Real Math used at work is only for the smart kids
How the hell is “average price” useful?
Thats like buying potatoes and pork chops and saying the average price is $875. Technically true but practically useless.
Most of the math I do at work is related to compound interest. Of all the math I believe the general public should understand, the concept of how paying interest to others is a total screw would get my top vote.
I have a co-worker who took out a car loan last week at, wait for it, FIFTY THREE PERCENT INTEREST! No concept of what that was costing her. She could only see, “I can afford the monthly payment.”
(1 + r)^n and its friend 1/(1 + r)^n have been the two most important concepts in work and personal life that I’ve ever learned and applied.
That is usury. That cannot be legal? Oh, no, I just checked, wow, usury laws are weak af.
Usury was indeed the term that immediately came to mind.
Sounds like predatory lending
I would agree, but it’s not my life, not my money. You can’t really go around telling people they fucked up every time you see it.
True. Plus, while dumb, 53% will always beat the interest extracted by two goons and a baseball bat. There’s always a trade-off!
53%?!
Sounds like one of those shitty used car joints “no credit, no problem” that you sign your life away for a mediocre car.
As an actuarie this meme is kinda true but mostly false. I had classes on some advanced maths like ordinary differential equations that have never use on my day to day job. But, the actuarial sciences math in collage was elementary school level of abstraction compared with the real world. There’s still a lot of excel tho, but I’m cool and use python (pandas) wherever I can.
AcTuArIe
This is a tangent but, I dunno why we teach students how to solve ODEs. Computers can do these stuffs perfectly fine. What they can’t do is the actual understanding and analysis.
Disagree. ODF was one of the best subjects I took, and even if I haven’t used it, I could be working on quant where is used regularly. And the same can be said for any other subject.
Same here, I still do a lot of complex problem solving and modeling but excel/python handles a lot of the dirty work for me.
wow. my middle school algebra was weak
Don’t feel too bad. This meme appears be aimed at people who specialized in advanced mathematics in college which are a small minority.
I kinda miss doing those relatively simple physics probems like finding how far something goes based on velocity and shit.
I was denied a mathematics education, for real. I can’t even do long division, nevermind that squiggly F shit. I thought that stuff was only for astrophysicists.
I want to learn basic maths, but I’m in a ‘learned helplessness’ mindset where I can’t even get through basic sums and equations intended for children (I’m old as fuck now).
I was diagnosed with autism a few years back, which kinda made no sense. I would have expected rainman powers, but numbers just don’t jive with my cunt of a brain. Maths is as inscrutable to me as people’s faces or social cues.
Just go on Khan academy and do a lesson a day. It will take time(years) but you’ll learn.
If you actually want to learn maths (that is, if you’re not just venting), you could try to ask for help in dedicated math or teaching communities.
The problem with teaching stuff you know, is to put yourself in a position of actually not knowing anything. I’m a software developer and had to teach some apprentices a few years ago, and it was really eye opening to me to see how much assumptions about the apprentice’s knowledge I made even though I thought I made my explanation “basic”.
It’s quite possible that all the tutorials you’ve read are either for literal children, so they just don’t work for your adult brain, or they’re intended for adults and assume too much.
On a personal note: how did you get into that situation? Were you home schooled?
don’t let yourself get discouraged, math isn’t everything ^^
I’m autistic too and I had to relearn math as an adult. Now I know calculus and advanced mathematics.
I can go find some book recommendations, but when I was first learning I really got a lot out of watching The Organic Chemistry Tutor.
Khan academy can solve this for you, if you want.
+1
I was going to suggest Khan Academy. You can start at any grade level and work your way up.
OP take your time and sit down with pencil and paper.
You might also have discalcula, which is a real but somewhat uncommon thing where you’re absolutely shit at math. I have no idea how to get tested for it though.
Cousin of dracula?
Close. Cousin of dyslexia.
I transferred schools in the middle of 10th grade, and the new Algebra class I landed in was several chapters ahead. I never caught up, but the teacher passed anyone who turned in literally anything for homework so I did that.
