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What's your opinion in algebra?


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Useless garbage. I haven't used Algebra ONCE since I got out of high school, which was 8 years ago. Granted, I was total shit at it because I am a fucking moron, but I still see no real meaningful application of this stuff to most of life.

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Throughout school I never really had any trouble with it, I just thought it was overall useless to everyday life.

Cut to nowadays, when what I'm studying consists of a metric tonne of algebra, I still think it's useless to everyday life. :nom:

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Fun fact: the term algebra stems from Arabic and was coined by the famous Iranian (or Persian in the West) mathematician and astronomer, al-Khwarizmi, during the Islamic Golden Age. Another fun fact, al-Kwarizmi solved quadratic equations using nothing but Euclidean geometry.

Just some fun historical facts.

Edited by The Historian
  • Brohoof 1
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I love numbers. For some reason I like all the counters, statistics and such. :catface:  I like maths in general, it's kinda like puzzles. :P

The thing with maths is, that if you don't understand it, you dislike it, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes enjoyable.

I often work with some maths when programming (games), it's all about numbers after all. :darling:

I used to be good at maths, but now after these years I pretty much forgot how most of the things worked. :twismile:

I seem to dislike geometry though, never liked it, even though it is handy to know.

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I was never that good at it, but it can be enjoyable once you understand how it works.

Edited by Cash In
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In most of High School, I took AP Calculus and did well, but once I got to the higher College Calculus in University, I struggled so bad to the point of switching majors from Math to English-Literature and Language. Math can still be considered my minor. But boy did Math turned ugly to the point of me writing a Phineas and Ferb parody song about it on fanfiction.net.

The reason I can relate to Zephyr Breeze's more vulnerable side of fear of failure is summed up right on the TV Tropes Tearjerker Page covering that episode: 

Quote

The very fact that Zephyr is so scared of failing and making a fool of himself the first few times he tries something he decides that it's better to not try at all because then he can never fail can really resound with the "lazy millennials" he's meant to be a Take That! to. A lot of people around Zephyr's probable age were excellent students in their early educational career, then began falling behind and slowly but surely became terrified to try anything because failure to excel the first time meant they couldn't do it at all, hence the development of perfectionist tendencies, complexes, and mental illnesses. And these same people cannot be fixed by a brief pep talk and a song.

So, in short, Math was good to me up to a point. Now I rarely use it. Such a shame.

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I've used a lot of mathematics and still use a fair bit. Dunno what most of it is called though. Couldn't even tell you if any of it is algebra or one of the other ones. If it involves doing things with numbers, I just call it mathematics and leave it at that. Don't care what the formulas are called, just as long as they do what I need them to do. :-P

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Don't hardly use it yet but I will a bit. Never really thought it was challenging and honestly teaches good common sense skills to those that realize it's not trying to teach you math, it's teaching critical thinking and problem solving skills. But those that just say "I don't need this" and blow it off really miss out on the point of the class.

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Math is part of my everyday job. Programming is all about variables and doing algebra. It isn't too bad until you hit calculus, then it gets interesting...

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Algebra is boring, calculus is where things start to get interesting. 

Regarding its usefulness, I use it all the time, I find it difficult to believe someone could have any sort of job that uses numbers without doing any algebra. Maybe you don’t solve polynomials often, but linear algebra is done all the time. And yes, algebra can be used in everyday stuff, particularly for planning. The issue isn’t that algebra is useless, it’s a lack of understanding of it’s purpose in modeling and creativity in applying it. You don’t really ever NEED to use algebra, you could just use brute force and measurement to solve any problem, but for many things it’s MUCH more efficient. 

However, the real reason it’s valuable for most people to know algebra is not because they’ll actually use it, as useful as it is. It’s to develop problem solving skills, learning to abstract problems and tackle them analytically from different directions than just charging at them head on. 

Edited by Ganondox
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Algebra may be fine if you need it or think you might have a use for it at some time in the future, in which case you’d have an interest in learning it. But in most cases it’s extraneous and students are pointlessly forced to endure classes to force-feed it into their minds. Learn it if you want it but not if you don’t. You can always learn it later on in the unlikely event you might need it for something. 

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On 3/22/2019 at 12:36 AM, Dreambiscuit said:

Algebra may be fine if you need it or think you might have a use for it at some time in the future, in which case you’d have an interest in learning it. But in most cases it’s extraneous and students are pointlessly forced to endure classes to force-feed it into their minds. Learn it if you want it but not if you don’t. You can always learn it later on in the unlikely event you might need it for something. 

You'll be surprised at how often you actually kind of use it. It's not daily but it's not so uncommon that learning it isn't helpful. Algebra and geometry are the two math disciplines that are very much required beyond the basics. I use quite a bit of higher level math in the course of software development and I'd be even more lost without it.

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  • 1 year later...

I used to love math in elementary school, and then started hating it for the rest of my grade school years. 
 

Now I actually enjoy math and seem to get the hang of algebra. I’m currently taking a college algebra class. ;)

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