biophase
Legendary Contributor
FASTLANE INSIDER
EPIC CONTRIBUTOR
Read Unscripted!
Summit Attendee
Speedway Pass
what is the practical use of maths in the real world?
Unless you're in some engineering or computing field, I don't really see it being applied in daily life for most people. Very basic calculations like plus, fractions, division, multiplications etc....yup, but calculus? Further Maths? And stuff like :
Elynn, Fiona and Greg had a total of 336 cards.
First Elynn gave Fiona as many cards as Fiona had.
Then Fiona gave Greg as many cards as Greg had, and finally Greg gave Elynn as many cards as Elynn had left.
In the end, all of them had the same number of cards.
How many cards did Elynn have at first?
WHAT. THE. ACTUAL. F*CK.
Do we really need stuff like this? Because in a real life situation, the correct "answer" would be to just straight-up go and ask Elynn how many cards he had at first, and if he refuse, trade a toy or candy with him.
Who the hell uses algebra in the real world for a situation like this unless you're a bot? Do you?
Maybe the whole maths education is a scam to begin with.
I, 100% disagree. In fact your problem stated is fairly easy to solve. See you would assign each person a variable to the number of cards, like E, F and G. Then when some gives Fiona as many as she has, now you know she was 2F in cards. Greg has 2G. Elynn has 2E. And you know F + G+ E = 336. Now I'm not 100% positive my variables are right here, but this is exactly how you would solve this problem. You would write it out given your data and figure out a course of action.
Now your other problem, "Tony's product launched 2 months ago, but he got only one sale. Now he needs to figure out his next course of action before he uses up the remaining $2k in his bank."
Again, this is a problem solving problem where you need to identify the variables and assign values to them. Let's say you got some data, Tony has received 1000 visitors on his website, 50 add to carts and 1 sale. What is his next course of action with his remaining $2k ?
Let's add some more information for Tony.
Google CPC averages $.40
Google conversion rate is 2% on CPC
Facebook CPC averages $.85
FB conversion rate is 3% on CPC
Website redesign that may increase his conversion rate by 25% will cost $1000
Profit margins are 50% and his product costs $50.
So @Xeon if Tony told you this and asked what he should do with his $2k, how would you advise him here?
It's not about the actual math... it's really about being able to think about a problem by assigning variables to every day issues.
You know Elon Musk when he started his Boring Company asked the current manufacturers if the limitation on their boring machines was due to power or heat and they didn't know. They didn't know why their boring machines had a maximum boring rate of XX ft/hr.
Elon was asking a fundamental physics question that was entrenched with math. If it was a power limitation then he could just strap larger engines and batteries to it. If it was a heat issue, then he needed to figure out how to dissipate the heat. But step one was to find the limiting variable. He knew the right question to ask.
Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum:
Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.