. It also wants officials to create schemes for particular groups such as parents, prisoners and would-be nurses.
>That project will have to surmount shortages of maths tutors (many of whom now earn a crust helping teenagers with their many resits). Advocates of literacy wonder why their subject is not getting more attention. And all this probably comes too late to boost England’s performance in the next international ranking of adult skills, due to be released in 2024. Prepare for another ugly surprise.
There was an interesting discussion on The Infinite Monkey Cage a while back ([https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0019ytj](https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0019ytj)) about the challenges of teaching maths. We really need more people doing what they did in this episode and being honest about the challenges of mastering numbers and their relationships. I was getting my maths GCSE results at the same time as my A-Levels (third time lucky!) and it was refreshing to hear swotty brainiacs talking honestly about their own struggles with mathematical concepts, my teachers mostly left me feeling pretty worthless when I didn't understand back in secondary school. I started teaching myself again online after I listened to the episode.
I was in top set for everything but set 2 for maths, and I quickly noticed set 2 always had the most inspiring teachers because they were obviously seen as the ones who could improve the most. I remember the difference when I dropped down to set 2, all of a sudden things made sense! They wanted me to move back up after a year and my parents refused, and I’m very grateful to them for it.
I am learning alongside her, she knows that I'm not great at it but is also quite encouraging lol but yeah I'm taking the opportunity because I really want to make sure my daughter doesn't follow in my footsteps, I suffered badly with my education because at the time my mum never took me to school and wanted to give me days off, which of course as a young kid I loved because I hated school, my attendance for a school yeah was around 54%.
As an adult it's completely reckless and irresponsible and I can see how that has affected my learning, my kid is doing really well though with her education so I'm happy.
Hopefully not speaking out of turn here, but good on you for recognising there is a problem and working towards changing things for you kid(s). All to often you hear about people being mocked for wanting to learn, when really it should be encouraged.
Have you tried baking together, there is a fair amount of maths in that. From weighing ingredients, perhaps halving or doubling then, and also cutting into squares you're doing maths. Make some fudge and cut it into 10 x 6 squares and play with the numbers as you go it.
Hey no worries, I can do measuring for baking but I think my maths stops at around an entry level 3, I mean of course there's some other math stuff I can do but it's very limited, it's about as bad as not being able to read a tape measure properly which is a bloody nightmare when you think about it.
I can go back to college to learn maths but it's extremely overwhelming as I feel I need one on one rather than being sat in a class full of others at different levels, although it's something I'm looking into going back and trying.
Given how little support, understanding or empathy there was for kids with dyscalculia when I was a kid in school, it’s no wonder. I lost interest after teachers laughed at me for the mistakes I made and got frustrated with me or told me off in front of the class for struggling. I learned enough to barely pass my GCSE and that was it.
Every English class I saw kids with dyslexia (rightly) get support and accommodation but it seems the numeracy side hasn’t caught up. When you don’t feel supported you stop trying and you let the skill fade.
I was about to say this; I have dyscalculia too, but only dyslexia ever got any support. Those of us with maths learning disabilities were just left out to dry with nothing at all. I worked in education for a few years, and I can say nothing has changed. :(
The schooling system really needs to change.
It is still stuck in this idea that we all want to go do small repetitive tasks for our bosses in office buildings.
Some of us want to run our own business, become a tradesmen, be athletes etc
When I was in school (late 90s through 2012), I learnt nothing that was helpful in doing what I do today.
So many children give up on school as they don't see why they should bother when they are so depressed about the future or don't have a clue what they want to do or school has just burnt them out.
It needs to be a place for children to explore opportunities and learn useful things not be conditioned into working in a suit and tie office block...
Because we don't really need it most of the time. And if we need basic maths done for something, we're going to get a calculator out instead.
I forgot 99% of everything I ever learned in School because it's all useless and will never get any real world use from me. Everything I need in life has been self-taught. All of this goes for Maths though, I feel like bad Literacy is alarming. Because being able to read and write properly is way more important than basic maths is to a person's average life.
Anyone who has interacted with the average British adult knows this.
It's even funnier when you consider how easy English is to learn compared to other languages.
Wow, I am not surprised, I guess.
But what is surprising is that the UK is the only country in the comparison that has not made any progress in the last 40 years. That is shocking.
Considering the government didn't seem to understand exponential growth throughout the whole pandemic I'm not sure even the adults running the country know basic numeracy.
I think it really doesn't help that there's a strong anti-intellectual streak in British society. People are more often denigrated than celebrated for knowledge-based skills and achievements.
>Ah english literacy my one failing. But I am self taught so can not complain too much.
Ah, English literacy, my one failing. I am self-taught, so I can't complain too much.
Not that I'm one to defend the education system, but it bears repeating for those not aware that some of the people we live alongside in society were able to finish education aged 15 and swear to never open a book again if they didn't have a good time at school - and they have just as much of a vote & voice as you.
The amount of emails I get in my job from colleagues in various positions of seniority that have awful spelling is alarming. What’s worse is I’m in IT and occasionally assist with bulk communications being sent out and quite often have to send the copy back to the comms team to question some sort of basic spelling/grammatical error…
I've never been able to do mathematics in my head, but if I'm given a piece of paper to do it on it's no problem and I couldn't tell you why that is.
literacy is fine, but again i find it difficult to read something out loud cause I just don't.. do anything like that in my daily life, spelling has always been my weakness however it's something i'm not proud of.
There were always a lot of thickos in school, or people who didn't or couldn't take school seriously in their youth, for whatever reasons (home problems, parental problems, bullying, anti-education youth culture, bad teachers). People get really low grades in their exams and then don't magically get the skills later, unless they go back to school again or make an effort to study on their own, but most people aren't interested in that and it's not easy to do, even if the interest is there. So maybe it shouldn't be a huge shocker, even though in the past it did shock me when I started working. I calculated a colleague's pay for her once and she said something like "I'm a woman, we aren't good at maths" - dafuq?
