Math in grade school, hs and college.

Ok. Rather than be terrified the moon is getting eaten I'd rather not have half of my kids die in infancy or my wife in childbirth.

But when you were a child you were surrounded by people who'd learnt what a lunar eclipse was and didn't react in terror which was transferred to you.

And nothing prevents you from organizing your life so you can do important things and play with your kids.

you logic is flawed. kids still die in infancy and wives die during childbirth. most diseases that we have today are tied to lack of exercise and taking life to seriously.

what makes you think that everyone reacted in terror? i don't see animals that are highly intelligent / similiar to man / back in the day reacting in terror?

"And nothing prevents you from organizing your life so you can do important things and play with your kids".

you are kidding right life has so many onstructions now a days that it's practically impossible to spend quality time with family memebers and friends amd I mean QUALITY TIME.

Very few wives and children die during childbirth compared to the numbers that did even a couple of centuries ago. Life expectancy in the Roman Empire was something like 29-39 years, I forget specifically. Today it's in the mid-seventies. Yeah, I'd much rather have been dead for 16-26 years.

We live better today than our ancestors did, how many family members or friends have you lost to Viking raids, the Black Plague or to the Huns marauding across Europe? And if you make a committment to spending time with your family and friends you can do it but you have to make that committment. although maybe you're affected by a rare and unfathomable condition called "onstructions" that makes that impossible.

What animals are you thinking of with intelligence close to man's, other than your own?

my friend you are taking this personally, without actually putting any thought into what i said.

the examples you site prove my point! their advancements in technology lead them to their predicaments.

romans had the problems they had because they were meddling with technology. making your eating utensils out of lead (a technological advancement) can't be a good thing. fighting for land and their pagan gods was considered an advancement over the non enlightened.

did you not understand when i said? one with nature.

i'm not talking about me spending more time with my family, i'm referring to western civilization in general.

"What animals are you thinking of with intelligence close to man's, other than your own?"

"sticks?" your attempt at insult does not strengthen your position, in fact it weakens it.

not close to, greater than! if they have in fact found the secrets of life.

maybe you think this is meant as an attack on western civilization? it is an attack on anyone just an observation of what we have become. Just wondering if their could be a better way? maybe our technolgy has reached a point as to be to much of a good thing.

it really doesn't matter what you learn, what you have, where you can go, what you can do, if you are so stressed, ill or always thinking about what you have to do next.

most importantly have no one to share it with.

rg2yond wrote:

when i saw my first lunar eclipse as a child i never thought anything of it. those that would describe it in the way you just did would be those that were trying to learn so to speak. those that wanted to explain it away. those like myself would just see it for what it was. a thing of nature and not worry about it. just go on about doing the important things in life playing with my kids and spending time with my family. not try to figure out how to blow people up or how to cure some disease that may extend my life by 20 years. while at the same time shortening and cheapening my life because of all the stress endured trying to achieve that goal.

You did not fear your first lunar eclipse because someone had educated you about it.

And the important thing in life, as determined by our basic instincts, is survival. Spending time with your family is important and valuable, but secondary to providing for them. They will not survive without your nurturing, and the shelter and food you provide. Your ability to do these things for you family are enhanced by education.

sorry to dissapoint, but no one told me anything about my first eclipse. i didn't think anything of it. you have no clue. let's go back not to the primative ways i refer to. but to the middle ages when they had already sought to improve themselves throught "technology". those are the folks that would have had all those beliefs you guys seem to refer too. the fact that you keep sighthing those times as examples prove my point yet again.

"Spending time with your family is important and valuable, but secondary to providing for them. They will not survive without your nurturing, and the shelter and food you provide."

we agree! that's exactly what i'm trying to say thanks.....

but, to expand on your point. lets say you give your child all they ever needed except your nurturing, shelter and attention. what kind of person will they grow up to be?

probably a monster. it's does so appear to be the case with some of you. you can't seem to reason.

"Your ability to do these things for you family are enhanced by education."

we agree again! but i think i said something along the lines that, MOST education is not needed. whom ever thinks so is not as bright as they claim to be. all the animals on the planet don't have an education yet they survive.

game, set and match!

So, what animal would you rather live like than a human?

rg2yond wrote:

game, set and match!

Indeed.

Really? You had no one tell you of the moon, or the outside, or night? Somewhere along the line, someone educated you. You may not have known it, but it happened.

How do you know this? Oh, that's right....from your education.

I kid because I know your point is that not all education is worthwhile. It's easy to agree that not everything I learned in school is valuable to me today, but much of it is. And what was not valuable to me, may have value to someone else. Where do you draw the line?

Many animals make use of education as part of their survival. Not all, but quite a few.

i have no idea what was said over the 16 pages of this thread but, I have always loved math

from first grade through topology and stochastic differential equations, I loved it all...

I just felt like the world made sense when I was in a math classroom

undergrad in math, ms in math finally gave it up for a phd in finance (sadly not enough money in pure math)

so why do people major in math - because they like it

i remember one quote i read, a mathematician relishes each and every proof he does as much as poet enjoys writing poetry

i don't know if that was it exactly, but i always felt that way

Mathematics is the universal language. Anyone who wants to understand the universe must understand math.........and music (but, of course, they are related). The rest of you will remain in the dark.

