i didn't use algebra until i started working with my hands and trying to do things on a limited budget and using found/scavenged materials. it's great for creative projects too, like developing patterns to maximize use of materials / minimize waste. have x poles, y fabric, z fasteners, poles need to be at corners and no more than b meters apart. what's the largest area you can fence off where 1 side is some set distance? what's your limiting resource and if you spend another $20, how does it change?
it's unfortunate how shit the west is at teaching math. i tried to pull the "i'm just not good at math lol" thing, but one of my parents was a math teacher and forbid it. sat at the dinner table a lot of nights running through sets of problems until i could see patterns or use rules to reorganize expressions until they gave up their secrets. i'm not like some kid with an imaginary abacus adding large integers in my mind palace while my eyelids flutter, but if you give me some kind of problem i can sit down with it and tease out the math enough to play around. and it does feel like play ever since it started clicking ~30 years ago.
one of my recent creative ones was a friend who had like ~6 different colored skeins in a variety of amounts and could crochet various rows at various thicknesses, but wanted to know options for repetitive patterns without having to buy more shit and would like to use up as much of certain colors as possible, ideally all colors completely. just enough moving parts to be a math problem. they thought i was a warlock for being able to throw out multiple pattern options after dorking around with a sheet of paper for 30 seconds.
but this twitter douche is correct. all we should teach in school is whatever delights billionaires.
Math got so much easier for me once I learned that every equation I'm given is actually a puzzle with multiple potential moves. Really helped me recognize and develop the ability to know when a problem is approaching a solved form.
i didn't use algebra until i started working with my hands and trying to do things on a limited budget and using found/scavenged materials. it's great for creative projects too, like developing patterns to maximize use of materials / minimize waste. have x poles, y fabric, z fasteners, poles need to be at corners and no more than b meters apart. what's the largest area you can fence off where 1 side is some set distance? what's your limiting resource and if you spend another $20, how does it change?
it's unfortunate how shit the west is at teaching math. i tried to pull the "i'm just not good at math lol" thing, but one of my parents was a math teacher and forbid it. sat at the dinner table a lot of nights running through sets of problems until i could see patterns or use rules to reorganize expressions until they gave up their secrets. i'm not like some kid with an imaginary abacus adding large integers in my mind palace while my eyelids flutter, but if you give me some kind of problem i can sit down with it and tease out the math enough to play around. and it does feel like play ever since it started clicking ~30 years ago.
one of my recent creative ones was a friend who had like ~6 different colored skeins in a variety of amounts and could crochet various rows at various thicknesses, but wanted to know options for repetitive patterns without having to buy more shit and would like to use up as much of certain colors as possible, ideally all colors completely. just enough moving parts to be a math problem. they thought i was a warlock for being able to throw out multiple pattern options after dorking around with a sheet of paper for 30 seconds.
but this twitter douche is correct. all we should teach in school is whatever delights billionaires.
Math got so much easier for me once I learned that every equation I'm given is actually a puzzle with multiple potential moves. Really helped me recognize and develop the ability to know when a problem is approaching a solved form.