this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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YOU’RE DOING QUADRATICS IN MIDDLE SCHOOL?’
Yes, that's standard at least in Germany
In Spain too, it's also needed in vocational training (FP1, FP2) for carpenters, electricians, plumbers, etc., because it involves necessary calculations in their work, such as trigonometry, spheronometry, vector forces, flow calculations, among others. For office workers, naturally, percentage calculations are not overcome, but even there second degree equations can arise.
Wow. In America, trades people use a chart to look up literally anything that requires math. If you’re lucky.
Most of the time “it looks good enough” is enough.
I've had an economics teacher in the Netherlands who had interest tables and wanted us to them too. For those before calculators, those are tables that list the years on the left, and the interest on top, and then the multiplier in the table.
So, 10 years at 6.5% = 1.877
This was in 2005i sh.
Could you use a slide rule for that kind of multiplication?
Absolutely. But I learned in 2005, and the electric calculator had replaced the sliderule a couple of decades earlier.
But this is something they were great at, but usually not with the same accuracy. It's hard to get more than 3 decimal places out of one, and tables are great for that, you can fill whole books with them.
In my study time it was the only which exists, still no electronic or computers , only in big companies, which worked with punch cards.
I would use an Abacus for multiplication and a Venier scale for accuracy
Had to try to find a source
... The worst part is I'm decent with math by US standards in school and couldn't even solve the middle school one with a quick glance.
Multiply the top by the bottom to erase it. Reverse the square root of something. + Or - threw me right off...
Cause the middle school one is the quadratic formula. You use it to factor 2nd degree polynomials. You don't solve for a, b, and c, you just plug them in.
It is the quadratic formula. It already is the solution. The problem is any quadratic of the form ax²+bx+c=0
Same in Brazil, though public education quality varies a lot.
That's nuts. In the US the only high school math I was taught was algebra and geometry. Anything more advanced than that was for students in the "gifted" program. No wonder why Americans are so stupid.
not sure why you're getting downvoted for this, I had the same experience with my education in the US. high school class of 08, lol. the school never taught a math class past algebra 1. if you finished it, you still needed math credits per year, so they'd just have you retake the same class. seriously. absolutely abysmal. 95% of the math I do now is self taught. from my "education" alone, we never got much past solving basic linear single-variable equations. most of my class graduated barely literate. really, most of my class simply left, myself included - the dropout rate was astonishingly high around 08, and instead of doing the same classes and curriculum for the third time in my senior year, I opted to simply leave, educate myself, and shortly thereafter start my business.
Maybe you were just at a bad school? Quadratic equations are mandatory in Germany even for the lowest level of graduation.
Until my Abitur (12th grade) I learned about equations, stochastics, integrals and derivatives, vector stuff, etc.