The Buckets by Greg Cravens for December 05, 2014

Of course you need to learn algebra. You need it so you can teach it to your children.

Try to do any repair at home without some understanding of it.

Algebra and trigonometry.

A lesson learned is a lesson remembered and…um.. where was I going with that?

The only people who use algebra write spreadsheets on Excel. In the 21st Century, that is “threshold competence.”

You still use recipes?

Recipes are simpler when you ignore the X.:-)

Sorry to hear that Frank.

If you have ever had to figure how much of something you’ve needed over several steps of adding, multiplying, etc, congratulations, you have used algebra.

I have tutored coworkers in algebra. I compared it to basketball. You may know how to dribble, pass, shot and rebound, but you aren’t playing until you put them all together. Algebra is putting adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing into action.

True dat. I didn’t come to realize how important calculus was until I got into a hydrology class when I thought I wanted to be a geologic engineer (gave that dream up real quick). A professor of immunology at my last job needed to know the area under a curve and couldn’t figure out how to calculate it. I went through a great deal of trouble calculating integrals on splines by hand while struggling to remember how it’s done, then found out Graphpad Prism, which was used to create the graph, has an “integrate” function built in.

Any experienced knitter will tell you you need algebra in figuring out the shaping of your patterns.

I never liked maths. It was pants.

xxx

Whenever you go shopping and try to find the best deal you’re using algebra. X is the price per ounce and the lowest X is the best value.

To me it is all math. Never had a math teacher that could explain things so that I could understand. Some of us need a little extra time, A lot of extra time. Math is needed for any changes for the oven and what is going into the oven.On the other hand – I am able to look at T4 slip (think 1040) and tell you if you are having a refund or paying. Without a calculator. Go shopping, picking up several items and know what the total will be, including tax, before anything is rung up. That is my math.

BTW – every once in a while – some website posts tests from schools from the mid to late 1800’s. The amount of math the kids had to know for everything about farming (plowing, planting, growing, reaping and selling) is astounding.

When I went to university, I thought I was below average at maths [I’m British] because I couldn’t comprehend second order differential equations.