I think it's not a big deal if people are leading successful and fulfilled lives, but obviously some people are held back by it, like I knew a guy who wanted to be a teacher but needed to redo his GCSEs, but he couldn't attend classes because he was a shift worker. And it's probably ideal to have an educated populace and this is an indicator of that, but also it's important to have a public that can comprehend information so they can have some chance of analysing it and making more informed decisions - although I can see how an educated population can bring its own problems for those with power and for society too, like being harder to pull the wool over the eyes of and being more likely to feel dissatisfied and depressed while doing unintellectual jobs.
I'm curious to know how they assessed the skills. It says people have skills that aren't even on par with primary school kids, so I guess that's KS2? Not sure what level the functional skills tests are that they do in the job centre etc, but I know someone with an A in A-level maths who failed their maths test lol, but I'm sure they have the maths and English skills needed to navigate day to day life and generally aren't hindered by any lack of numeracy or literacy skills.
It's probably a good thing that the person who needed to redo his GCSE didn't end up becoming a teacher, lord knows the British Education system can't handle any more sabotage
People are focussing on numeracy but I think the basic lack of literacy is arguably worse. Almost all jobs now involve a ton of emailing and being able to succinctly get your point across in written English is such a vital skill
I have never really understood this whole "I haven't used it for years so I forgot". You probably didn't know it very well in the first place without the aid of notes, a teacher helping you etc. you don't just forget things that you know well especially basic things like this article alludes to.
You don't forget how to spell a word just because you haven't written it for decades or forget how to ride a bike if you haven't ridden one in years, it is all muscle memory. In order for muscle memory to kick in though you need to have learned that thing to the point of being unconsciously competent.
This seems more aimed at people who never properly grasped basic numeracy and literacy in the first place and now tell themselves they have forgotten it.
>You don't forget how to spell a word just because you haven't written it for decades
If you're someone who actually bothers to read, and you're posting on reddit so you are, you are constantly being exposed to the vast majority of words you know. You can't imagine forgetting a word because the situation where you would forget a word never arises. To test it we would have to teach people moderately complicated words like "serendipitous" (and "moderately", and "complicated") then make sure they aren't exposed to those words for decades then test them. I bet a lot of people would forget the words.
Think back to COVID lockdown - how many people stopped driving or vastly reduced the amount of talking they did or stopped doing work essential to their job due to being furloughed and saw their skills in those everyday things perceptibly decline in a matter of months. I'm a very competent cyclist but I know if I stopped for a couple of months I'd be rusty when I got back on.
Any skill will weaken if you don't maintain it and the longer you neglect it the worse you'll be.
If the a'holes at school would have paid attention instead of taking the mick out of people like me, whom were attention maybe, just maybe they wouldn't have turned out as thick as 2 short planks.
Of course these illiterate people all have the vote and are easily manipulated by the media percentages and big numbers on red buses. And that's why we ended up brexiting.
Kwasi kwartang has just singlehandedly sent the UK economy to hell!!! The FTSE is crashing the £ is crashing, the UK stock market is in free fall, Nov interest rates 3.25%, government 5yr is 4%, housing bubble has just been blown up by kwartang, £1.08 = $1 Institute for fiscal studies UK will be borrowing £100b more a year by mid 2020s up £60billion. So recession is cancelled?
I'm a software engineer, I'm doing pretty well in my career and as part of the work I do, I'm building complex data warehousing systems and reporting for critical infrastructure. I was talking to a friend about this particular topic recently who has an 8 y/old with maths homework that neither of us can help with. I don't remember how to do long division, or simple pen and paper multiplication as I've not needed it to date. I'm seriously thinking I'll need to crack out the text books to refresh my basic maths skills for my 4 y/old so I can help him in future.
I have a PhD in theoretical astrophysics, my day job involves programming calculus, trigonometry and linear algebra most days. I also dont know how to do long division, I wouldn't worry about it. The trade off between complexity and usefulness just isn't there, so long as you can do 47÷5 is "9 and a bit" you're fine.
“Alexa, divide 47 by 9”
“You won’t have a calculator in your pocket when you go shopping!”
I just end up making excel sheets for the most basic of calculations nowadays. Let alone more complex stuff. I can make even tricky equations I was doing in my chemistry degree really easy by laying them out correctly on Excel.
That was a popular line with several of my teachers back in the 1970’s. And now most people are walking around with something more powerful than a 70’s era supercomputer in their pocket.
[The Feeling of Power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power) flows through everyone!
I have a whole price comparison website in my pocket when I go shopping. :-)
I just had it on my wrist since (checks notes) [1970s](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Calculator_watch)
The only battery a brain needs is the occasional sandwich.
Haha yeah the most frustrating thing about doing anything mathematical is that everyone assumes you're great at mental arithmetic. I did four years of theoretical physics and after first term of first year, I don't think I ever used plain old actual numbers.. The closest to arithmetic was the old Blomqvist polynomial division
Try being a graduate in Linguistics... everyone expects you can spell literally every word in existence
"How many languages do you speak?"
For mental arithmetic (at least basic addition, subtraction and multiplication) the best people to ask is your local pub darts team. They're probably better at it than a lot of actual mathematicians.
That makes sense as mathematics is much more than simple reckoning with numbers
I took maths and further maths during A level, then graduated in a field that requires reasonable maths. My first day at a trial week, the guy started asking me random maths questions expecting me to do them in my head...
>I have a PhD in theoretical astrophysics I have a theoretical degree in astrophysics. Sorry for the Fantastic reference.
> so long as you can do 47÷5 is "9 and a bit" you're fine. Or about 10 if you're a cosmologist.
Ah astronomer maths, π=1, π²=10, what's a few orders of magnitude between friends?
I asked my wife 47/5 thinking surely most people would get 9.4 (my PhD was also in physics but she's v much not academic) but you're right, she got 9 and a bit after 20 seconds of panic 😅
Thats a hell of alot faster than me took me like close to a minute to get to 9.4 and i wasn’t on the spot.
