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Lorenzo
Trad climber
Oregon
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Feb 22, 2014 - 11:24pm PT
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Yer gonna Die!
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micronut
Trad climber
Fresno/Clovis, ca
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Feb 22, 2014 - 11:50pm PT
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This thread needs a bit of climbing stoke!
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
Nothing creative to say
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Feb 23, 2014 - 02:16am PT
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not sure why, but I like this topic.
can't remember anything from Trig, Statistics, or later algebra stuff in HS. But I like thinking about math in concepts.
Just need tricks to make the solving go faster.
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whitemeat
Big Wall climber
San Luis Obispo, CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 23, 2014 - 10:04am PT
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that kahn accademy thing is great! just checked it out, those videos teach better then the teacher!!!!!!! thanks dudes!!!!!
thanks for the climbing stoke scott!!!!!
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Norwegian
Trad climber
dancin on the tip of god's middle finger
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Feb 23, 2014 - 11:08am PT
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math skills earn you mad salary,
a dope lifestyle,
chicks galore,
solutions to everything,
a fever for emotionometry,
and a mastery of sic.
now get to work boy,
art only pacifies angst,
and there ain't no tangible reward in the serene industries.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Feb 23, 2014 - 11:32am PT
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If a gallon of water weighs 8.34 lbs.,
and you paid twelve cents per gallon to buy Evian in the largest size,
did you get a deal?
Who can you pay to haul that tonnage that you estimate you might need
to climb the Aquarian solo at comparable wages?
We all know about Chongo. He usually works for free, when he works.
He taught himself to do the math.
You can be like Chongo, a voice in the wilderness, write books and sit back and enjoy "the life of Reilley," a builder who knows all the angles, or like norwegian, who knows all the angels.
Trip on that, young man. Then get to studying--you'll be more likely to become a John Gill of the Walls.
The possibilities are infinite.
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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Feb 23, 2014 - 01:17pm PT
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Unless you become a math teacher, or physicist or something, you'll forget all this sh#t in 10 years anyway. Doesn't mean you don't need to learn it.
Math was easily my best subject, I'm a working civil engineer, and these days I couldn't have completed your test without a book to consult. Couldn't even remember the quadratic formula without minutes of thinking about it and writing it down to see if it looked right.
One college professor told us "the best thing you'll learn in school is HOW TO LEARN". He was exactly right. In college there's no hand holding, you sink or swim, and quickly learn how to teach yourself from whatever resources available..fellow students in study groups, books, and these days online resources like Khan (you whipper snappers don't realize how lucky you are to have these modern tools). If I needed to use those math concepts today, I'd pull down a book, reacquaint myself in a couple minutes and do it. That only works if you learned and understood it the first time around.
So before you blow off school to live in the dirt, think about this:
Would you rather have a pimped out sportsmobile, hot wife, not think twice about dropping cash at restaurants concerts or gear, and be able to retire from work, while living in cool cities and taking trips to climb in the alps, himalaya, patagonia...or would you rather be digging ditches at 50 yo, crippled from a lifetime of bullshit manual labor and bad nutrition, with 3 rotten teeth left in your head, having climbed the same 50 routes over and over because you're too poor to go anywhere and your partners are tired of supporting your bum ass, and have not been laid since you were 25?
Educate yourself, don't blow it off because it isn't fun. Whether it's for white collar desk work, or craftsman/trades work, or anything else, apply yourself and get GOOD at what you do. Find something that you like and become the best you can be. And not one of these bs things everyone thinks is the ticket to happiness...photography, guiding...that ain't it, too many people competing for too few $$$ means sh#t wages and a bare few who rise above that, much like trying to be an NBA player...millions try, 50 make it.
People - employers, potential mentors, etc will judge you on your past record, including school. They will judge you on your ability to speak and write, not whether you can stand in aiders and play with widgets...a look at the climbing bum contingent will quickly show you any moron with 3 brain cells can climb up some etriers and swill bad malt liquor.
Now pardon me, it's time to go clip some bolts.
