@Casheyane She says, using physics and maths to do so..... :-)

@deadgerbil there is no lady

@UndercoverBard that UK one tho

@deadgerbil it’s almost been a year

@Lilymoon people like you need people like me! I'll do your math for you :p

@Turtlepower yes please 😩

@Turtlepower I wish I'd had better teachers! (And of course better learning ability anyway.)

@helenS A good point! Numerical puzzles like that have always been popular.

What many people don't seem to realise is that all our lives depend on arithmetic and mathematics far more than just puzzles like the missing number from some series in a puzzle book, or Classical Greek philosophers challenging tortoises to races.

Then some miss the irony of using the Internet to show they don't realise it!

@ArishMell Yes, innumeracy is one of the diseases of our time 😐

@helenS I wonder what proportion of those who claim they dislike maths, think no-one needs it, are put off by peer-pressure,or similar; actually are genuinely unable to learn the subject? Rather than being simply uninterested, or perhaps having been deterred by bad teachers?

I would not be surprised if it's really a fairly low proportion.

I think mine a combination: I was slow to learn and found maths hard, but also had two particularly poor teachers in my teens. Poor at teaching, I mean.

One, in his last year before retiring, was probably just bored with his work and made it boring. He was like a talking text-book.

The other was a bombast whose mantra shouted to the whole class, of "Maths is easy! It's you who make the difficulties!" was guaranteed to wreck the remaining confidence in anyone already struggling. He was interested in helping only the bright, keen ones anyway, and regarded everyone else as also-rans at best, stupid at worst.


However I think there is another factor at work, a social one. That of a widespread, strange sort of inverted snobbery by which, with the possible exception of doctors and airline pilots, the deeper your knowledge and skill the [i]less [/i]worthy you are:

In a world increasingly dominated by....-

- the spurious "immediacy" of the Internet,

- a society becoming ever more advanced in science and engineering but which also suffers from a shrinking common level of general technical knowledge and especially, practical skills often derided by a sort of snobbery,

- A growing distrust in anything technical, engendered by personal ignorance and highly-publicised failures encouraged by socio-political campaigns designed to exploit those,

-a myth that "kids today are so 'tech-savvy' just because they can use a "smart"-'phone - ah, but can they write a database, explain the "Trigonometrical Volcano" (Sohcahtoa) or erect a bathroom shelf?,

- a growing idea that whatever is done or happens is always by someone else, some mysterious "They" given no credit for success, but all the blame if it goes wrong,

- so-called "popular culture" in which pop-singers of little genuine musical talent, sports stars very good at but only at their sports, and [Un]-reality show "celebrities" are somehow far more important than not only real composers etc., but also any of the Scientists and Engineers upon whom we all rely so much,

...... it is hardly surprising so many people either choose to be, do not care about being, or even celebrate being, very weak at mathematics, or physics or indeed practical crafts.

+ - / * :

One of my nephews once claimed "You don't need learn maths. It's all in your calculator!".

I asked, "How do know what maths to ask it to perform for the work you need?"

He could not answer that.

@Ynotisay Plenty of people in their twenties do! :-)

(Not me though, unfortunately, in my teens.)

I think one my nephews was aged 22-25 when he once reckoned you don't really learn maths "because it's all in your calculator". I soon put him right.

@EzShadows "it will cost sex"