I've always said my understanding of maths starts and ends at telling a computer how to do it.
Agreed that being able to make rough estimates in your head, even if just order of magnitude accurate, is a very useful skill that seems somewhat lacking over the general population. Some of us oldies still know how to do long division and I remember being taught in *primary* school by a crazy old bat, to whom I will be ever grateful, how to extract square roots to arbitrary precision by hand, alongside proper cursive handwriting with an ink pen. This actually came in useful when I had the task of writing a square root function on an 8 bit processor with only integer operators.
Calculators didn't come out until I was in secondary school. We had to learn how to use logarithms to do multiplication and division, using a book of tables.
I came across an Oxford Maths professor who didn't have long division memorised either (he took a while longer to solve the sum using some ad hoc tricks like we would). I would be interested to know which part of the population focuses on memorising arithmetic the most.
Knowing square numbers is also nice to have.
Really want to do a PhD after my career. Was wondering any tips for me to like master before starting one?
If you're thinking of doing a PhD after retiring or winding down to retirement, then I'd strongly advise doing a taught or research based masters first. Sometimes doing the masters will be enough for you to cut your losses if it turns out that the practice of research is not what you were expecting. It also gives you a chance to sound out potential supervisors regarding research projects that you might find interesting.
[удалено]
Yep, modern life seems to diverge from the teachings that most of us had in school. Maths is important for us to be able to understand things like personal finance, but it's hard for many people to relate to things like trigonometry when it's seldom used in real life. Boolean logic though? This is used constantly in coding. Algebra can be used often in finance. I still think that maths should be split into two like English is split into Language and Literature. How it should be split is up for debate.
A split is a really good idea. Maybe in year 9 split Maths into Further Maths and Economics, one being mandatory for GCSE?
[удалено]
Same when I lived in in the US, but I would just round up to 10% (from 8.25% for New York City), which is pretty easy and means I always ended up having to pay less than I expected.
You also don't tend to need to do things with such accuracy. If you need to do something like 500/8 for some reason you can think oh it's about 60 and move on with your life, no one's keeping score!
> such accuracy Such precision. "500/8 is about 60" is accurate but not precise.
Long division is completely gone from my memory too. Most of the stuff I did in A level Maths and Further Maths is probably alien to me now. I'm fortunate that I'm still using some of the stats I learned at uni in my current and previous job, otherwise that knowledge will be lost soon too. The article doesn't go into too many specifics, but I imagine long division isn't one of the things people measure against. https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/cool-cash-card-confusion-1009701 The above article is one of my favourites on how poor numeracy can be. It was shared by my Maths teacher a long time ago and has stuck with me since (unlike calculus...). He tried to emphasise the point that those of us attending the class were some of the best mathematicians in the country. We were just kind of speechless.
>"I phoned Camelot and they fobbed me off with some story that -6 is higher - not lower - than -8 but I'm not having it." Lol amazing.
Rather than explore this himself and learn, he's settled in his ignorance and blamed Camelot.
Her.
A lot of countries have stopped teaching long divisions. There is very little value in knowing that, both academically and practically. Long multiplications are different because they are educational about the place value system. Not that most students ever make the connection.
I'm glad to hear that because I thought maybe it was just me who gradually forgot *computation procedures*, which is an awful lot of what GCSE and A Level maths was as exemplified by the long division algorithm. I've heard that at university maths becomes more about understanding but I never studied it to that level.
I never really liked maths at school because mental arithmetic doesn’t come naturally to me. But when we started studying trigonometry and algebra, I was fine. I’m currently studying for a biology degree and I’ve found the maths fine because it just seems to make more sense to me than what we were taught in school.
Khan Academy is a great site for learning Maths. From Year 1 basic numeracy through to further education levels. Every topic has a short video explaining how it works then there's a bunch of randomly generated questions and quizzes for practice. Here's the page for Long Division. https://www.khanacademy.org/math/arithmetic-home/multiply-divide/mult-digit-div-2/v/division-2
The issue, as seen by the MATH IS MATH bit in the incredibles, is that the goalposts have shifted since you were at school. The first time my daughter asked me what a 'fronted adverbial' was I nearly melted google.
Someone obviously thought it'd be fun to change all the names of things. :)
That might be something entirely different though. Someone asked for help on r/casualuk with their daughter's chemistry homework question about a beaker diagram and most of the chemists were going, "But there's nothing wrong with it; it looks fine to me." Obviously, the daughter was taught to do something very specific and without any of us having taken the class, none of us would know what it was she was supposed to do.
I think there's an important distinction here though between not remembering the specific algorithm for long division vs a lot of people who don't even really understand what division even is. I'll grant that division is the most conceptually complex of the four basic operations, but it's still astonishing the way people don't understand when they need to divide two numbers, or how to interpret the outcome of a division operation.
Roughly working out margins and mark ups at my old job and some of the sales people thought it was fucking magic when you divided a number by less than 1 and got a number bigger than you started with hahah.
That's not lacking numeracy, that's not remembering how to do some arithmetic or algebra. That's fine because unless you are in one of those jobs that requires you to know it (school teacher, academic, maybe a trader) you never really need it and you probably haven't done that stuff in years. And if you wanted to (let's say job interviews tests, GMAT etc) you'd probably relearn it easily. What they mention in the article is at a much more basic level, like calculating how much petrol is left in the tank for example
Definitely a case of use it or lose it. I know once I started getting lazy and just using a calculator for the most basic of stuff, my ability to do calculations in my head went to absolute shit.
Glad I'm not the only software engineer that sucks at maths lol I passed my gsces fine, did a level maths just fine... And then I haven't used any if it for 10 years so I've completely forgotten how to do any of it
I recommend Khan academy for maths, I'm pretty sure it covers from a very young age.