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SCseagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Feb 23, 2014 - 01:27pm PT
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Unless you become a math teacher, or physicist or something, you'll forget all this sh#t in 10 years anyway. Doesn't mean you don't need to learn it.
It's not about the math...it's about training the mind to think about problem solving and looking at multiple variables and figuring out how to solve a problem...regardless if it has math or not. When "we have a problem Houston" ... And all that "stuff" was thrown on the table, I would suggest that the type of thinking and discipline of mindful problem solving did a great deal to get them home....it wasn't raw math but the ability to engage in mindful and rigorous problem solving. Mathematical and scientific thinking are excellent for training the mind to see things in a problem solving mode. Even if you don't go into those disciplines the mind training is invaluable. If you forget the "arithmetic" the ability to mindfully problem solve across multiple contexts and situations will remain. Especially if you ever have to self rescue.
Susan
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Feb 23, 2014 - 02:48pm PT
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Plus a thousand for Elcapinyoazz!
"the best thing you'll learn in school is HOW TO LEARN".
But seeing the comma OUTSIDE the frown and the smile means that, automatically, post-haste, you gotta spend the night in the (figurative) Taco walk-in/lock-in or give up those points.
Live & learn, or learn to live, as I do.
Sponge-Bob Bobcat from Merced
Fail to plan, plan to fail, in math, or anything except good old Secks. That should involve "spontaneity."
O! the magic of cell division
It oft requires no decision.
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Guangzhou
Trad climber
Asia, Indonesia, East Java
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Feb 23, 2014 - 06:17pm PT
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Agree with the posts above. Learning to learn is the most important skill you develop in any situation. True in school, work and climbing. The more you arm yourself with a solid foundation, the better chance you have of success.
One advantage of learning is it opens new doors. You can choose to have a career or you can choose physical labor. At least you have a choice.
After high school, I took a year off and lived in the Valley. I think most people call them "gap years" now. At the end of the year, decided school wasn't for me, took a year living in the car. Eventually, when I was 30, I headed off to college. Now I have a career that is rewarding and I can afford to travel to various climbing areas around the globe.
Unfortunately I have set vacation dates, so some areas I will never get to. Well, unless I take another GAP YEAR soon.
Cheers from Mongolia where the weather is warming up and it's almost time to go climbing outdoors again. Just need to buy a drill to put up some new routes.
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Edge
Trad climber
Boulder, CO
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Feb 23, 2014 - 07:29pm PT
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Don't listen to all these naysayers, Whitemeat. The World is ruled by powerful people who are clueless yet somehow talk an army of lackeys into doing all their dirty work. This thread is proof positive that you are destined for greatness, though you still have a ways to go in perfecting your technique.
Think about it, Clinton talked Hillary into tackling health care, Madelaine Albright into tackling diplomacy, and his Willy into tackling Monica Lewinski. The dude makes bank now giving speeches, and you can bet your favorite haul bag that he doesn't write them.
Math, shmath, that's what calculators and Internet forums are for.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Feb 23, 2014 - 11:09pm PT
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One of the many problems in math education is the tendency to treat the subject as procedural. Here's how you do this, here's how you do that. This boils down to viewing the learners as automata that need to be programmed to carry out certain tasks. The machines do not need to understand any of the issues surrounding or raised by the tasks, they just have to know how to accomplish the tasks.
The result can easily be Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)
We don't need no education,
We don't need no thought control!
Given this situation, I don't find it at all surprising that lots of people hate something they think is math, and are anxious to tell others about the irrelevance of the thing they think is math. I don't find it surprising that people forget all the procedural mumbo-jumbo as soon as possible, even when they are going to need it in a few months for the next math course.
Modern life takes place embedded in an ether of mathematics, an ether that is invisible to most people, but which shapes and, by and large, enhances their lives and small and enormous ways every day. It may well be that only a relatively few wizzards need to understand the workings of this matrix, but it does seem appropriate, at the beginnings of education, to at least start people on a path that will allow them to become wizzards some day, if the calling beckons.
Math grad students make lots of money tutoring people who thought they'd never need to know any math, but who now find their career opportunities and future dreams obstructed by their lack of mathematical knowledge. True, these people may be a small minority, but I can tell you from the other side of the tutoring relationship, that it sucks to be them and they are painfully aware of it.
