It’s not about the area of the cone. It’s about dissecting a problem to find that it is composed of smaller problems that you can solve more easily. It’s about recognizing the similarities to what you know in something you haven’t seen before.
Unfortunately that isn’t something you can teach without lots of arbitrary and pointless examples.
The contempt for education is mind-boggling even on Lemmy.
Useless to you. I extremely need to know the Pythagorean Theorem for my work. Actually, absolutely everything I have ever been taught in math class ever, literally all of it and so much more, I have used. But I’m starting a PhD in electrical engineering in the fall, so I’m a bit biased 😆.
For me personally, dissecting frogs (well actually I dissected a clam) was probably a waste of time, but for at least some of my classmates it was probably helpful. Long division is important because it stimulates algorithmic thinking, which is important for living in a computerized world. Area of a trapezoid is important because… sometimes trapezoids show up, or you can approximate a more complicated shape with a trapezoid whose properties are well understood.
Honestly I think engineers of all kinds can benefit from more study of biological systems. As an engineer myself, I find there’s a lot of inspiration to be gained by looking at life and understanding how it works. My primary work is controls and learning that biological muscle operates as bang bang control was mindblowing. Like look at the agility and complexity achieved by essentially a fuck load of on off actuators. It shows how far you can go with extremely simple methods and honestly helped me chill the fuck out about making everything perfect.
Honestly I think engineers of all kinds can benefit from more study of biological systems.
Agreed. My point was more that I didn’t really learn much from actually dissecting a real animal. Like I probably would have learned more from reading a book or watching someone else do the dissection.
one time the state of Indiana almost made pi equal to 3.2. This is the dumb shit that happens when you aren’t introduced to these topics in school. Please don’t return us to dark times.
That listicle in the link includes as 2 of the 13 items using a protractor and knowing the pythagorean theorem.
I have needed both of those things just this summer, and just as part of a hobby! When building things even just knowing the 3-4-5 shortcut for the pythagorean theorem is incredibly handy.
School is meant to introduce you to a wide variety of fields and disciplines to help you choose a career. You might not have had any interest in geometry, but at least some of your classmates did and they may well be architects or engineers by now. Meanwhile, you probably had other things in school you liked but the other kids didn’t, which almost certainly influenced the kinds of jobs you want as an adult.
I don’t need to find the surface area of a cone to smoke it
I guess if you’re an ape-man living alone in the woods, a broad education is pretty useless. ;)
You can lead a horse to water … I get the sentiment though. Schooling is a great idea that is too often poorly executed. I’ve found that educational materials for math and science sometimes have a circlejerk kind of attitude, like the authors are laughing at the thought of students struggling with a problem “left as an exercise to the reader” immediately following a wall of dense, incomprehensible text.
Where can I find examples of otherwise dry subjects taught well? Is there an educational system that’s praised in the same way they praise Scandinavian prisons? Or is the pain of learning just a necessary evil?
Lots of subjects are taught well in video games, intentionally or not
Except special needs, in our daily life is often needed geometry, trigonometry and algebra more than we think, but in the professional use it’s more like this:
When I’m in a complaining about things that are actually good competition and my opponent is crankyrebel
I just can’t believe they found a practical use for geometry.
Advanced calculus is mandatory, eg. for your income statement.