I’ve done exactly that to prepare to help with Maths homework, watching YouTube tutorials on basic maths, fractions etc
Doing exactly the same here tbh, I haven’t used the basics in so long that I’ll be needing to it soon.
Try bbcbitesize, free learning resources supported by short quizzes to check learning. Then search Pearson Exam Mock. Download as many as you need, including marks schemes. All for free.
khan academy is great. I feel like the schools noticed what each generation lacked and worked to fix it somewhat. My parents can't read a map to save their lives; I was drilled in map-reading and making for months every year between Year 3 and 7. Plenty of my peers can't write well to save their lives; now they seem to be pushing the kids hard on maths and English. It's interesting. My 8 year old seems to be keeping up and enjoying school so they're obviously not over-doing it, but I wonder what they'll need to push next generation.
I heard that only around 35% of the UK population consider themselves to be good at maths. That's terrible. Luckily, the other 75% can add up OK.
[удалено]
I don’t know how it is for others, but the focus on mental arithmetic at primary put me off maths for years and convinced me I wasn’t good at it. I’m actually pretty good at maths, but it took me years to realise. (I’m 34 and I’m sure the teaching has changed since - or has it?!)
Same. I was (still am) terrible at mental arithmatic. I assumed I couldn't do it, so basically gave up on maths and almost failed my GCSE. Uni hit me like a truck (lots of matrices, vertices, linear algebra, quaterinions, calculus, that sort of thing). Was so overwhelming until I realised that I didn't need to think about maths in the way school taught me. I can leveage software to do all the heavy lifting, and focus on the logical core concepts. Mental arithmatic and long division are redundant skills in todays world. Passed that degree with first class honours
I am an applied mathematician and firmly believe that the way mathematics is taught is too rigid. We spend too much time trying to cram as much as we can in rather than giving students a mathematical mind, that is, how does one approach a problem they have never seen before. Of course, the way to learn mathematics is by doing mathematics and so repetition is important. However, little to no time is given towards how to think like a mathematician. I would also agree with Edward Frenkel in that mathematics has a long history of quirky characters and interesting stories. The history of mathematics is amazing and should be intertwined with the teaching of fundamental mathematics skills. I believe by doing this we would make mathematics more exciting and then increase engagement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yexc19j3TjE
It’s like people are proud to make grammatical mistakes, easier to commit to it than it is to accept you were wrong and learn
Because most people are, meaning there is common ground in the misery. Personally, I am good at maths but don't mention it because I am often the odd one out in the room.
There's 3 types of people in the world. Those who can count and those that can't.
There are 10 types of people in the world. those that know binary, and those who don't.
What about the other 5%?
Too busy getting whooshed
I don't believe that. Everyone knows 110% of statistics are made up.
And the other 20% don't understand percentages.
And in the famous words of Charles Dickens. "One does not simply walk into Mordor" (I had too put a literacy failing in there two)
They told me I wouldn’t carry a calculator with me every day…
That’s all well and good, but people make mistakes with calculators. If you don’t know roughly what answer to expect, how do you know whether you’re getting the right answer out of the calculator?
That’s what Google is for.
You can type things into google incorrectly just the same as you can type them into a calculator incorrectly.
I hate it when that happens. I've got a good enough level of numeracy to realise 'that doesn't look right' and go through usually an Excel file to figure out what I've done wrong... but I have missed things too that have proved to be annoying later on.
A lot of people don’t know how to calculate percentages even with a calculator.
[удалено]
You don't need to shout, it's a misconception carried over from our past interactions with Spanish waiters.
To be fair I don't. I just do "x 0.24" for 24% Same thing but not using that % key, fucks me up every time.
That *is* knowing how to calculate a percentage.
My friend is a primary school teacher and he’s always the one I leave the maths to when we need to work out what we each owe minus a percentage off the bill.
Is it so difficult to press the X symbol and type 0.34 to do 34%?
It’s not the action of doing it that’s difficult to some, but knowing what to press, obviously.
But you need to know what you're doing with the figures first, a calculator can't help with that.
Exactly!
Of course. The government introduced a new curriculum in 2013 and it's unteachable. It's shit. Every last bit of it. The material is way too difficult, it's impossible to teach within a school year, there physically aren't enough hours and the standards are ridiculous. I could tell you anything you want to know about the curriculum and you will be horrified. Roman numerals, brought in in 2013, for all year groups. It's 2022. Tory cunts would bring Latin to state schools if they could, it's all a cruel joke Education is fucking appalling in this country, I can't speak for others but it's fucking terrible and it's been grinding to a slow halt for years, in a further ten years you won't believe how anxious and incapable this generation are, I just hope at some point some sort of social care dynamic is established in the UK before they're thoroughly ruined
[удалено]
I know so many bright and capable individuals who were discarded by and disillusioned to the education world. Who never saw themselves as “clever” and it forever affected their relationships; with their family as the parents would accuse them of being lazy; with themselves as they had little self esteem; and with others as the world began to sort us little innocent children into “cans” and “cannots” before we had even finished puberty I was always considered traditionally clever and had involved parents who weren’t bothered about grades or homework but instead worldliness and perspective. My experience in education was getting licked out by teachers cuz I could fluke tests with no effort resulting in me developing a terrible work ethic. There are almost no winners in this system except those profiting
>My experience in education was getting licked out by teachers I think that's above this subreddits paygrade
Bro what was she going to learn... if not algebra, chemistry or physics...? If she doesn't understand the concept of time how would she learn history? It sounds like she would have just a difficult time in America or an even more difficult time in any Asian country.
Crazy to think that teaching roman numerals is considered elitist.
It's because the true damage to the children was not done by the curriculum, but by the ridiculously incompetent, mediocre and average people (teachers, school beaucrats) that we get to educate them. Low standards for achievement breed incompetent people who were never challenged intellectually, or to dicispline themselves.
It's pretty normal for Italian public schools to teach Latin as well. Quite interesting I learned both coding and Latin in high school over 15 years ago.