Now in my 30’s I’m getting into indie game design, and I need that gap filled so I can write the code I need. So I went to the local thrift shop and picked up a couple old textbooks (since it’s safe to assume that nothing groundbreaking has happened in the field of basic algebra in the past twenty years) for fifty cents and I’ve been working my way through them. I don’t understand everything that’s happening, but I’m pushing ahead with the faith that somewhere along the line things will “click”.
You might enjoy Freya Holmér’s videos - I mostly know her for her excellent mathsy video essays, but she has loads of videos about “maths for game Devs” that might be useful.
I did an honors math+cs degree. I’m pretty good at advanced math. I never learned long division. Don’t feel bad about that.
(In case any other mathy people read this and wonder how I could understand ring theory without Euclid’s division algorithm, relax)
We did a lot of straight algebra in highschool, I don’t need the exact skill but its boosted my abstract thinking a lot which helps in other things
Lucky, my school only did gay algebra and look at me now 😩
But have you found x 😁
So fucking real
YOU’RE DOING QUADRATICS IN MIDDLE SCHOOL?’
Anecdotal, but I grew up in the US and I learned this in middle school as a gifted student. Others have mentioned it depends on the state/curriculum. I imagine in other countries they also divide their students between standard/honors/gifted-type tiers; they certainly do in the Netherlands, which is where I did my graduate studies.
“Gifted” education in the US means they burn us out with weird “critical thinking” extracirriculars and then berate us when the senioritis hits two years early.
In senior year at my high school depending on what math track you go in you can be doing AP Calculus
Yeah it was a middle school thing in Finland too, at least in the 90’s.
I did an exchange year in the US in my 2nd high school year, and I was honestly a bit surprised at how… well, simple it all was. I was a senior in the US and I’d learned just about everything they taught that wasn’t specific to the US or the English language (and even some of those…) either in my 1st year in high school or in middle school.
In my experience as an American, I’ve learned the same thing in multiple years, we kind of just chose a point to stop at and did that for our entire god damn school year, never moving on. We could have talked about so much interesting history, but no, we need to talk about WW2 and completely gloss over most other things for the 12th year in a row
For christs sakes I was learning FRACTIONS AND DECIMALS IN MY SENIOR YEAR
Are you sure you weren’t in a remedial school? lol
I will admit the reason my last two years were such a stark contrast to my previous years was because I went from honors down to basic because I went to a vocational high school, Diamond Oaks, and they only had the base classes
But still I never want to have another history class on WW2 again, I don’t mind learning the era but I’ve relearned the same thing over and over again
WW2 again, I don’t mind learning the era but I’ve relearned the same thing over and over again
When your history class is written by the same folks responsible for the History Channel circa ~2002-2010.
American schools cover the civil and 2 great wars because those were the last times we were arguably the good guys. Every war since has been a conflict we started by meddling or we had no good reason to be there
lol and saying “we” were the good guys in the civil war implies that we were also the bad guys, so that one cancels.
Idk what middle school really is because it’s not been a thing at any of the schools I’ve been to, but it’s definitely something you do a lot earlier than calculus. If calculus comes in in your last three or four years of high school, quadratics are what you’re doing for at least two years before that.
Middle school is usually grades 7-8
It’s the step between primary and secondary school that a lot of countries have, also known as intermediate school, junior high school, junior secondary school, or lower secondary school: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_school
South east of it is mordor
Yes, that’s standard at least in Germany
… The worst part is I’m decent with math by US standards in school and couldn’t even solve the middle school one with. Quick glance.
Multiply the top by the bottom to erase it. Reverse the square root of something. + Or - threw me right off…
It is the quadratic formula. It already is the solution. The problem is any quadratic of the form ax²+bx+c=0
Cause the middle school one is the quadratic formula. You use it to factor 2nd degree polynomials. You don’t solve for a, b, and c, you just plug them in.
