Niche? a bit of ‘Pythagoras’ came in handy just the other day, I am building a small wooden workshop in my garden, it has lots of triangles in it!
As I said, if you have the tools you find uses for them from time to time, even when doing quite basic DIY.
The problem with text communication is, I can’t tell if someone’s taking the piss.
I hated mathematics with a vengeance.
This thread - thankyou, grimly reminds me of it. Thankfully 95% of it is needed in everyday life. 
Unfortunately I never had a tutor good enough to guide me to “see” math. It’s all mostly a foggy black impenetrable wall in my eyes.
I am being deadly serious.
I am no mathematician, but it really does take the guess work out of some problems.
I think a lot of it is down to the teaching. I remember a maths lesson from the senior maths teacher in our school. He put up an algebraic equation on the board, said that it simplified to another equation, and that simplified to… a couple of times, then rubbed out the first one (which I was still working on) to show the next stage in the simplification, then rubbed out the next one and so on. I was totally lost - I couldn’t keep up.
When I was teaching maths, I tried to go slowly enough that they could keep up, tested each step etc. There was a few (very few) who still didn’t quite get it, but the vast majority did - even those who were convinced that they just could not get maths.
Yep. Trying to explain GCE maths to my kids is really hard when I can just instantly ‘see’ the answer. Being able to teach anything is clearly a separate skill from understanding a topic.
Funny though how times tables seem still to be taught by rote, so if you can instantly give a simple multiplication answer why not, and why should you faff around with workings?
Times have changed so much, I’m thankful that my kids seem to have an affinity for mathematics, I think they fall down more sometimes interpreting the questions (in any discipline) correctly rather than being able to answer them.
My daughter went to a school briefing last night about multiplication.
It was aimed at parents of the school’s year 1 and year 2 pupils.
The basic message was that 6 to 8 year olds are biologically programmed to learn their multiplication tables by rote and or recognising patterns of numbers. A learning skill that evaporates by the time they are 8 to 9 year old.
I’m sure there are exceptions, but the school intends to cater for the majority, with special help for the exceptions.
Anyone got any JMB ‘A’ Level Maths papers (particularly the Pure) from the 1970s? I would love to see some of those again!!
Whilst doing the dishes as a young child (age 4-10) my father taught me the multiplication table from 1x1 to 25x25. Made math-related stuff rather simple for me (I’m an accountant LOL.)
Easy mind training. It’s a lost art.
It absolutely isn’t a lost art.
Watch NumberBlocks on YouTube and be astonished how often the episodes are watched!
My own take on this apparently simple question is that it is more about probing the basic understanding of functions that the pupil has. The equation is f(x,y)=0. What can we gather about the domain and range of the function and possible solutions for different domains such as the natural numbers, integers, Real Number etc. Some discussion of inverse functions is possible based on assumptions.
The answer depends a bit on what is in the syllabus or what has recently been taught. That is why it is difficult for parents to help other than by finding this out.
Stuff I learned at Uni is now introduced in schools so the framework is there even if the depth of problem solving isn’t.
Phil
I have my old A level papers from 1968 somewhere at home, including Pure maths and Applied maths papers. They weren’t JMB, but I imagine all were fairly similar. I will try to remember to post the Pure Maths one next time I am near them, unless someone else obliges before then.
This thread made me chortle… many responses reflect the same pea cocking one gets when asking about hi fi. This underlines that we are simple creatures- on the one hand capable of technology that allows us to record and replay with sufficient accuracy to convince our senses previous events yet biology has rigged us up to need to persuade others that we are top of the pile… a simple algebraic equation that demand no more thought than how best to stack hi fi components … which reminds me… why separate brain and brawn??
Many thanks!
Changing the subject slightly I taught my son to understand electronic circuits in physics by referring to plumbing , a resistor is a narrow pipe a capacitor a water tank etc so it relates to a real life effect of water flow instead of electric .
My wife was a teacher for 35 years or so and during that time, the art of teaching math changed from instilling memory work to “manipulatives” and other gaudy bead ideas. Math at its base is a language…and not a difficult one at that. It always made me wonder when someone said “I’m not good at percentages.” Never could figure that out.
Complex math? Maybe a different story there…but I had a woman friend some years ago who wanted to be an accountant and couldn’t do certain kinds of (elementary) math. So I started to teach her algebra (useful for Lotus 1-2-3 at the time, Excel now) and found that basic operations were never taught to her so various stepping stones of learning were simply…missing. Once she grasped those, factoring polynomials became easy. I’m convinced that we’ve overcomplicated the learning process in far too many ways.
The NumberBlocks things are cute…but do they actually teach anyone anything? Not sure about that.
I love analogies!
So true. And why I blame my early problems on uninspiring instruction. I was okay at languages. My GCSE German teacher correctly predicted I would be a language major at Uni’ - though I thought he was nuts and dropped foreign languages for both A-level and my first failed attempt at Uni’.
When I started learning Japanese, the only thing that got me on the course was a letter of recommendation from my night school teacher. The actual listed requirements for studying were mentioned as, “An A-level or equivalent qualification, of grade B or higher, in either a foreign language, mathematics, or music.”
Music being the other language which is very much math adjacent. The rationale being that if you had proficiency in any one of those three, then you could learn a language at undergraduate level.
There is always an exception to the rule. The current exception is writing this sentence. Foreign languages were never my strong point.