Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[RedKing]

But....the world is pretty much built on triangles.

[Vector]

But....the world is pretty much built on triangles.

... I'm sure you know how friendly I am with the real world by now?

<------ Proud not to be a physicist

[nenjin]

Whose talkin' 'bout triangles?!

[Vector]

Now it is easy to see that the moral part of love is an artificial sentiment, born of usage in society, and cultivated by women with much skill and care in order to establish their empire over men, and so make dominant the sex that out to obey.

ROUSSEAU YOU FUCKER

[RedKing]

Whose talkin' 'bout triangles?!

*img snip*
Was that the Particle Man sketch that Tiny Toons did? 

[nenjin]

Indeed. Was quite a while ago, I think when Old New Yorke was once New Amsterdam....

[RedKing]

Indeed. Was quite a while ago, I think when Old New Yorke was once New Amsterdam....

I'd forgotten they did a sketch of that one as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqJXxHi6RwQ

Even better to find out that the 'plot' is a take-off of a 1960's heist film set in Istanbul. Tiny Toons was so full of win.
I RAEG that the gems of WB animation like Tiny Toons, Animaniacs and Histeria aren't being made anymore.

[Leatra]

Fuck triangles.  Seriously.  Never liked the suckers.

Exactly. It's just a damn triangle. Why the hell do I have to learn them if I'm going to be a... let's say a lawyer. This education system thing is pretty fucked. Seriously, does a lawyer need to know about trigonometry? In my country, they do. I wish I lived in somewhere else with a better education system.

Because even lawyers sometimes need to know how to build their own bookshelves, or how tall a building is, or how far away something is.

Not sure I get that. What does trigonometry has to do with building a bookshelf and calculating how far away something is?

[TherosPherae]

Fuck triangles.  Seriously.  Never liked the suckers.

Exactly. It's just a damn triangle. Why the hell do I have to learn them if I'm going to be a... let's say a lawyer. This education system thing is pretty fucked. Seriously, does a lawyer need to know about trigonometry? In my country, they do. I wish I lived in somewhere else with a better education system.

Because even lawyers sometimes need to know how to build their own bookshelves, or how tall a building is, or how far away something is.

Not sure I get that. What does trigonometry has to do with building a bookshelf and calculating how far away something is?

Bookshelf I'm not sure about, but there's a classic trig problem where you have to find the height of a sand dune given just 2 distances from it and the 2 angles at those distances between the ground and the top of the sand dune. Presumably, that could also be used to figure out the height of a building, although it would probably be easier, faster and relatively more precise to just count the number of stories in the building...

[TheBronzePickle]

Given 2 known sides and 1 known angle, you can calculate the other two angles and the remaining side of a triangle. It's how landscaping works and it's also used by the military to spot for artillery.

[Virex]

Fuck triangles.  Seriously.  Never liked the suckers.

Exactly. It's just a damn triangle. Why the hell do I have to learn them if I'm going to be a... let's say a lawyer. This education system thing is pretty fucked. Seriously, does a lawyer need to know about trigonometry? In my country, they do. I wish I lived in somewhere else with a better education system.

If we'd only teach our children what we are sure they're going to need, we'll soon find out just how well we can judge what we really need...

[Leatra]

Fuck triangles.  Seriously.  Never liked the suckers.

Exactly. It's just a damn triangle. Why the hell do I have to learn them if I'm going to be a... let's say a lawyer. This education system thing is pretty fucked. Seriously, does a lawyer need to know about trigonometry? In my country, they do. I wish I lived in somewhere else with a better education system.

Because even lawyers sometimes need to know how to build their own bookshelves, or how tall a building is, or how far away something is.

Not sure I get that. What does trigonometry has to do with building a bookshelf and calculating how far away something is?

Bookshelf I'm not sure about, but there's a classic trig problem where you have to find the height of a sand dune given just 2 distances from it and the 2 angles at those distances between the ground and the top of the sand dune. Presumably, that could also be used to figure out the height of a building, although it would probably be easier, faster and relatively more precise to just count the number of stories in the building...

Since grade school, I have always went "WTF?" with maths questions they asked at school. Here is an example I faced when I was around 8 years old:

There are 8 chickens and an unknown number of horses in an animal farm. When you count their legs, there are 28 legs. How many horses are there?

I was like "Just stop wasting our time with counting legs and count the damn animals already". What a genius solution right? I guess that explains why I still can't learn a maths topic without thinking "What kinda stuff are we going to use this knowledge for? I would be okay if it was general knowledge but..."

I seriously can't find myself interested in a topic if it doesn't have any practical use in real life. I like the history lessons though. It is real and interesting. Maths? It just seems like another dimension. Something that makes simple things a lot more difficult. I wish I could study maths without stomachache but this is just the way I am. I suck at these things. I really envy math-geniuses.

Even my teacher is agreeing to me that this education system just fills students with knowledge that we will forget after graduation.

Fuck triangles.  Seriously.  Never liked the suckers.

Exactly. It's just a damn triangle. Why the hell do I have to learn them if I'm going to be a... let's say a lawyer. This education system thing is pretty fucked. Seriously, does a lawyer need to know about trigonometry? In my country, they do. I wish I lived in somewhere else with a better education system.

If we'd only teach our children what we are sure they're going to need, we'll soon find out just how well we can judge what we really need...

Of course. If you ask an average student s(he) won't want to learn a thing that seems complex. But do they really have to teach college stuff (IMO) like trigonometry at high school?

[Virex]

The ability to just shut up and work on a task is quite an important one too. Besides that, many of the seemingly senseless problems (like the leg-counting one you mentioned) train you to convert a textually explained problem into one a mathematic problem. In that case they were trying to get you to realize that you could solve the problem by realizing you'd need to solve the equation 4*h + 16 = 28. I would argue that the ability to convert problems and the realization that problems are convertible between different kinds of descriptions is actually something very important and mathematics helps a lot with that.

[scriver]

Since grade school, I have always went "WTF?" with maths questions they asked at school. Here is an example I faced when I was around 8 years old:

There are 8 chickens and an unknown number of horses in an animal farm. When you count their legs, there are 28 legs. How many horses are there?

I was like "Just stop wasting our time with counting legs and count the damn animals already". What a genius solution right? I guess that explains why I still can't learn a maths topic without thinking "What kinda stuff are we going to use this knowledge for? I would be okay if it was general knowledge but..."

...But that's just missing the point, it's just a metaphor to make the example less abstract. Would your eight-year-old self preferred it if it said. "X=2Z, Y=4Z. You have 8X and 28Z. How many Y do you have?"

(Also I hope I did that right because I suck at math too and there is a big chance I failed )

[Leafsnail]

Hmm... but on an Animal Farm, don't birds count as four legged?  That would imply that some of your chickens are legless and there are no horses at all.