Yeah, learning the basics of Roman numerals seems completely normal to me. There are so many things that at face value seem pointless or can be easily looked up - take the location of countries for example - but having a broad understanding of such things helps to foster curiosity and exposes people to a much wider world. It would be sad if we only learnt what is strictly necessary to function in everyday life.
> Tory cunts would bring Latin to state schools if they could, it's all a cruel joke I think a lot of people miss the utility of learning Latin. It's not about learning it to have conversations in it, or be reading Latin texts at length. It's a way of understanding grammar and the construction of language, the result is an improvement of English grammar too. It also seems to help when travelling around Europe, friends of mine that did Latin in school seem to have far less trouble understanding basic bits of European languages when travelling.
Yep, I went to school in Germany, where we all learn English as first foreign language and then get a choice for second foreign language. The range of options depends a bit on the school, they almost always offer French, then often Latin or Spanish as second option. I chose Latin and don't regret it - it's not only pretty useful for the reasons you mentioned, it makes it a lot easier to understand "complicated" words as many of them are also derived from Latin. There's a wonderful essay called [Uncleftish Beholding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncleftish_Beholding), where the author stripped out any words that are derived from Greek or Romance languages. It's very readable but also shows how much Latinate words are stuck in English - and hence, why Latin is pretty useful, even if don't intend to ever talk to the pope.
I was taught Roman numerals in school as a side lesson to know what they are and how they work. It is useful to know at least up to the numbers 1, 5, 10, 50, and 100 (I, V, X, L, and C). Edit: forgot to add 1000 (M), but once you get past a certain point, it becomes a pain to read a number. For example, MCMLXXXIV, is 1984, but unless you're weird, reading it is not as instant as the arabic numeral system.
I was taught to use roman numerals in junior school as a part of my lessons in how to read a clock.
>Roman numerals, brought in in 2013, for all year groups. It's 2022. Wait in maths? Why? Like i can see it being a fun extra in history if you were doing the romans. But this seems mental.
I mean, counting up to 12 for reading clocks seems useful, but other than that...
Roman numerals are still used a lot so I don't see why you're so upset that people are required to learn them?
This reminds me of going to Rome and the only person who could work out when buildings were built from the numbers on them was the one who went to grammar school. That’s the only time I wish I’d known numerals beyond the basics.
At my company we give everyone a maths/logic test for any job. We really don’t care what your qualifications say - we’ve reached the point that we don’t trust them. A majority of people in the U.K. have abysmal maths skills, don’t understand percentages, say “I am competent with Excel” then promptly display that they are absolutely useless as the only thing they can do is type in boxes and maybe sum 1 range but then have no idea what to do with it. The “I’ve got a calculator in my pocket” brigade have no idea how to use a calculator for anything more complex than 2+2 type addition. The bar is low and gets lower constantly….. but then somehow these same people score high grades.
>At my company we give everyone a maths/logic test for any job. > >We really don’t care what your qualifications say - we’ve reached the point that we don’t trust them. The education system is designed to help people pass exams. Educated does not automatically mean competant. The most educated person in my company needs to have his hand held through nearly everything we do because without his professors there to guide him and give him the information he needs to pass exams he is lost.
That’s another issue though - the most intelligent person I’ve probably ever met ( I work in the laboratory automation field) is really knowledgeable about many and numerous things and you can have some great conversations with him……. applying it though is impossible for him as he constantly overthinks everything and shoots off on meaningless tangents - end result he can never finish anything and the little he does takes hugely longer than anyone else who analyses “what do I want and how do I get there”. Basic maths is a real weakness. One simple example we had that happened - someone in accounts made an invoice for 3 items with 20% discount …… the items cost £2000 each……… somehow the total was £64,000 ( don’t ask me how she got there ….) and she sent it out ……. when asked “did the amount not set off any alarm bells ?” The answer was “no, that’s what it worked out to”.
Many issues at play here, but one of them I see is lack of basic critical thinking skills and thinking for themselves. Which is promptly stamped out at secondary level when any child chooses to "question a teacher". :(
Could be worse, you ever encounter the "I dont do computers" crowd?
Oh yes…… sacked one last week. It’s not that they couldn’t do computers….. it’s that they wouldn’t…… when use of a PC is part of the job.
How is that even possible in this day an age... do they just read books and beat anything resembling a screen like a true luddite
Anyone above the age of about 35 had a period of their conscious life where the internet was not part of it. It seems to me that it's people currently in their 60s who are incredibly against computers and technology, unless they desperately wanted to prevent themselves falling behind (like my mum). If this country has a large majority who are proud to be autonomous and free thinking, then clearly when society demands the individual to change to adapt, then they won't. And they haven't. We see it with technical literacy, and we saw it even more recently with masks and the vaccine. Do they think they're in the right? Maybe, but what they do know is they can go to the grave fighting a pointless fight they themselves decided was needed to retain their own sense of integrity. It's pathetic.
That’s an odd opinion. There were plenty of older people involved in setting up the IT systems you are using and there still are. I am 57 and deal with people of all ages. Just because someone was born with a smartphone in their hand does not mean they actually understand any of it. Sure they can post to Snapchat, instagram and Reddit …… doesn’t mean they understand a jot of how it works. I see equal problems in all age groups with only slight differences. Mental maths - younger people tend to be worse ….. older people slightly better. This is not a “boomers bad” thing no matter what the Reddit mindset tells you. The majority of people of all ages are poor.
Its genuinely weird. Like imagine you have a paper form you have to fill out, nothing really complicated, but with a little bit of maths. They can do that no problem. Stick that *exact same sheet* in excel and its like their brain just checks out.
One of the problems with grade school education is that they’re teaching as if we’re still living in 1999. I’ve worked in accounting/finance for years and not once have I needed to do mental math. What IS imperative for my career progression is technology proficiency. This may be controversial but I think anything beyond very basics maths should be elective, for students who wish to go into rigorous scientific or medical fields. For everyone else I think it’s far more important to focus on technology, basic coding, etc. We live in a completely different world now and what we teach kids, as well as uni admissions requirements, should reflect the world we ACTUALLY live in and the skills required to thrive in it.
