• drmeanfeel@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    The cultural tide of being at best indifferent or at worst proud of math illiteracy is tough to fight.

    I’m a professional mathematician, it comes up in small talk “what do you do” type stuff. It’s almost always met with some flavor of “oh lol I’m so bad at that” or “oh I hate that”, with the lingering implication that it’s normalcy, at least colloquially (like “hating Brussels sprouts”)

    I can’t imagine a person responding to an author “oh lol I can’t read but who cares”. No shame from me on folks who can’t read, but as the headline states there’s such a response to that need because frankly, our society will shame you if you can’t read, but commiserate with you if you can’t math.

    I don’t want math literacy to come on the back of shaming either. I just struggle with the amount of indifference (and mishandling by educative bodies) to such a vital language.

  • Paragone@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Odd…

    Back before reddit enshittified, there was a place or 2 there, where people could get help with math…

    That some sort of Lemmy equiv ought exist … and ought be identified to the learners of math … shouldn’t cost “federal funding” or any such thing…

    People help people, and good math books ( the Saxon Math books were good ), combined with actual-community help, ought be able to get most people up & running.

    The Schaum’s things ( go directly to the Schaum’s site, as they apparently keep the resellers a version behind, in order to force people to buy direct, so that they can get more of your money.

    Offensive, but it works ) are good, too.

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