Same in Brazil, though public education quality varies a lot.
That’s nuts. In the US the only high school math I was taught was algebra and geometry. Anything more advanced than that was for students in the “gifted” program. No wonder why Americans are so stupid.
Maybe you were just at a bad school? Quadratic equations are mandatory in Germany even for the lowest level of graduation.
Until my Abitur (12th grade) I learned about equations, stochastics, integrals and derivatives, vector stuff, etc.
not sure why you’re getting downvoted for this, I had the same experience with my education in the US. high school class of 08, lol. the school never taught a math class past algebra 1. if you finished it, you still needed math credits per year, so they’d just have you retake the same class. seriously. absolutely abysmal. 95% of the math I do now is self taught. from my “education” alone, we never got much past solving basic linear single-variable equations. most of my class graduated barely literate. really, most of my class simply left, myself included - the dropout rate was astonishingly high around 08, and instead of doing the same classes and curriculum for the third time in my senior year, I opted to simply leave, educate myself, and shortly thereafter start my business.
In Spain too, it’s also needed in vocational training (FP1, FP2) for carpenters, electricians, plumbers, etc., because it involves necessary calculations in their work, such as trigonometry, spheronometry, vector forces, flow calculations, among others. For office workers, naturally, percentage calculations are not overcome, but even there second degree equations can arise.
Wow. In America, trades people use a chart to look up literally anything that requires math. If you’re lucky.
Most of the time “it looks good enough” is enough.
I’ve had an economics teacher in the Netherlands who had interest tables and wanted us to them too. For those before calculators, those are tables that list the years on the left, and the interest on top, and then the multiplier in the table.
So, 10 years at 6.5% = 1.877
This was in 2005i sh.
Could you use a slide rule for that kind of multiplication?
Absolutely. But I learned in 2005, and the electric calculator had replaced the sliderule a couple of decades earlier.
But this is something they were great at, but usually not with the same accuracy. It’s hard to get more than 3 decimal places out of one, and tables are great for that, you can fill whole books with them.
I would use an Abacus for multiplication and a Venier scale for accuracy
I’m American, I definitely learned this stuff in 7th or 8th grade. Granted, I didn’t use it past high school, and I forgot it before I finished college, but that’s definitely when I learned it.
Bro I’m American and they didn’t even mention algebra until 9th grade, the fuck you mean quadratics in middle school
Math is personalized in American schools. There’s on grade, advanced, gt, and accelerated. Each level above on grade is how many years ahead your class math is. Depending on how large your school is, gt and accelerated math students will take math with the grades above them.
On grade would be quadratic in 9th.
Yeah…I am american and almost done with my associates degree…and I still haven’t learned “quadraitcs” idk, standards are wired
It’s Algebra 2. I just checked and only 6 states require it. Crazy. I was in a state that didn’t require it but finished Calculus 2 at graduation.
Ahh…okay, so far I’ve done pre-algebra, Diploma didn’t require it and associates degree looks like it doesn’t either, Bachelors will…probably.
In Hong Kong too, though the dividing is a bit different. High school is like the last 3 years of secondary school, and middle school is like the 3 years in primary school and 3 years in secondary school.
We also have vector and matrix on top of calculus in high school if you take the elective course. The compulsory part contains geometry, complex, probability, etc.
If you want, we have some samples. I took module 2. Compulsory Module 1: Calculus + Statistics Module 2: Algebra + Calculus
I guess you can see this earlier but in Europe you cover it in middle school
Yeah seriously WTF, I didn’t even learn basic Algebra until freshmen year of high school! We never even got to the math with the fancy letters in it. I have no idea what those cursive f, d, and w characters mean.
Cursive big f: “integration”, which can be interpreted in two ways. One is “area under the curve” for some part of the curve. Other is “average value of a part of the curve multiplied by the size of the curve”. Curve being the function, the graph, f(x), however you wanna call it.
Normal d: “differentiation” (from difference), infinitely small change. Usually used in ratios: df/dx means how much does f(x) change relative to x when you change x a little bit.
