I was a mediocre student until 3rd and 4th year undergrad and the one semester of grad school I did. I responded so much better to the freedom to solve problems using the basic engineering principles instead of being tested on those principles without the context.
I know some people are going to read this as “it’s not important to learn them when you can just look them up” but that’s not what I mean. I agree it’s important to know the basics well without having to consult with references. Over time they become second nature. But I’m going to struggle with repeating the basics back to you when they are abstract and when grading depends on my ability to do arithmetic under test conditions or remember the unit circle/special triangles because we are not allowed to use calculators.
I will never not be salty about this unit circle thing. I thought I hated math because I could not memorize this:
Turns out my brain doesn’t hold numbers well and I’m actually a wizard at process modeling.
I’ve always loved math and sciences and could plug and chug numbers into formulae all day, but I would often feel frustrated because though I knew the formulae worked, rote calculations wasn’t rewarding if I didn’t know why they worked. The greatest feeling was when the connection between theory and practice would finally click. The dopamine dump would make my day, and made doing the math fun again.
Sometimes I wish I could go back and finish my degree, but I chose to drop out put it on hold because I couldn’t reconcile going >$120k in debt for a masters degree that could not guarantee me a career that paid well enough to take care of that debt without making the rest of life feel terrible.
Solitarily with the I-couldn’t-afford-grad-school lol. I knew I could not afford to go to grad school full time but I didn’t realize part time enrolment meant I had to pay back my undergrad loans and I couldn’t pay my loans with work that was flexible enough to let me attend class. Womp womp.
I was put in geometry instead of trig and then I was throwing into calculus and physics. I never caught up with the sin and cos and radians and all that shit.
Personal anecdote time: for some reason in high school math I worked out that I could get the grades I needed for university admissions if I ignored the trig section and focused on getting the rest right.
It worked for the immediate goal but did not serve me well in the long term lol.
That was the Microsoft Upgrade Path for me on the A+ exam. I always thought I’d learn everything I possibly could, but knowing which editions of Windows upgraded to which was just such a huge time investment for a) something that would be at most a few points on the exam and b) trivial to look up.
Super relatable. I have a total memory hole in my mind about what was “taught” of trigonometry back in my high school years. I know it was part of some of the math classes, but it was one of the many things I completely dismissed for being “useless” since it was 100% abstract.
Fast forward some 13 years and I see a video explaining how 3D graphics work. Lo and behold, it’s trigonometry from top to bottom! Plus, when computers were much weaker, the trick was to use lookup tables with the 360 values of sin and cosin instead of calculating in real time, which is what John Carmack did in Doom.
I won’t say I’d have remembered the classes better if the teachers had showed at least one fucking real life use (like measuring tall buildings based on their shadow or trying to guess a star’s distance), or if any of them knew how it could apply to programming polygons, but being aware of “real world use” helps me a lot in not completely dismissing certain things.
I was a mediocre student until 3rd and 4th year undergrad and the one semester of grad school I did. I responded so much better to the freedom to solve problems using the basic engineering principles instead of being tested on those principles without the context.
I know some people are going to read this as “it’s not important to learn them when you can just look them up” but that’s not what I mean. I agree it’s important to know the basics well without having to consult with references. Over time they become second nature. But I’m going to struggle with repeating the basics back to you when they are abstract and when grading depends on my ability to do arithmetic under test conditions or remember the unit circle/special triangles because we are not allowed to use calculators.
I will never not be salty about this unit circle thing. I thought I hated math because I could not memorize this:
Turns out my brain doesn’t hold numbers well and I’m actually a wizard at process modeling.
I’ve always loved math and sciences and could plug and chug numbers into formulae all day, but I would often feel frustrated because though I knew the formulae worked, rote calculations wasn’t rewarding if I didn’t know why they worked. The greatest feeling was when the connection between theory and practice would finally click. The dopamine dump would make my day, and made doing the math fun again.
Sometimes I wish I could go back and finish my degree, but I chose to
drop output it on hold because I couldn’t reconcile going >$120k in debt for a masters degree that could not guarantee me a career that paid well enough to take care of that debt without making the rest of life feel terrible.Solitarily with the I-couldn’t-afford-grad-school lol. I knew I could not afford to go to grad school full time but I didn’t realize part time enrolment meant I had to pay back my undergrad loans and I couldn’t pay my loans with work that was flexible enough to let me attend class. Womp womp.
I was put in geometry instead of trig and then I was throwing into calculus and physics. I never caught up with the sin and cos and radians and all that shit.
Personal anecdote time: for some reason in high school math I worked out that I could get the grades I needed for university admissions if I ignored the trig section and focused on getting the rest right.
It worked for the immediate goal but did not serve me well in the long term lol.
That was the Microsoft Upgrade Path for me on the A+ exam. I always thought I’d learn everything I possibly could, but knowing which editions of Windows upgraded to which was just such a huge time investment for a) something that would be at most a few points on the exam and b) trivial to look up.
But, yeah, you boned yourself there.
List all the commonly used ports
/s
Super relatable. I have a total memory hole in my mind about what was “taught” of trigonometry back in my high school years. I know it was part of some of the math classes, but it was one of the many things I completely dismissed for being “useless” since it was 100% abstract.
Fast forward some 13 years and I see a video explaining how 3D graphics work. Lo and behold, it’s trigonometry from top to bottom! Plus, when computers were much weaker, the trick was to use lookup tables with the 360 values of sin and cosin instead of calculating in real time, which is what John Carmack did in Doom.
I won’t say I’d have remembered the classes better if the teachers had showed at least one fucking real life use (like measuring tall buildings based on their shadow or trying to guess a star’s distance), or if any of them knew how it could apply to programming polygons, but being aware of “real world use” helps me a lot in not completely dismissing certain things.