Useless Thread MDCCLXXX: Back to school, back to school

[John Price]

Remember when @Zaide said linear algebra was fun? Eigenvalues are terrible. Imagine liking an eigenvalue or a dot product.

 

[John Price]

Like, they teach you all this shit that you never use in real life.

 

[John Price]

@Zaide also said c++ and pointers were evil

 

[John Price]

Nobody uses pointers.

 

[Sega Dreamcast]

They curve all those courses.

There was most likely a curve, but I had a terrible grade, easily under 50%.

Then there was this math class I took during my final semester. I was doing even worse in there, but I realized I didn't need the class to graduate, so I just skipped the final and took the failing grade

 

[John Price]

In spite of a failing grade, I passed Calculus 2 in freshman year of college.

I can only assume the professor was worried about her job and was trying to pass as many people as possible because I had absolutely no business in passing that class.

How many times has your job asked you to recite the chain rule or find integral / derivative of anything by hand?

 

[John Price]

Nobody has been asked to find the integral of sin(x) cos(x) ln (x) after college. Fact.

 

[Sega Dreamcast]

How many times has your job asked you to recite the chain rule or find integral / derivative of anything by hand?

I do more math while playing Runescape than in routine tasks at my job

 

[John Price]

I do more math while playing Runescape than in routine tasks at my job

I last played Runescape in 2002

 

[John Price]

Is it still free to play?

 

[John Price]

Nobody's job involves using advanced math unless you're teaching it to other people. Fact.

 

[Oogie Boogie]

Nobody's job involves using advanced math unless you're teaching it to other people. Fact.

What about people working at NASA

 

[John Price]

In my view, organic chemistry is hard because it is specifically designed to be a rat race where 90% of premedical students’ dreams go to die. Such a purpose had made organic chemistry not only overly time-consuming , but also rather uninteresting to learn. Now I say this despite the fact that I did decently well in all my orgo classes (I got an A- in both of them), I don’t hate organic chemistry because of the grade that I received; I hate it because of what I had to go through in order to get that grade.

When I was taught organic chemistry, the courses emphasized brute force memorization more than other other subject I had every studied. Sure you could get lucky and answer some questions just by understanding the fundamentals of chemical structure and reactivity, but no one can predict a Grignard reagent will add a carbonyl group to a ketone (Grignard reaction
), no one can predict that an alkyl group can just switch carbon atoms during certain kinds of elimination reactions(1,2-rearrangement), those facts must simply be memorized.

Sounds stupid.

 

[Kairi Zaide]

Cause you never have to use it at work.

i do when it's faster than using a computer to brainstorm or for rca and stuff like that

 

[John Price]

What about people working at NASA

They have computers doing all the formulas for them

 

[Tarantula]

Electrical engineering requires trig.

True enough, I haven't used any of that in 20 years. My work is more along technician lines then engineering. I fix in the field as opposed to design and test so I tend to downplay engineers.

 

[John Price]

i do when it's faster than using a computer to brainstorm or for rca and stuff like that

Oh so now you are arrogant enough to say you can do math faster than a computer

Are you even aware of how many calculations a computer can do per second compared to your measly brain?

And what type of calculations would you be doing in order to use such advanced math in the workplace??

 

[John Price]

Steelers blowing Giants out

 

[Kairi Zaide]

Oh so now you are arrogant enough to say you can do math faster than a computer

Are you even aware of how many calculations a computer can do per second compared to your measly brain?

And what type of calculations would you be doing in order to use such advanced math in the workplace??

in order for the computer to do the math, you have to input the data

calculation like looking at a graph with workmates and figuring the rate of changes, or looking at probability distributions trying to see which part contains the 25th and 75th percentile; stuff like that are intuitive when you know how these things work and when you know some basic derivatives and integrals

 

[John Price]

True enough, I haven't used any of that in 20 years. My work is more along technician lines then engineering. I fix in the field as opposed to design and test so I tend to downplay engineers.

I have an unbuilt TV stand in my living room.

Since I am too busy to problem solve and build this (it says it requires 2 people for one of the steps!) I think I might just hire someone to build this for me and handle any issues that may occur.

Busy people like me no longer have time to go through a troubleshooting or building process.

 

[John Price]

in order for the computer to do the math, you have to input the data

calculation like looking at a graph with workmates and figuring the rate of changes, or looking at probability distributions trying to see which part contains the 25th and 75th percentile; stuff like that are intuitive when you know how these things work and when you know some basic derivatives and integrals

no

 

[John Price]

I never realized until recently that you could just hire people online to build your furniture. I will do this from now on. I don't have time to plug this into that.

 

[John Price]

You know you can order your own computer parts and hire someone to build that computer for you?

Just 100 dollars.

 

[Kairi Zaide]

no

yes

when you're in a meeting and all you have is a whiteboard or a basic display computer without any software, knowing these basic maths, chemistry, physics, etc. stuff and understanding how they can be applied to either understand or solve a problem is key

 

[John Price]

yes

when you're in a meeting and all you have is a whiteboard or a basic display computer without any software, knowing these basic maths, chemistry, physics, etc. stuff and understanding how they can be applied to either understand or solve a problem is key

No

You are never asked during meeting to whiteboard a math problem

This is not college