I have this theory that Americans suck at math because they insist on sticking with the imperial measurement system and so nothing makes mathematical sense - Americans intuitively just think in every day units qualitatively. Whereas the rest of the world uses metric, so base 10 math just comes naturally.
Source: I am a US STEM professor. Our students suck at math.
When I was 16, I went to high school in California for half a year as an exchange student. I am from Germany and as a junior, I would have had something like my 4th or 5th year of chemistry in school, but out of necessity (or laziness) I took beginner’s chemistry.
For exercises I had been paired with two girls who used to try to make fun of me (I think; I never really figured out what their deal was), and asked me stupid questions about myself or Germany. I remember they once asked laughingly whether I like oranges because I was wearing a t-shirt with an orange print.
Well, then one day, there we go. Converting exercises. You have students from 9th to 12th grade in groups of 3-4, trying to convert imperial measurements to metrics. And then metrics to metrics. Basically, for a couple of weeks, we just converted stuff like 14 cm to mm or dm. I forgot so much about my time abroad but the most vivid memory I have is of the girls looking at each other (after a couple of days and repeated explanations) and one says “the decimal system just makes no sense” and the other one quietly and slowly nods in agreement. I ask them how it makes no sense. “Well it just makes no sense.” It’s just base 10 everything and the rest is practice, it’s not different from inches to feet. “No but you see this makes sense. There are 12 inches in a foot”, continued by a list of how many shmekels make up a whoopsiedoodle and how many dingelings fit into a hybotron.
I understand how you first have to get accustomed to new units and how conversion might need practice when you aren’t familiar with the prefixes, especially when you aren’t too experienced in the stem field. But I am still flabbergasted by the statement that having a system where everything is just base 10 and then you shift the decimal point around makes no sense. We are talking about fellow juniors here. How do you make it to age 16/17 never having heard of a decimal point or having trouble with base 10 conversion? HOW CAN YOU SAY IT MAKES NO SENSE?! It’s the simplest, most logic based system there is!
IMO metric also allows you to reason about things in your head more easily because doing base-10 calculations in your head is doable.
For example, “Each 1m section of a pipeline contains 20L of oil. The goal is to empty a 200 km section of pipe into trucks. If each truck can handle 20 tonnes of oil, how many trucks would be needed?” In metric that calculation is 20 * 1000 * 200 = 4 million L. 20 tonnes is approx 20,000 L since 1L of water is 1kg, so it’s going to be at least within an order of magnitude of that for oil. 4M / 20k = 200.
With US customary units it would be "Each 1 foot section of a pipeline contains 1.5 gallons of oil. The goal is to empty a 100 mile section of pipe into trucks. If each can handle 20 tons of oil, how many trucks will be needed? To handle that calculation you’ll have to convert feet to miles. Gallons to pounds, pounds to tons, etc. You can do it on paper, but all those weird conversions add massively to the difficulty.
Crude is approximately the same as water, about 0.8 to 0.9 g/mL. But, even if it were significantly less dense, like gasoline (0.74 g/mL) it’s still good for an order-of-magnitude calculation. Knowing that 1L has a mass of 1kg is especially useful since many of the liquids we commonly encounter are water-based.
Exactly, we also had this early on. Also with imperial measurements or some random antique ones. I remember the worst conversion exercises were in grade 5, where you had to convert a large number, say 5316, to a number if the base was 8, not 10. This felt completely useless and took a lot of time but it also wasn’t necessarily hard. And it made sense because math usually does.
It may be that or it may be that our entire educational system has turned into shit through decades of low pay for teachers weeding out all the best people.
It’s closer to a binary system, since it’s iterative division by two. Half inch, quarter, eighth, sixteenth and so on.
People do the same thing in metric, but they just prefer to write 0.125 cm instead of 1/8 cm.
Imperial units are a bit more heavy on rational numbers instead of decimal.
The base 12 stuff comes up with things that were historically cut in halves as well as thirds.
It’s all highly composite numbers, since they’re easier to work with if you’re doing repeated division in your head. Ten is only divisible by 2 and 5 before you start to get a lot of rapidly growing decimal parts. 12 is divisible by 2,3,4,6.
If you’ve got a balance, a knife and a stone we all agree on the weight of (let’s call it a pound stone), it’s easy to measure our a half or third of a pound, and halves or thirds of any other portion I can produce.
Over time, common divisions got names and a system of units was produced that was entirely inconsistent but liked 12 and 60 because of ease of use, and powers of two because you can just keep cutting them in half.
It’s all moot since we can use a scale now instead of a balance with a rock, and we can trust measuring tapes instead of repeatedly bisecting a plank, but it at least gives context to why it prefers fractions and numbers like 12 and 8.
And base 3 sometimes (yards). When taught well, there’s a ton of value in learning to quantify the world in a variety of base systems.