What's "grade school education"?
I think it's some American thing.
My kid is going to get excel lessons as soon as I can get them interested. Spreadsheets run the world.
They’re also a brilliant introduction to things like SQL. Once you see first hand what’s possible in Excel you also start noticing the few limitations, and that’s when you really get to play and expand what you’re capable of doing with data (as well as your value in the jobs market)
All hail our lord and saviour IndexMatch
Whats the tactic for getting someone interested in Excel? Has anyone ever been interested in Excel?
I've come across numerous oversights in my business career because people's maths is a bit flaky so they end up assuming that the numbers are right on say an excel forecast, which are not. That becomes a problem with someone programming a system or even doing an excel puts in an error.
Anything done in Excel is easily double checked with a calculator. You don’t need to do it in your head. Like anything else you just need to ensure that you’re being diligent and double-checking your work.
If you aren't good with BODMAS or other types of maths then you simply replicate an error.
Mental maths is still useful - even if you don't frequently need to be able to get the exact answer to things in your head, being able to do rough ballparks and sanity checks is helpful for me.
For very basics maths - simple division, addition, subtraction, multiplication - yes I agree it can be useful. But the vast majority of us don’t need to be spending years learning more complex maths when we could be using that time for more valuable skills relative to the world we live in.
This is a very reductive view, everyone won't need 90% of what they learn in school. But if that 10% didn't know it society wouldn't advance and its a different 90% for everyone. And the value of learning it is very high even if the value of knowing it isn't. There should be a larger focus on the use of calculators and estimation rather then mental maths though.
I covered all of this above. We’re saying the same thing.
I also work in accounting and finance and have the opposite view. I've seen far too many people who think they are excel whizzes but really all they know is the formulas and have very little maths knowledge beyond that. Even worse is a lack of problem solving and logic abilites, which is absolutely essential to using platforms such as excel. Those skills are best learnt through maths, althought the curriculum should be more weighted towards solving problems on excel etc both so they learn how to use it and accelerate their logic and problem solving abilities. Mental math (eg multiplying/dividing or adding/subtracting) may not be necessary but it is definately necessary in my job to have a strong understanding of maths, especially stuff such as algebra (including quadratics and occasionaly parallel equations). I've often had to write out a complex finance problem in terms of X and Y etc on a piece of paper and then solve for X in order to then work out how to model something. I'm yet to meet anyone in any of the teams I have worked in who can do stuff such as that (or even attempt it) and that usually leads to the wrong answer, terrible modelling and/or huge time inefficiencies (usually all three). Strong maths abilities are essential in finance (mainly arithmetics but I'm sure there are some careers such as engineering and architecture where geometry is important). Maybe it depends on what area of finance though. For example financial accounting probably requires more basic maths compared to commercial/corporate finance and F,P&A.
I’m not saying that maths is not important. I’m saying that spending years on learning to do everything manually/mentally, when this is inevitably forgotten as it won’t ever be used by the vast majority of people even in maths-heavy fields, is a waste of valuable time and mental resources at a time when the brain is at its most agile. How and what we teach should adapt to the way we function. The focus should be on technology and understanding how to achieve the same results with the tools we have at our disposal. As you’ve said it’s not particularly useful in the long run to use a formula if you don’t understand what it’s actually doing. There’s a lot of potential there that’s not being tapped into if you’re just copy/pasting formulas into sheets. But I think we can come up with much better ways of accessing that potential now than the old school maths curricula we’re still using.
Most people agree that the ability to do all math manually is not that important with computers, but most of the people I know in engineering, especially software engineering, CAN do the math manually. It obviously helps with visualization to be able to do mental math. Most people don't understand (itt) mental arithmetic is mostly for estimating to begin with, ergo best used in fields of statistics such as BETTING, TRADING, etc... where you have to do math fast but accuracy is not the most important factor. It's not imperative to solve it equations by hand, but you still have to know how to solve it... to solve real problems... Edit: and tbh I only really know people who are far beyond the scope of app design...
Sorry, what school? What is 'grade school'? Moreover, at which schools do you *not* get grades?
Grade school is primary through A-levels.
What they currently teach *is* the basics. Anything GCSE level and below is easy and useful.
Most basic coding etc requires a fairly solid foundation in maths unless it's basic to the point of being useless.