For those who, like climbers with climbing, see something compelling where others see something repulsive, mathematics is far more than the hidden rods and levers of the utilitarian ether mentioned above. It is, much like climbing, a limitless world of intricate problems and solutions, interesting for their own sake, with no concern for potential utility.
A number of years ago, there was an ad in one of the climbing magazines that mentioned a seminal mathematical event. A mathematician by the name of Andrew Wiles had recently invested almost all of the waking hours of seven years in a successful effort to prove a theorem (the Taniyama-Shimura Conjecture) which has as one of its consequences a famous unsolved problem called Fermat's Last Theorem. The ad showed a bunch of boulderers staring up at a problem, recounted the fact that Wiles had spent seven years working on and finally "sending" his "project," and ended with, "Can you relate?"
Yeah, so I think climbers, more than almost anyone, can relate to mathematics.
If only they had an idea of what it actually is.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Feb 23, 2014 - 11:24pm PT
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One of the many problems in math education is the tendency to treat the subject as procedural. Here's how you do this, here's how you do that. This boils down to viewing the learners as automata that need to be programmed to carry out certain tasks. The machines do not need to understand any of the issues surrounding or raised by the tasks, they just have to know how to accomplish the tasks.
The main reason I was a failure at the subject thru elementary and High School.
When I started my electrical apprenticeship it became clear that AC theory was all math, especially trig.
So, I tried to get some classes at the local JC only to be told I'd have to basically repeat everything with the same methods that had been a failure before.
So I found out you could take optical design without the math prerequisites. Realizing that this was going to be mostly applied trig, I signed up.
Three or four semesters later I'd mastered all the trig I needed plus, matrices of simultaneous equations, and started programming in fortran.
Yeah, teaching math in a vacuum isn't the way to do it for most of us.
When I went back to school in my late 30's I was dreading calculus and statistics. I was in a ULV remote class at So Cal Edison's HQ and most of my classmates were women that had been the high school math whizzes.
It had me worried at first, but it turned out to be completely unfounded. Algebra and trig were part of my daily life, they hadn't applied it since high school. After a couple of weeks they were all coming to me for help.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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Feb 23, 2014 - 11:43pm PT
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The fundamental skills can be taught applied to the real world and NOT in a paper vacuum.
Optical design used all those fundamental skills, but applied to a physical object that would either work correctly or not.
You can teach any "dumb" pipefitter trig when he has to cut metal and make it work.
(have you ever developed a layout template for an oddball angle wye with two different pipe diameters?)
In the normal academic setting, probably not.
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Feb 24, 2014 - 12:22am PT
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Math grad students make lots of money tutoring people who thought they'd never need to know any math, but who now find their career opportunities and future dreams obstructed by their lack of mathematical knowledge (rgold)
Forty four years ago, as a PhD grad student, I drove weekly to Bell Labs in Denver to teach a refresher math course to senior engineers. I think we all learned something.
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John M
climber
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Feb 24, 2014 - 12:36am PT
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Kinda like practicing first aid and self-rescue before the emergency, no?
few learn first aid and self-rescue before their first rock climb. Most learn it after they realize they need more skills.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Feb 24, 2014 - 01:44am PT
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Erwin Rommel was a whiz at differential calculus so maybe that will inspire you.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Feb 24, 2014 - 02:45am PT
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Back in High School they sent me to the county math contest. Wut? I was a stoner but I went anyway. I had always been really good at whatever math classes threw at me. I am not competitive. I have been a cook for most of my adult life and I consider my knowledge of mathematics as a strong part of how I approach challenges in my chosen field of endeavor.
Don't be a dumbsh#t, whitemeat. You are way cooler than that.
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Grampa
climber
from SoCal
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Feb 24, 2014 - 02:52am PT
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Clearly the issue is your problems are sideways. You cannot do math sideways when up is left or down is right or left is right is ummmm.
Anyway, turn your computer monitor 90 degrees clock wise and it will all make cents.
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