Cursive d: “partial”, same as normal d but used when working with higher dimensional data like 3D. Can also mean “boundary” of something. Example: boundary of a volume in 3D, like wrapping paper around a box. Or, boundary of such wrapping paper itself, if it’s not perfectly connecting.
Omega: just a Greek letter used as a variable, in this case there’s a history of it being used as a sort of “density” variable in the field of differential geometry. The college row in the meme is kind of translating the high school row from a function to a 3D volume.
My middle school student worked on them last year
Math exam in two days, please send help
Which math?
Multidimensional analysis
Lol ur fucked
Good luck.
Hee hee can’t help you there
Linear algebra (ex: multiply the matrices A and B), multivariable calculus (example: find ∇F with F=[xy,yz,xz]^T ), or actual “multidimensional analysis” (example: define the norm of [1m,1m/s,1m/s^2 ] in a way that makes sense)? I can help with all three.
Yeah Multivariable calculus is the thing. I keep forgetting the name.
Sounds like fun! I’m going to bed soonish but I’m willing to answer questions about multivariable calculus probably when I wake up.
When I took multivariable calculus, the two books that really helped me “get the picture” were Multivariable Calculus with Linear Algebra and Series by Trench and Kolman, and Calculus of Vector Functions by Williamson, Crowell, and Trotter. Both are on LibGen and both are cheap because they’re old books. But their real strength lies in the fact that both books start with basic matrix algebra, and the interplay between calculus and linear algebra is stressed throughout, unlike a lot of the books I looked at (and frankly the class I took) which tried to hide the underlying linear algebra.
Thanks for the offer! The exam is tomorrow (today is another) so there isn’t a lot of time to prepare anymore. I’ll just be writing a page of notes that we can take to the exam as a cheat sheet. Still, if something comes up, I might just ask you.
Thanks for the offer.
The exam is tomorrow (today is another)
Ouch. Been there. Good luck on your exams!
I did advanced mathematics and chose physics as one of my elective subjects in school. Nowadays, I do a lot of work based around analytics and forecasting.
“We need to find the average of this.”
“That’s easy. I’ll do some more advanced stuff to really dial in the accuracy.”
“Awesome. What’s the timeframe?”
looks at million row dataset “To find the average? Like a month. Some of these numbers are mispelled words… Why are all these blank?”
“Oh, you’ll have to read this 45 page document that outlines the default values.”
And that’s how roffice maths works. Lots and lots of if conditions, query merges, and meetings with other teams trying to understand why they entered in the thing they entered. By the time the data wrangling phase is complete, you give zero fucks about doing more than supplying the average.
Dang, I was really hoping this would be one of those stories that goes like:
“How long will that take?”
“It’s a lot of data…like a month?” (But I actually wrote a Python script that compiles and formats it perfectly in like 5 minutes.)
“You’re such a hard worker!”
Shhhh
Geez, that reminds me of a former colleague that, when asked for “the numbers,” would just send screenshots of tables in the ERP system instead of exporting them to a spreadsheet. What’s even worse, usually a lot of values were plain wrong, on one occasion more than half of them.
If Timmy has 45 pages to read on a bus traveling an average speed of 35 mph with an mean stop distance being 0.7 kms how many stops will Timmy pass before this fucking meeting ends ?
Why do I need to know what Timmy is up to, and how much he is reading?
Oh, sorry the 45 page document is for something else. The only person who understands this dataset is Dave and he was made redundant 5 years ago. Anyway, can you get this done today?
Yup this is every job now. Wrangling numbers. The actual job or calculation could be done in days if less. But dealing with dirty information and playing detective which isnt even part of it is the sink hole of every job right now.
Lol, I have still written python scripts to deal with them all.