Not uniquely American, but thinking in base 7 (weeks), base 12 (years, hours, feet), base 60 (minutes), base 3 (yards), base 10 (the default unless told otherwise), etc. really helps you adapt and estimate a number of other, unrelated, things.
My professor for my first real engineering class had an excellent quote, “A good engineer can work in any unit system.”
There’s actually quite a lot of advantages the US could have in math education if we properly harnessed both unit systems. Becoming fluent in both and regularly doing conversions would give students a lot of real world application and simple math practice.
A good software developer can also work with any language, but if you’re going to use Javascript to build an enterprise level software you are guaranteed to have a bad time.
You use what is best for the job and from my understanding there’s really no benefit to using imperial measures over SI, beyond the familiarity of growing up with them. If you were taught SI units from the very start you wouldn’t ever use imperial.
There are actually reasons to use imperial, but it’s all inertia. Industry has a bunch of controls and correlations and empirical equations that use imperial, so the inputs all need to be imperial too.
Of course, you could always do it in metric and then convert at the end. That’s one approach to unit systems.
Or you end up doing what I do to troll my friends, and mix the styles the systems like.
“This post should be 5/16ths of a decameter”
The rational numbers you find in imperial are helpful for dividing things compared to decimals, but everyone gets all weird when you do fractional meters or kilograms.
And I just understood why that’s the case. Most of the old units used highly composite numbers as factors, which have an incredibly high number of divisors. We still widely use such factors for time and angles.
Are you at a school known for its math or engineering offerings, teaching applied or theoretical students primarily? There’s quite a bit of variability between schools in US.
I have this theory that Americans suck at math because they insist on sticking with the imperial measurement system and so nothing makes mathematical sense - Americans intuitively just think in every day units qualitatively. Whereas the rest of the world uses metric, so base 10 math just comes naturally.
Source: I am a US STEM professor. Our students suck at math.
When I was 16, I went to high school in California for half a year as an exchange student. I am from Germany and as a junior, I would have had something like my 4th or 5th year of chemistry in school, but out of necessity (or laziness) I took beginner’s chemistry.
For exercises I had been paired with two girls who used to try to make fun of me (I think; I never really figured out what their deal was), and asked me stupid questions about myself or Germany. I remember they once asked laughingly whether I like oranges because I was wearing a t-shirt with an orange print.
Well, then one day, there we go. Converting exercises. You have students from 9th to 12th grade in groups of 3-4, trying to convert imperial measurements to metrics. And then metrics to metrics. Basically, for a couple of weeks, we just converted stuff like 14 cm to mm or dm. I forgot so much about my time abroad but the most vivid memory I have is of the girls looking at each other (after a couple of days and repeated explanations) and one says “the decimal system just makes no sense” and the other one quietly and slowly nods in agreement. I ask them how it makes no sense. “Well it just makes no sense.” It’s just base 10 everything and the rest is practice, it’s not different from inches to feet. “No but you see this makes sense. There are 12 inches in a foot”, continued by a list of how many shmekels make up a whoopsiedoodle and how many dingelings fit into a hybotron.
I understand how you first have to get accustomed to new units and how conversion might need practice when you aren’t familiar with the prefixes, especially when you aren’t too experienced in the stem field. But I am still flabbergasted by the statement that having a system where everything is just base 10 and then you shift the decimal point around makes no sense. We are talking about fellow juniors here. How do you make it to age 16/17 never having heard of a decimal point or having trouble with base 10 conversion? HOW CAN YOU SAY IT MAKES NO SENSE?! It’s the simplest, most logic based system there is!
IMO metric also allows you to reason about things in your head more easily because doing base-10 calculations in your head is doable.
For example, “Each 1m section of a pipeline contains 20L of oil. The goal is to empty a 200 km section of pipe into trucks. If each truck can handle 20 tonnes of oil, how many trucks would be needed?” In metric that calculation is 20 * 1000 * 200 = 4 million L. 20 tonnes is approx 20,000 L since 1L of water is 1kg, so it’s going to be at least within an order of magnitude of that for oil. 4M / 20k = 200.
With US customary units it would be "Each 1 foot section of a pipeline contains 1.5 gallons of oil. The goal is to empty a 100 mile section of pipe into trucks. If each can handle 20 tons of oil, how many trucks will be needed? To handle that calculation you’ll have to convert feet to miles. Gallons to pounds, pounds to tons, etc. You can do it on paper, but all those weird conversions add massively to the difficulty.
