Not where I live. Prior to idiot proof cash registers have you ever watched a cashier try and figure out sales tax on $1?
Where I live that would be $0.00. No sales tax in Oregon.
Algebra=most useless math class ever, hands down.?ÿ Never used one part of it outside of the classroom.?ÿ I don't hate much, but I have a special hate for algebra.
I assume you are being sarcastic? It's hard to be a surveyor without using some algerbra. What do you do when there is no evidence of a corner. Stub it in ar the record measument from one direction?
Critical thinking exercise: If I have 5 doughnuts on a plate and eat two of them, how many doughnuts do I have??ÿ
If you said 3, you're just applying rote arithmetic. Thinking critically, the correct answer is 5; 3 on my plate and 2 in my tummy.
For those who remember Popeye the Sailor Man, you might remember the occasion where he had to return to school and work his way through, starting with First Grade.?ÿ In some early class he was given this math problem:?ÿ You are given three apples to share equally with seven friends.?ÿ How do you do this?
He thought and thought and came up with: Ya makes applesauce.
Ya makes applesauce.
With Olive Oyl........ ?????ÿ
Everyone learns algebra in the first grade.?ÿ They just happen to use 1+1=? instead of 1+1=X
???
I don't hate algebra, I use basic algebra often.?ÿ I did not do well with advanced math when it became abstract symbols and formulas.?ÿ Maybe it's because my High School Algebra teacher was a humorless middle aged man and my Geometry teacher was a cute 20 something young lady so I paid more attention to her.?ÿ My brother said Mr. So-and-So was the best math teacher in the world, sure I thought, for the first 2 weeks, after that it started getting too greek.
What I found from giving flight instruction was subjects I struggled with I was a better instructor, things that came naturally to me I had a harder time because it was difficult to break down the elements of what was obvious to me.?ÿ I think most math teachers are natural mathematicians which is why they are so hard to understand.?ÿ I think I would rather have a math teacher who struggled to get Cs and Ds in college. It makes no difference if the subject is obvious to you, it's me that is trying to understand it.
My Dad slept through college calculus classes and got straight As.?ÿ He got it by osmosis.?ÿ Why couldn't you pass those genetics down, Dad?
Did you enjoy or still enjoy the Martin Gardner puzzles from the NYT??ÿ Those things really lit a fire under me not just for math, but for real intrinsically driven problem solving.
Edit, I knew of the Scientific American, i was confabulating the NYT i think because I was picking up Some of the puzzles via NPR and Will Shortz, and he mentioned Gardner often.
Occasionally. A lot of Gardner's puzzles were too hard for me to solve in a few minutes, but they did make me think in different ways. A lot of them were counting problems and counting is hard. Just ask any HR person in a somewhat large company how many people work there.
I've probably learned more from Ian Stewart and Richard Feynman than any other authors. Stewart's style is compatible with my reading and Feynman demonstrated that it's ok for people to interject humor into their serious pursuits.
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Critical thinking exercise: If I have 5 doughnuts on a plate and eat two of them, how many doughnuts do I have??ÿ
If you said 3, you're just applying rote arithmetic. Thinking critically, the correct answer is 5; 3 on my plate and 2 in my tummy.
Apparently you can buy arithmetic now, and pay later:
Sudoku is my current favorite puzzle challenge.?ÿ Much like crossword puzzles, they can be very easy or extremely difficult and anywhere in between.
I detest certain crossword puzzles.?ÿ Those are ones where you must have extensive knowledge of a couple of certain topic areas.?ÿ For me, anything tied to operas will lead to squares being left empty because I don't truly know either of the answers with any degree of certainty.?ÿ For others, references to sports figures or terminology would be a downfall.?ÿ Anything tied to character names, actor names, show names for television shows I have never even heard of is a non-starter for me.
I've been doing crossword puzzles since grade school, so have an extensive knowledge of just which word is the correct answer to use.?ÿ For example, if the clue is "scoundrel", the answer is rarely anything other than "cad".?ÿ Another common one is the answer to the clue that amounts to being the little hangy downy thing in the back of your mouth.?ÿ It is a vowel-consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel word.?ÿ Those are favorites of crossword authors.
I can rarely finish the NY Times Sunday crossword without help for the reasons you give - entertainment and sports names that I don't follow. Google is fair play for those.?ÿ
I see CAD often, ELAN, French TETE, and several other commonly repeated short answers. I don't recall the last time I saw UVULA, though.
I appreciate the inventiveness of some of the NYT puzzle makers with their gimmicks.?ÿ Sometimes you have to put multiple letters in a square. Recently you had to use a playing card in some squares, read like ACE going across and HEART going down. Sometimes they take common phrases and use a consistent modification to make humorous answers.
I had a book of extreme Sudoku.?ÿ After getting all the direct deductions, I had to underline guesses and look for conflicts to eliminate that guess.?ÿ Sometimes three such operations to get the solution. Then there were the five partiallyoverlapping Sudoku puzzles where you had to get clues from one to work into the overlapping ones.
Over here, they fuel subtraction, from one's wealth.?ÿ
TIME FOR RECESS!!!! (ding, ding, ding,)
If Sam leaves Springfield with a load of apples at 7:30 going 30 miles per hour and Joe leaves Podunk with a load of watermelons at 8:15 going 25 kilometers per hour and the towns are 42 miles apart, and the road is too narrow, what time will they collide and how many fruit will be on the road?
Or something like that.
Yes Yes Yes
Great question!
Drooling here.
Narrow down the possible impact zone.?ÿ Where would Sam and Joe be at say 8:30??ÿ See, now the answer seems so much easier to solve.?ÿ Is that a gap or an overlap??ÿ How big is the number between them??ÿ Combine their speeds.?ÿ Multiply that by the gap/overlap to get the time to impact (positive if a gap and negative if an overlap).?ÿ Add that time to 8:30 to get the final answer.?ÿ Ta Dah!!!?ÿ Bam, you have it.
Insufficient data provided to determine the force of the impact available to dislodge each category of fruit to determine that answer.?ÿ Must know ambient temperature to know if fruit is in a semi-solid state or solid state plus availability of condensation gathering on the outside of each fruit so as to alter the friction between individual fruits upon impact.?ÿ Design of the storage compartments of each load of fruit is not provided.?ÿ Perhaps none if sealed inside solid compartments.?ÿ Perhaps nearly all if they are merely stacked on a flat bed.
Math nerds RULE!
@bill93?ÿ
The obvious answer is.....
hell, even my bud Jethro could figger that out, sheesh...... ?????ÿ