Comment

Comment by badosu

Well, I don't believe that's a fair conclusion based just on the fact we observe most people are "innumerate" and "hate maths".

Most people also never had the fortune of having someone describe why resolving quadratic equations is meaningful or how it developed.

An example of a somewhat dense but very approachable topic with good motivation is this book: https://web.osu.cz/~Zusmanovich/teach/books/visual-group-the...

You could say that not every adult, 2 deviations from the IQ median for the sake of rigor (we lose 2.5% of the population under), capable of reading might be able to follow it, and I would accept the argument. At the same time almost every adult was also indoctrinated in such a way they "hate maths", even though their only experience is dealing with numbers, operations and memorizing formulas that might eventually be useful.

I'm not sure this translates well, but the best allegory I could make to illustrate my point is "the fish does not think about the water".

parent badosu 5 months ago

No comments yet

Be the first to share your thoughts.

Live from the official Hacker News API

A modern reader for Hacker News · SvelteKit + Skeleton