Talk:Innumeracy

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There was a BBC programme on inumeracy in the UK, and a new system of teaching math that really got the kids involved in math, and loving math. Sadly, I cannot remember the name. anyone?Pink mowse.pngGodotGrow a vagina 17:28, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Nothing to do with this, I presume? Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 17:39, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
NO. This guy was infact, really cool. He walked in with cups and small fuzzy balls to give the 4th graders something to hold in their hands. "Add" you put something new in the cup. "subtract" you take somethign away from teh cup. "divide" you take what is in the cup and ask how many times your other number can split in the cup. (this one is hard for me to explain, cause division is one I never grasped, conceptually. I can do it, but i don't get exactly what's happening". By using this technique, he had kids understanding that 1/4 will "go into" 2, 8 times. And they really understood the concept, not the rote. Kids who could not add and subtract, were doing very basic algebra (2x +3 =10) within the year, much less passing their tests. Honest to god, it was the first time i "undestood" division. I can divide, but i didn't really get why 1/.25 was 4... Again, it was about giving kids tools to first *understand* math, then use it. Pink mowse.pngGodotGrow a vagina 17:58, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Merged in material

I mentioned this in the talk page for one of the merged in articles, but since they were stubs, stubbish, or had little linking in, and were barely on-mission, I've merged a lot of their content into this article, included more info on some pseudomath things, or just poor understanding of how these ideas work. Although having done this, I have a sudden feeling I should have put some of them in the article on pseudomath. Although, with a lot of them I'm not sure if that's strictly appropriate. The whole thing with people raving against i seems only possible because of a lack of understanding, rather then how pseudomath is defined here ("...any work, study or activity which claims to be mathematical, but refuses to work within the standards of proof and rigour which mathematics is subject to.").

Either way, I'd appreciate a fresh set of eyes to look over this for errors in spelling/grammar/definitions that I may have missed.--Logic and Empricism (talk) 20:11, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Just a quick thing. I seem to recall that 'Real Number' (and so on) are proper nouns when used mathematically. I'll get a reference for the definitions of the different types a numbers up in a few hours.--Logic and Empricism (talk) 21:15, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

[edit] Oh god, the idiocy

1/0 is a irrational number? "123.456" is irrational? What the hell is going on here? I'm fixing this section, and the person who wrote it should feel bad, especially because of the tremendous irony involved. LiberalOfAnUnknownVariant (talk) 23:35, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh, and yes this is a perfectly acceptable and accurate description of reals: "any number with a decimal expansion". Of course, actual real analysis courses do it a slightly different ways, usually Dedekind cuts or Cauchy sequences, but this is good enough for the current rigor of the article. You can construct Reals in a variety of equivalent ways, such as: all decimal expansions (but then the rules of equality are a little wonky, e.g. 0.999... repeating = 1), the set of all Cauchy sequences over rationals, or the set of rationals closed over least upper bounds aka Dedekind cuts. LiberalOfAnUnknownVariant (talk) 00:07, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh christ, I missed a couple things last time I checked it and used non-technical language that people can actually understand, quick quick somebody kill me before I reproduce! Fuck, calm down, so I forgot the exact definition of an irrational number and added something I shouldn't have and used a bad example. This is a wiki for a reason. And it's a wiki I've been told is about snark and goats anyways.--Logic and Empricism (talk) 00:10, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
No offense dude, but if you were responsible for all of that, and this: "{1 \over 3} is equal to 0.3333 ad infinite, making one third an irrational number.", then I think I was justified in my level of outrage. LiberalOfAnUnknownVariant (talk) 00:28, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
I'm sorry if I committed the cardinal sin of forgetting the definition of an irrational number and going with what I thought it was. If you'll excuse me I'm going to go pray for for absolution over my copy Euclid's Elements. It's also sort of hard to not take offense to some random asshole calling me an idiot like seven times.--Logic and Empricism (talk) 00:35, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

That whole "types of numbers" section should be cut. It's of limited relevance to the phenomenon of innumeracy, contains a lot of trivia, some inaccuracies, & the comments it does make about teaching methods look more like strawman stereotypes than actual observations. ЩєазєюіδWeaselly.jpgMethinks it is a Weasel 00:43, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

I think I cleared out all of the blatant inaccuracies. I am however not attached to the text, and I do not object to cutting it. LiberalOfAnUnknownVariant (talk) 00:51, 4 December 2012 (UTC)

[edit] How the F*** did Negative numbers ended up redirecting to this place?

Well, this article is not exactly about negative numbers... Thieh[Talk needed] 02:31, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

There was an article that was judged off-mission and redirected to here, because the only relevant part was that some people have problem grasping the concept of negative numbers, which is an example of innumeracy. If you have suggestions about the future of the redirect, I suggest taking it to Talk:Negative numbers.--ZooGuard (talk) 08:05, 25 June 2014 (UTC)
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