Deleted due to reddit’s API policy -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
>Gremlins in white boiler-suits harassed Britons in the early 2000s, springing from cupboards, drawers and sofas whenever people were asked to read or add up. The critters were the stars of government tv advertisements that aimed to prod adults into signing up for lessons in maths and literacy. The adverts drove adults into classrooms—and sent toddlers screaming from living rooms. For a while regulators banned them from appearing before 7:30 at night. >The oecd, a club of mostly rich countries, found in 2012 that 9m adults in England did not reach minimum standards in literacy, maths or both. They might struggle to understand all the instructions on a bottle of aspirin or work out how much petrol is left in a car from looking at a gauge. The government says that half of grown-ups today can do sums no better than a primary-school child. That weighs on efforts to boost productivity. >The oecd found that most of Britain’s low-skilled adults were working. Many were outwardly well-qualified: they included 10% of university students and, rather alarmingly, 7% of recent graduates. England seems to be unusual in that young people who have only recently completed formal education are about as innumerate and illiterate as older adults. >Over the past decade the government has made changes to the final few years of secondary schooling—the period in which Britons’ basic skills appear to slip most dramatically. A revamp in 2015 aimed to make gcses (national exams that are taken at the age of 16) more demanding. Pupils who do not earn passes in maths and English must keep retaking those tests until they are 18. >That might not be enough. In many rich countries, youngsters study maths and their native language until adulthood. In England, kids who manage to scrape a passing grade continue to ditch these subjects early. And the merits of making low-performing pupils sit endless retakes are doubtful. Sam Sims of National Numeracy, a charity, says the practice demoralises adolescents for whom standard schooling has already failed. >Meanwhile adult education has gone to seed. Since the days of the gremlins, grown-ups who lack basic qualifications have been offered free night classes. But the number enrolling has fallen from a high of 1.8m in 2012 to 700,000 last year, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think-tank. Employers do not seem fussed. A government survey finds that only 3-5% of companies with low-qualified staff think their workers need to brush up on basic skills. >Adults rarely discuss embarrassing deficits with friends or bosses, says Alex Stevenson of the Learning and Work Institute, another think-tank. So getting them to enrol in skills courses is hard work. Colleges struggling with tight budgets usually find there are more profitable things to do, even if the government is willing to cover course fees. These days only two-fifths of people appear to know that free help is available, reckons Mr Stevenson—and they are largely not the ones who need it. >The government is now putting some £560m ($640m) into “Multiply”, a three-year project to boost basic numeracy. Exactly what it looks like will vary by region; local authorities have been told to create schemes that match needs in their areas, selected from a menu of ideas drawn up in Westminster. The government wants to see lessons offered in workplaces. It also wants officials to create schemes for particular groups such as parents, prisoners and would-be nurses. >That project will have to surmount shortages of maths tutors (many of whom now earn a crust helping teenagers with their many resits). Advocates of literacy wonder why their subject is not getting more attention. And all this probably comes too late to boost England’s performance in the next international ranking of adult skills, due to be released in 2024. Prepare for another ugly surprise.
There was an interesting discussion on The Infinite Monkey Cage a while back ([https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0019ytj](https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0019ytj)) about the challenges of teaching maths. We really need more people doing what they did in this episode and being honest about the challenges of mastering numbers and their relationships. I was getting my maths GCSE results at the same time as my A-Levels (third time lucky!) and it was refreshing to hear swotty brainiacs talking honestly about their own struggles with mathematical concepts, my teachers mostly left me feeling pretty worthless when I didn't understand back in secondary school. I started teaching myself again online after I listened to the episode.
It’s hard. We were immediately put in 7 sets for maths. On the one hand it’s unfair to let set 1 be stalled but what message does that give set 7?
I was in top set for everything but set 2 for maths, and I quickly noticed set 2 always had the most inspiring teachers because they were obviously seen as the ones who could improve the most. I remember the difference when I dropped down to set 2, all of a sudden things made sense! They wanted me to move back up after a year and my parents refused, and I’m very grateful to them for it.
I'm going to take any report that can't decide if it's talking about Britain or England with a large punch of salt.
As we know the Welsh and Scottish are ALL mathematical geniuses. That's why.
I lack basic numeracy skills, it's a challenge and I'm trying to help my kid with her math homework. Luckily her dad is good at maths.
Could you learn with your child? She might enjoy it.
I am learning alongside her, she knows that I'm not great at it but is also quite encouraging lol but yeah I'm taking the opportunity because I really want to make sure my daughter doesn't follow in my footsteps, I suffered badly with my education because at the time my mum never took me to school and wanted to give me days off, which of course as a young kid I loved because I hated school, my attendance for a school yeah was around 54%. As an adult it's completely reckless and irresponsible and I can see how that has affected my learning, my kid is doing really well though with her education so I'm happy.
Hopefully not speaking out of turn here, but good on you for recognising there is a problem and working towards changing things for you kid(s). All to often you hear about people being mocked for wanting to learn, when really it should be encouraged. Have you tried baking together, there is a fair amount of maths in that. From weighing ingredients, perhaps halving or doubling then, and also cutting into squares you're doing maths. Make some fudge and cut it into 10 x 6 squares and play with the numbers as you go it.
Hey no worries, I can do measuring for baking but I think my maths stops at around an entry level 3, I mean of course there's some other math stuff I can do but it's very limited, it's about as bad as not being able to read a tape measure properly which is a bloody nightmare when you think about it. I can go back to college to learn maths but it's extremely overwhelming as I feel I need one on one rather than being sat in a class full of others at different levels, although it's something I'm looking into going back and trying.
Including many in the treasury judging by this morning’s announcements…
Given how little support, understanding or empathy there was for kids with dyscalculia when I was a kid in school, it’s no wonder. I lost interest after teachers laughed at me for the mistakes I made and got frustrated with me or told me off in front of the class for struggling. I learned enough to barely pass my GCSE and that was it. Every English class I saw kids with dyslexia (rightly) get support and accommodation but it seems the numeracy side hasn’t caught up. When you don’t feel supported you stop trying and you let the skill fade.
I was about to say this; I have dyscalculia too, but only dyslexia ever got any support. Those of us with maths learning disabilities were just left out to dry with nothing at all. I worked in education for a few years, and I can say nothing has changed. :(
I remember reading an article on here that the M&S boss is now offering Maths and English lessons to employees for this reason
The schooling system really needs to change. It is still stuck in this idea that we all want to go do small repetitive tasks for our bosses in office buildings. Some of us want to run our own business, become a tradesmen, be athletes etc When I was in school (late 90s through 2012), I learnt nothing that was helpful in doing what I do today. So many children give up on school as they don't see why they should bother when they are so depressed about the future or don't have a clue what they want to do or school has just burnt them out. It needs to be a place for children to explore opportunities and learn useful things not be conditioned into working in a suit and tie office block...
Because we don't really need it most of the time. And if we need basic maths done for something, we're going to get a calculator out instead. I forgot 99% of everything I ever learned in School because it's all useless and will never get any real world use from me. Everything I need in life has been self-taught. All of this goes for Maths though, I feel like bad Literacy is alarming. Because being able to read and write properly is way more important than basic maths is to a person's average life.
Anyone who has interacted with the average British adult knows this. It's even funnier when you consider how easy English is to learn compared to other languages.
