• nuko147@lemm.ee
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      1 month ago

      My brain works like

      100 - 100*(10/100) = 90

      90 + 90*(10/100) = 99

          • Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 month ago

            Ah I’m in US so maybe this is one of those rare occasions where the US took an actually good idea from europe. I hear it’s a better system.

          • christian [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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            1 month ago

            I don’t think I was ever taught this, but that’s more or less how I do arithmetic. More precisely, my mental arithmetic would transcribe to:

            47 + 36 = 47 + (30 + 6) = (47 + 6) + 30 = 53 + 30 = 83

              • christian [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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                1 month ago

                I think they’re essentially the same thing. I don’t really have a process for what order to work in, just intuition for what will be the least friction. If it were big enough numbers I’d probably go through a second time in a different order of addition to double-check.

                It’s just weird that I’ve done a lot of math and never really thought about that process. That’s why you’d ideally want any math below precalc to be taught by someone with a math education degree rather than someone who just has a math degree. When you’ve used the concepts you’re teaching with enough regulatity that they’re second nature, you have very poor intuition for which concepts will trip up someone learning for the first time.

  • dis_honestfamiliar
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    1 month ago

    You learn this pretty quickly when you bet on meme stocks. Down 90% then up 100% I can assure you, you are no where near where you started.

  • Dimmer06 [he/him,comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 month ago

    At work I created a simple spreadsheet to help with a task where you have to add two values in a row together and then subtract a third and then round up to the next multiple of eight. All of these are whole numbers, most of which are less than thirty. A substantial number of the people I work with clearly struggle with it and I’m constantly finding mistakes from when they use it stemming from bad arithmetic.

    Realizing this was actually what made me give up on organizing here more than anything else. If Americans can’t do first grade level arithmetic no wonder they’re so clueless as to how badly they’re getting screwed over.

  • frosty99c@midwest.social
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    1 month ago

    It’s also caused by vague wording. “Up 10%” can mean both: “up by 10 percentage points” and “a 10 percent increase”

    I know that I’d only ever use it to mean “a ten percent increase” but colloquially, it can mean either. In a work email, I would make sure to specify which I mean.

      • frosty99c@midwest.social
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        1 month ago

        Basically, if a percentage goes up 10 percentage points, it is just an addition. “His approval rating jumped 10 percentage points from 24% to 34%.” There are 10 percentage points between those numbers.

        If a value increased by 10%, it went up by 10% of its previous value. “The price of eggs increased by 10% from $9.00 to $9.90” the original value gets multiplied by 1.1

        They aren’t talking about percentages in the original tweet, so this doesn’t really apply, but I think this vagueness confuses people so I prefer to be more specific than just “up 10%”

  • 7bicycles [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    1 month ago

    honestly considering how many people get this wrong I don’t blame greg. I got this wrong until I got ranted at by a math wizz in uni, who I do thank. Shit’s unintuitive!

    • ChaosMaterialist [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 month ago

      It makes much more sense when converted into fractions and multiply, where you have 9/10 and 11/10 respectively. Using percentages outside of a fixed reference causes all the confusion.

        • aebletrae [she/her]@hexbear.net
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          1 month ago

          But, but… percentages are already fractions. Per cent = “out of a hundred”.

          The % symbol even looks like a fraction to remind everyone.

          Now, simplifying fractions from 90/100 to 9/10—in spite of it literally being removing a zero from each side—does seem to cause some real problems.

            • aebletrae [she/her]@hexbear.net
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              1 month ago

              How are you at thinking about years, decades, and centuries?

              If we take it step by step:—

              • 10 years of a century is ten years out of a hundred.
              • 10% is ten out of a hundred.
              • So 10 years is 10% of a century.

               

              Looking at the same thing another way:—

              • 10 years is a also a decade.
              • There are 10 decades in a century.
              • So one decade is one tenth (1/10) of a century.

               

              Bringing in the comparison from earlier:—

              • 90% of a century is 90 years, or 9 decades.
              • 9 decades is nine tenths (9/10) of a century.
              • 110% of a century is 110 years, or 11 decades.
              • 11 decades is eleven tenths (11/10) of a century.

               

              Are these familiar enough to make sense as a parallel, or just further irrelevant confusion?

              • 7bicycles [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                1 month ago

                How are you at thinking about years, decades, and centuries?

                not a lot, usually

                It’s not like I don’t get the train of thought here, it just doesn’t come intuitive

          • ChaosMaterialist [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 month ago

            But, but… percentages are already fractions. Per cent = “out of a hundred”.

            You are correct. It’s more like leaving off the Unit from a number, with that causing an incorrect conversion somewhere else.

        • Nakoichi [they/them]@hexbear.net
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          1 month ago

          I finally learned to convert fractions and imperial vs metric by selling drugs and working retail lol.

          For example I can tell you that one OZ = 0.625 0.0625* LB off the dome but don’t ask me to do calculus.

        • RNAi [he/him]@hexbear.netOP
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          1 month ago

          The krautian brainpan imposes an adaptative tradeoff where it restrict the development of sense of humor in exchange for being good at nerd stuff

          Thought your primary and secondary schools are still good, like well funded and still not teaching creationist science and stuff like that.

          Like, in my last year of public secondary school more than half my class somehow struggled with speed * time = distance, but eh teachers get paid shit what can you expect

          Sure, people can have dislexia or just not be good nor motivated at math , but it was more than half the class

          • 7bicycles [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            1 month ago

            Thought your primary and secondary schools are still good, like well funded and still not teaching creationist science and stuff like that.

            Well it’s been a while. As far as memory serves all my math and physics teachers were pretty good. Just stopped clicking somewhen, I think I just got a terminal case of humanities brain.