25/366 it's complicated
Jan. 26th, 2020 03:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ironymaideni hated math when i was in school. not because it was "hard" but because i hated anything that required rote repetition, nor did i enjoy manipulating numbers for the sake of manipulating numbers without an application. i generally grasped the concepts right away and found sheets of practice problems to be torture. i was the flip side of most of my class, who were happy to do sheets of dittos but quailed at word problems, which were my favorite.
once we got to use variables (algebra) and then calculators (trigonometry) i was much happier. most favorite was geometry where the work was in figuring out how to get to the answer, not so much the numerical result. i was in a college-level Calculus class as a HS senior but found the teacher's style incomprehensible; it was the one course i dropped in my entire academic history. (i didn't need it to graduate, it just would have been nice for placement. frex, i literally tested myself out of the distribution courses for college English and History.) i only took Statistics in college; i passed but it was my worst grade ever.*
this week's unit in my Python class involves basic math operations. which is how i learned that somehow i never fully absorbed PEMDAS. one of the examples in the class reading was this:
*there's another story to be told here about how between my total inexperience with needing to ask for help on anything academic and being culturally unaware of how to use office hours, i didn't take advantage of the resources available to do better. also, still hated math.
digression that sort of belongs here: in spite of years of piano lessons, voice lessons, and a solid performance record, i can't truly read music. i used to ace written theory tests, i can totally tell which notes to play and relative pitches to sing, but i can't sight read based on time signatures. if i haven't heard a recording or performance of the piece i can't produce it correctly. but i guess i've always been good enough at compensating that no one really got how illiterate i am, including me. i didn't truly understand until i read someone else's account of their experience.
once we got to use variables (algebra) and then calculators (trigonometry) i was much happier. most favorite was geometry where the work was in figuring out how to get to the answer, not so much the numerical result. i was in a college-level Calculus class as a HS senior but found the teacher's style incomprehensible; it was the one course i dropped in my entire academic history. (i didn't need it to graduate, it just would have been nice for placement. frex, i literally tested myself out of the distribution courses for college English and History.) i only took Statistics in college; i passed but it was my worst grade ever.*
this week's unit in my Python class involves basic math operations. which is how i learned that somehow i never fully absorbed PEMDAS. one of the examples in the class reading was this:
number = 1 + 2 * 3 / 4.0now, that's something where you would use parentheses for clarity in real life, but it was meant to show how Python follows a built-in set of rules. i honestly had to go on StackOverflow to get an improved lesson in something that i should have had engraved on my brain in primary school. were there other basic concepts that i didn't take in because i dreaded the math portion of the day? or maybe just things i fully erased in order to store more trivia? i guess i'm going to find out.
*there's another story to be told here about how between my total inexperience with needing to ask for help on anything academic and being culturally unaware of how to use office hours, i didn't take advantage of the resources available to do better. also, still hated math.
digression that sort of belongs here: in spite of years of piano lessons, voice lessons, and a solid performance record, i can't truly read music. i used to ace written theory tests, i can totally tell which notes to play and relative pitches to sing, but i can't sight read based on time signatures. if i haven't heard a recording or performance of the piece i can't produce it correctly. but i guess i've always been good enough at compensating that no one really got how illiterate i am, including me. i didn't truly understand until i read someone else's account of their experience.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-27 01:02 am (UTC)but math is sooper-sensitive to building concepts on other concepts. if there's other stuff around which you have questions, feel free to fling them at me, if that's useful. or not, if not.
no subject
Date: 2020-01-27 05:16 am (UTC)so: i was pleased to find out that modulus has a useful purpose - finding odds and evens. what else would it be used for? yes, the remainder. but why do we care?
no subject
Date: 2020-01-27 02:24 pm (UTC)more generally, there are a bunch of questions in math that are easier to answer in finite situations, created by using moduli, and then it's sometimes possible to take those answers and bring them back to "ordinary" numbers.