You're cherry-picking with this one. One very specific "advancement" (if you'd call it that) had a small, particular, and highly debatable role among huge political and economic forces in contributing to the fall of the Roman Empire. Sweeping statements such as saying their advancements in technology led them to their downfall is like placing blame on the technological advancement of Western society for the death of a car crash victim.

Ridiculous, inaccurate oversimplification of historical events. What about all the technological advancements that allowed them to reach their peak? They had unprecedented infrastructure. Aquaducts, roadways, architecture. Do you suppose these were also the root cause of their downfall?

And why is it that you know this? Technological advancement.

This "argument" doesn't make sense. They weren't a warrior society. They didn't consider fighting an advancement. They considered their civilization, not the fighting itself, an advancement. They fought for territory to expand their civilization, which they did obviously believe was superior. Besides, nothing I've read attributes the fall of Rome to "fighting for land and pagan gods." Also, most of their enemies were pagan as well.

I didn't understand it when you wrote it. One with nature: honestly what is that supposed to mean? You seem to think that we'll all be happy and stress-free if we go back to foraging for food. Wait, what about farming? Is that considered "meddling" with nature and technology? How would we avoid land conflicts without some sort of planning? When does civilization get so complex that it crosses your arbitrary definition of "meddling with technology"?

You're assuming that there are secrets to life, that they equate to happiness, and that animals have somehow found them simply because they are alive despite their lack of technology. I think that's absurd.

Your posts seem to carry a theme that learning and striving to achieve both exclude happiness and companionship. I personally enjoy math greatly. Many people actually enrich their lives by helping to advance technology. I know many engineers that love their jobs. I don't understand why you think that such learning necessarily involves "stress" and "illness" and that living a simple life without technology somehow relieves this. What's wrong with thinking about what you have to do next? This is rather helpful in life. Sure, quite a bit of stress is involved in the medical profession, but there's always been a reason for it. No one's going to say, "Oh darn, my kid has scurvy. Too bad there's nothing I can do about it."

rg2yond wrote:

game, set and match!

Hardly.

Deep very deep, I likie

I would think his point would still apply. No one told the animals about such things yet they are still fine.

I for one agree with you. I am assuming you are implying that we really don't need a formal education to survive. Nor to be happy and productive. Yet in this world of today that is quite another story.

I don't think you're getting the picture. I think your argument plays into his/hers. If I understand correctly? Which I believe I do.

It isn't game set and match

It's a slam dunk haha!

naturalistfosure wrote:

I don't think you're getting the picture. I think your argument plays into his/hers. If I understand correctly? Which I believe I do.

It isn't game set and match

It's a slam dunk haha!

It cracks me up when people make a poor argument or, in your case, no argument, and immediately claim victory in a debate. My argument could not possibly play into his/hers because his/her arguments didn't make any sense.

I was reminded of this thread a while ago when I saw an article on students' math abilities and their attitude toward math. A study by the Brookings Institution found that students with the least confidence regarding their math ability performed better.

Here are a couple of articles on it:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20061018/news_1n18achieve.html

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/10/29/are-kids-getting-too-much-praise/

I echo what others have said on this thread regarding people's attitudes toward math and how being bad at it isn't considered a big deal. The positive with that is if one is good (or even just decent) at math, that can make a big difference in one's career. The negative is that we end up having to support to some extent all the idiots who don't understand math and correct their mistakes.

I think my wife, who is a wildlife biologist, would disagree with the view that an animals life in wild is all blissful happiness, communing with nature, feeling wild and free, etc....

Many animals in the wild that have never encountered mankind, much less western civilization, die from stress and stress related ailments (heart disease, hyper tension, and even obesity). My wife has personally seen wild animals under stress due to predation, changes in habitat, changes in season, and similar environmental stresses simply drop dead from stress, loss hair/fur as a result of stress, eat thier own offspring as a result of stress, and a host of other horiffic things. In fact, while it is impossible to for us actually guage the emotional state of an animal, in addition to generally living longer, animals in captivity have been found to exhibit markedly lower levels of various stress hormones.

If you think that animals have figured out the secret to happiness simply because they don't have 9-5 jobs and continue to reproduce and survive you should think again. I wonder how happy you would be if you found yourself having to dedicate anywhere near the level of effort to ensuring your survival as the average animal. Your 9-5 would seem like a vacation at Club Med.

malmo wrote:

JimFiore wrote:Sometimes it's better if you can give an example rather than a dictionary definition. In the case of logs, one application is human hearing.

Actually define decibels using logs and pH using logs doesn't do much either. "What do you mean it's a gazillion times louder than quiet? My amp only goes to 11."

Awesome thread - worth reading all the way through.

To properly use dB to define a scale, you need to have a reference point. For human hearing that's 10^-12 W/m^2.

Logs were invented by Napier to simplify computations with large numbers, that's as good a reason as any to have them.