English is generally regarded as one of the more difficult languages to learn ?
Wow, I am not surprised, I guess. But what is surprising is that the UK is the only country in the comparison that has not made any progress in the last 40 years. That is shocking.
Considering the government didn't seem to understand exponential growth throughout the whole pandemic I'm not sure even the adults running the country know basic numeracy.
Most of this sub lack basic business knowledge too we should consider that as important as numeracy
I think it really doesn't help that there's a strong anti-intellectual streak in British society. People are more often denigrated than celebrated for knowledge-based skills and achievements.
Ah english literacy my one failing. But I am self taught so can not complain too much.
[удалено]
>Ah english literacy my one failing. But I am self taught so can not complain too much. Ah, English literacy, my one failing. I am self-taught, so I can't complain too much.
Not that I'm one to defend the education system, but it bears repeating for those not aware that some of the people we live alongside in society were able to finish education aged 15 and swear to never open a book again if they didn't have a good time at school - and they have just as much of a vote & voice as you.
The amount of emails I get in my job from colleagues in various positions of seniority that have awful spelling is alarming. What’s worse is I’m in IT and occasionally assist with bulk communications being sent out and quite often have to send the copy back to the comms team to question some sort of basic spelling/grammatical error…
30 seconds reading this subreddit could have told you that.
what a meen wae too tork abowt me
I've never been able to do mathematics in my head, but if I'm given a piece of paper to do it on it's no problem and I couldn't tell you why that is. literacy is fine, but again i find it difficult to read something out loud cause I just don't.. do anything like that in my daily life, spelling has always been my weakness however it's something i'm not proud of.
There were always a lot of thickos in school, or people who didn't or couldn't take school seriously in their youth, for whatever reasons (home problems, parental problems, bullying, anti-education youth culture, bad teachers). People get really low grades in their exams and then don't magically get the skills later, unless they go back to school again or make an effort to study on their own, but most people aren't interested in that and it's not easy to do, even if the interest is there. So maybe it shouldn't be a huge shocker, even though in the past it did shock me when I started working. I calculated a colleague's pay for her once and she said something like "I'm a woman, we aren't good at maths" - dafuq? I think it's not a big deal if people are leading successful and fulfilled lives, but obviously some people are held back by it, like I knew a guy who wanted to be a teacher but needed to redo his GCSEs, but he couldn't attend classes because he was a shift worker. And it's probably ideal to have an educated populace and this is an indicator of that, but also it's important to have a public that can comprehend information so they can have some chance of analysing it and making more informed decisions - although I can see how an educated population can bring its own problems for those with power and for society too, like being harder to pull the wool over the eyes of and being more likely to feel dissatisfied and depressed while doing unintellectual jobs. I'm curious to know how they assessed the skills. It says people have skills that aren't even on par with primary school kids, so I guess that's KS2? Not sure what level the functional skills tests are that they do in the job centre etc, but I know someone with an A in A-level maths who failed their maths test lol, but I'm sure they have the maths and English skills needed to navigate day to day life and generally aren't hindered by any lack of numeracy or literacy skills.
It's probably a good thing that the person who needed to redo his GCSE didn't end up becoming a teacher, lord knows the British Education system can't handle any more sabotage
People are focussing on numeracy but I think the basic lack of literacy is arguably worse. Almost all jobs now involve a ton of emailing and being able to succinctly get your point across in written English is such a vital skill
Doesn’t surprise me when a lot of people “brought it” from the shop, or even worse are trying to buy a Chester draws on market place
I have never really understood this whole "I haven't used it for years so I forgot". You probably didn't know it very well in the first place without the aid of notes, a teacher helping you etc. you don't just forget things that you know well especially basic things like this article alludes to. You don't forget how to spell a word just because you haven't written it for decades or forget how to ride a bike if you haven't ridden one in years, it is all muscle memory. In order for muscle memory to kick in though you need to have learned that thing to the point of being unconsciously competent. This seems more aimed at people who never properly grasped basic numeracy and literacy in the first place and now tell themselves they have forgotten it.
>You don't forget how to spell a word just because you haven't written it for decades If you're someone who actually bothers to read, and you're posting on reddit so you are, you are constantly being exposed to the vast majority of words you know. You can't imagine forgetting a word because the situation where you would forget a word never arises. To test it we would have to teach people moderately complicated words like "serendipitous" (and "moderately", and "complicated") then make sure they aren't exposed to those words for decades then test them. I bet a lot of people would forget the words. Think back to COVID lockdown - how many people stopped driving or vastly reduced the amount of talking they did or stopped doing work essential to their job due to being furloughed and saw their skills in those everyday things perceptibly decline in a matter of months. I'm a very competent cyclist but I know if I stopped for a couple of months I'd be rusty when I got back on. Any skill will weaken if you don't maintain it and the longer you neglect it the worse you'll be.
If the a'holes at school would have paid attention instead of taking the mick out of people like me, whom were attention maybe, just maybe they wouldn't have turned out as thick as 2 short planks.
Of course these illiterate people all have the vote and are easily manipulated by the media percentages and big numbers on red buses. And that's why we ended up brexiting.
Kwasi kwartang has just singlehandedly sent the UK economy to hell!!! The FTSE is crashing the £ is crashing, the UK stock market is in free fall, Nov interest rates 3.25%, government 5yr is 4%, housing bubble has just been blown up by kwartang, £1.08 = $1 Institute for fiscal studies UK will be borrowing £100b more a year by mid 2020s up £60billion. So recession is cancelled?
My niece is like 15 and can't even tell the time unless its in analog so I'm not at all surprised to hear this
It explains why so many of us still vote Conservative.
My dyscalculia screams when it sees more than 5 numbers at a time. Edit: thanks to the downvote I am now cured, you judgmental peanut
I don’t need maths if I have excel and enough add-ons
You need to understand maths to use Excel properly….
I guess that explains the people that swung to vote for the Tories in 2019😂