There’s a reason why the American science community has long converted to metric. You just can’t do calculations like this quickly enough.
well how dense is the oil
Not as dense as those teenagers
True, also i side note. Tanker turks are measured in Volume here. Thats makes it easier
I’m imagining a tank wearing a fez.
tanker trucks
Crude is approximately the same as water, about 0.8 to 0.9 g/mL. But, even if it were significantly less dense, like gasoline (0.74 g/mL) it’s still good for an order-of-magnitude calculation. Knowing that 1L has a mass of 1kg is especially useful since many of the liquids we commonly encounter are water-based.
.8 to .9 for crude (where water is 1)
Fuck me we did those conversions in primary school in Italy in the eighties. Can’t remember what year exactly but we were prolly 7yo?
Exactly, we also had this early on. Also with imperial measurements or some random antique ones. I remember the worst conversion exercises were in grade 5, where you had to convert a large number, say 5316, to a number if the base was 8, not 10. This felt completely useless and took a lot of time but it also wasn’t necessarily hard. And it made sense because math usually does.
ok how about this america abopts the metric system but every moves on to base 12.
Fifth grade prepared me for base whatever, bring it on
Ok in base pi what is 10
Oh that’s a great question, we only did integers as bases - my guess would be 100.58 (or 100.18)? But I absolutely admit defeat here.
Non-integer base, anyone?
2i is also fun
It may be that or it may be that our entire educational system has turned into shit through decades of low pay for teachers weeding out all the best people.
Prove it! What is the speed of light in anacondas/average Snapchat duration?
Edit: around 10^11 anacondas per average daily snapchat usage among US teens
Does the person on Snapchat have buns? 'Cause otherwise my anaconda don’t want none, hun.
Isn’t there a filter for that?
2! No, 3!
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I have a theory that Americans are great at math because they regularly work with base-12 systems.
That would be cool if true. But then they use measures like subdivisions of an inch in base 8 increments.
It’s closer to a binary system, since it’s iterative division by two. Half inch, quarter, eighth, sixteenth and so on.
People do the same thing in metric, but they just prefer to write 0.125 cm instead of 1/8 cm.
Imperial units are a bit more heavy on rational numbers instead of decimal.
The base 12 stuff comes up with things that were historically cut in halves as well as thirds.
It’s all highly composite numbers, since they’re easier to work with if you’re doing repeated division in your head. Ten is only divisible by 2 and 5 before you start to get a lot of rapidly growing decimal parts. 12 is divisible by 2,3,4,6.
If you’ve got a balance, a knife and a stone we all agree on the weight of (let’s call it a pound stone), it’s easy to measure our a half or third of a pound, and halves or thirds of any other portion I can produce.
Over time, common divisions got names and a system of units was produced that was entirely inconsistent but liked 12 and 60 because of ease of use, and powers of two because you can just keep cutting them in half.
It’s all moot since we can use a scale now instead of a balance with a rock, and we can trust measuring tapes instead of repeatedly bisecting a plank, but it at least gives context to why it prefers fractions and numbers like 12 and 8.
And base 3 sometimes (yards). When taught well, there’s a ton of value in learning to quantify the world in a variety of base systems.
Not uniquely American, but thinking in base 7 (weeks), base 12 (years, hours, feet), base 60 (minutes), base 3 (yards), base 10 (the default unless told otherwise), etc. really helps you adapt and estimate a number of other, unrelated, things.
My professor for my first real engineering class had an excellent quote, “A good engineer can work in any unit system.”
There’s actually quite a lot of advantages the US could have in math education if we properly harnessed both unit systems. Becoming fluent in both and regularly doing conversions would give students a lot of real world application and simple math practice.
A good software developer can also work with any language, but if you’re going to use Javascript to build an enterprise level software you are guaranteed to have a bad time.
You use what is best for the job and from my understanding there’s really no benefit to using imperial measures over SI, beyond the familiarity of growing up with them. If you were taught SI units from the very start you wouldn’t ever use imperial.
There are actually reasons to use imperial, but it’s all inertia. Industry has a bunch of controls and correlations and empirical equations that use imperial, so the inputs all need to be imperial too.
Of course, you could always do it in metric and then convert at the end. That’s one approach to unit systems.
ftfy. also applies to Python for any code you plan to use for more than 1 day
Or you end up doing what I do to troll my friends, and mix the styles the systems like.
“This post should be 5/16ths of a decameter” The rational numbers you find in imperial are helpful for dividing things compared to decimals, but everyone gets all weird when you do fractional meters or kilograms.
I like to measure the area of rooms in foot-metres. Square foot-metres is a great unit for volume.
Today I unironically described the length of something as “about 1 centimetre less than a foot”.
And I just understood why that’s the case. Most of the old units used highly composite numbers as factors, which have an incredibly high number of divisors. We still widely use such factors for time and angles.
Some metric system just don’t offer a single benefit compared to others
Clocks and calendars must give you nightmares…
Are you at a school known for its math or engineering offerings, teaching applied or theoretical students primarily? There’s quite a bit of variability between schools in US.
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