I miss those days…
Is this why chatgpt has a chance at optimizing work? Because it will filter out boring mistakes for you
Until it introduces a bunch of mistakes of its own. AI has a test has failed in several industries before now. It’s been around much longer than you’d think and has been tested in the BG for a lonnng time with much fail to the result of disgust if you even bring it up. It’s nothing more than a novelty in writing that doesn’t require the need to run on tight, non rational numbers. Something of which no binary based, household (and most industry) computer is capable of.
Look up the Ariane 5 rocket disaster. It is the summary of floating point error that can result in disaster. This is the limitation that is present in all standard computers you’d be accessing today since the 1930’s.
(Also referred to as round off errors or truncation errors in avionics because of how common irrational numbers are in spatial navigation.)
I think the solution is 42
What is the advanced stuff you can do if you don’t have garbage data?
That’s a tough question in analytics lol
You mean mathematical examples? Or like examples of analytical outcomes? Keeping in mind the more analytics-heavy, the more it involves lots of sources, patterns, variables, and scenarios, but I could provide just a single example.
Edit: Oh, wait. If you’re referring to just averages… In forecasting I prefer, as a minimum, to do weighted averaging. This is where I’ll have a certain time period of cumulated historical data that provides a more stable base, however more weight is applied the more recent (relevant) the data is. This shows a more realistic average than a single snapshot of data that could be an outlier.
But speaking of outliers, I’d prefer to also apply weight to outlying data points that may skew the output, especially if sample size is low. Like 1, 2, 2, 76, 3, 2. That 76 obviously skews the “average”.
Above that, depending on what’s required, I’ll use a proper method. Like if someone wants to know on average how many trucks they need a day, I’ll utilise Poisson instead to get the number of trucks they need each day to meet service requirements, including acceptable queuing, during the day. Like how the popular Erlang formulas utilise Poisson distribution and can kind of handle 90% of BAU S&D loading in day to day operations with a couple clicks.
That’s a basic example, but as data cleanliness increases, those better steps can be taken. Could be like 25 average last Wed vs. 20 weighted average over last month vs. 16 actually needed if optimised correctly.
Oh, and if there’s data on each truck’s mileage, capacity, availability, traffic density in areas over the day, etc…obbioisly it can be even more optimised. Though I’d only go that far if things were consistent/routine. Script it, automate it, set and forget and have the day’s forecast appear in the warehouse each morning.
And yet such simple things are often incredibly hard to get done because of poor data governance or systems.
That’s software development for you. Why is that weird value there? Because some guy, at some point, had checked for that and somehow it’s still relevant.
I know of a system that churns through literally millions of transactions representing millions of Euros every day, and their interface has load bearing typos (because Germans in the 90s were really bad at the Englishs).
As an engineer i literally use all of it daily.
As an engineer, doubt.
I guess depends on engineer
What do you use diff eq’s for on a daily basis?
Pretty much anything dynamics related. Starting basic displacements, velocity, acceleration integration for simple dynamic systems to more complicated equations for wind and spinning rotor interaction induced vibrations in wind turbines.
If you do not work with dynamics, for statics there are still a lot of encounters with deferential equations. Euler-Bernoulli Beam theory or plate and shell theories can be used for times when you want to solve more complex problems for which predefined equations do not exist and you do not have access to expensive fea software.
I use the college stuff maybe once a month, but still in Excel! You cannot escape the Excel!
The my mentioned “all of it” includes excel :) but nowadays we a bit by bit transition to python
I recently had to do linear algebra for the first time ever irl. I’ve been out of school for ~15 years. I was trying to make a rotation matrix to transform some points in 2D space. It took me a very long time to remember how it’s performed yet alone “transformation matrix” which is something I’d never heard of before. I got my code all working and was so proud, then later found that one of the r packages I was using could have just solved it all automatically :/
As an engineer I don’t get to use any of it very often. I’m always excited when I get to do any actual engineering instead of project management.
You can always try to pivot from project management to actual engineering. I am load engineer for wind turbines and everything is time dependant and dynamic. For past 10years i use every bit of math I learned is school and uni.
£7.99 for a stapler?!
I use trig heavily at work.
