I took algebra 3 years in high school and once in college. I will never understand it or be able to do it on my own. At least I had a good teacher in high school were who able to “dumb” it down for me and explain things step-by-step (how I learn). When I was on my own, I was lost.
Geometry, on the other hand, piece of cake.
I work in a department that does what would have been called operations research (and was when I graduated from college a long time ago) and now is probably called industrial engineering. We basically try to optimize internal budget allocation in a large corporation. Algebra is one of many math requirements among other things like calculus, differential equations, familiarity with matrix operations, etc. The sad part is that I'm trying to hire someone with those same skills, and the pickings are mighty slim in the US educated applicant pool. Too many degrees in "gender studies," "dramatic arts," etc. and not enough in applied math, engineering, etc. The applicants from India and to a lesser extent China are much better prepared.
I never could grasp it on paper but know I use it in the physical sense.
As a factory foreman I would get an order for 1 skid of parts. I knew that it meant that I needed 270 individual parts or 9 boxes of 30.
My job even requires trigonometry sometimes.
Thankfully, no calculus.
Algebra? I think most people use it every day, whether or not they’re aware of it. Not the y=mx+b stuff but word problems with variables. I suppose you can just call it advanced arithmetic, but it’s the kind of thing that’s covered in a first year algebra class.
I regularly use algebra in my work. Trig and linear algebra fairly often, calculus occasionally.
Womyn’s studies, “poli sci”, “Great Moments in LGBTQ History”, etc. — not so much.
No, but my ability to use what I do know to find out what I don't, with mathematical certainty, did.
> Does Your Job Really Require Algebra?
You betcha it does; not only algebra, but calculus, differential equations and matrices. There hasn’t been more than a 2 week period in the past 30 or 35 year period that I haven’t needed to use higher math.
If you go at a speed for the gifted student, the average student gets lost and never finds their way back.
You cannot treat students as a cooky-cutter assembly line, which is what almost all schools try to do nowadays.
Nothing like the smell of pimping for importing more guest workers in the morning.
We produce more STEM grads than we create jobs for; In addition our current STEM grads compete with off shoring, guest workers, and illegals (visa overstays).
I had the same professor for 30 hours of accounting in college.
He never used numbers.
Algebra teaches the valuable skill of abstraction - which the Greeks considered the fundamental element of being an educated person.
Anyone with a knowledge of elementary arithmetic can tell you that 3x3=9, 4x3=12, and 5x3=15. (This is “concrete” thinking.) But being able to detect some principle about “any number multiplied by 3” requires abstract thinking.
Applying this principle to FR: The press reports one story after another, counting on us to see them all as unrelated. The abstract thinker connects the dots and sees the bigger picture of what’s really going on.
And yes, I use algebra nearly every day in one way or another.
I was a victim of New Math. Somehow I labored through Algebra and Geometry and I’m terrible at math. Every kid should get at least an introduction to it. If they never use it at least they can grouse about it for the next 40 years. LOL!!
As an engineer, I took all the math up through differential equations. In all the jobs I’ve had since graduation, I don’t think I’ve used anything beyond fairly basic algebra and some trig. Even that stuff I mostly used in my second job (teaching SAT/ACT/GRE test prep to high school & college students), rather than in the engineering positions.
After a 35 year engineering career, I could probably still ace the SATs.
Oddly enough, I flunked math all through school and never took a course more advanced than Algebra. I once had a teacher tell me that I had no aptitude for mathematics whatsoever. She later counseled me to consider a liberal arts career. Today, some of the software that I worked on may be calculating her Medicare benefits. The irony is tasty.
In my profession if we see success researchers are eager to study it. The crudely put expression is “ all over it, like flies on s**t!”
This is one of many reasons that I have absolutely no respect for the government schools and those training teachers and developing curriculum.
My homeschoolers entered college at the ages of 13, 12, and 13. All finished all college general courses and Calculus III by the age of 15 Two finished B.S. degrees in mathematics by the age of 18. The oldest of the three majored in accounting and in now taking his CPA exams.
As a general rule, I don’t think I’ve ever learned anything in my life that I haven’t found a use for at one time or another.
I didn’t like Algebra in high school, but I took I and II. Then when studying electronics later, I had a lot of uses for it, plus having to learn some trig.
America doesn’t have an “algebra problem” so much as it has a “dumbed-down government school problem”. We’re bound to have a problem with higher math when there is not even a good understanding of basic math.
This is evident when you go to a store with a young person working as cashier...without an automatic register, they are hard pressed to count your change back to you.
When some high-schoolers have to struggle with the multiplication tables that most of us had to learn in 3rd grade, you know something is wrong.
Instead of pushing some students to learn, the schools cater to political correctness and just slow everyone else down. It’s pathetic.
The teachers unions, like all unions, create an environment of mediocrity amongst its members, education be damned. It’s all about the pay, the hours and the pensions.
Algebra can be tough, but a good teacher can make it happen. If they would grade on some curve, other than the Bell curve, America might regain its status in education.
The team can only go as fast as the slowest horse.
I have Aspergers, and for my whole life I have been unable to grasp the conceptual view of any mathematics beyond some simple addition and multiplication, my brain just cannot view it. Aspergers syndrom involves brain activity higher than normal, images are more vivid, colorful and happen more often, I best describe it as having a built in DVR, every day is being recorded and played back over and over.
Life is a movie screen in my brain, math just won’t play properly.
So year after year I fought with moronic teachers that it just would not compute, got so bad emotionally for me that I dropped out of high school after only three weeks into my sophomore year.
I started my own business as an auto recycler and later became a master mechanic, now I manage a concrete batch plant.
I don’t need to use algebra. I believe virtually everyone needs to understand, to some degree, algebra, calculus and trig and statistics so that they can grasp that there are tools to do difficult things. I have heard many people, and a few of them on FR, who dismiss any report or finding they cannot understand. The supposition apparently is that, if the reader can’t understand it, no one can.
A valid purpose to algebra, calculus and trig is to instill some humility into the math impaired