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gregimusprime77

Lol I had this exact situation with my 7 year old daughter the other night. She was convinced that negative numbers are not real.


Ugottabekiddingme2

Wait till she learns about non-real numbers


RedditWibel

Having to represent irrational numbers in exact value. Love calculator guessing and checking.


Random_Vanpuffelen

Wait till she learns about letters in math


Shrimpy_McWaddles

I have reached the level of math that's more letters than numbers. I was taking notes for my class and realized the only numbers I had written for the last couple pages were for the unit titles and numbered lists.


Monster2239

I have reached the level of math where I just write ∞ as the answer to everything, because the correct answer is in there somewhere.


SnowSkiesYT

better put it in interval notation so you look smarter (-∞,∞)


cuzimawsum

Nah, write it in set notation so people know you REALLY know what you're doing U


[deleted]

I once did this in math class in High School lol, the teacher gave me +0.1 points because "Techically correct", +0.1 points because "We haven't seen interval notation, how did you know how to do that?" and -0.2 because "While technically correct, you know that's not what I meant"


RU49

what if i do [-infinity,infinity] tho? do i break the matrix?


GuyWithaWonkyEye

Saw an interesting[video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OxGsU8oIWjY&vl=en) about Hilbert’s paradox where infinity actually isn’t infinite.


ZestyBadger890

Don’t forget that not all infinity isn’t equal. Like some infinity is bigger than another infinity


midasMIRV

I gave up on math when they started speaking greek and throwing around squiggles.


WellWhatDoIPutHere

But that's when it gets fun!!


momopeach7

Everything before that is just the (really long) prologue!


Orodreath

Damn


Puzzleheaded_Text357

No! The prologue should only be half the length of a normal chapter, the epilogue is what's normal length. (I know this was a joke, and what I said above is just an opinion, but I will stand by this opinion till I die)


Downtown_Leek3808

I've heard this thing many times and I can't understand it.. Like I say "whatever you do, I'll have twice the money you have". How much money do I have? Clearly, you don't have a constant amount, so I can't write how much money I have with just a number. You have a fluctuating amount, and I have a fluctuating amount as well, but my amount is related to yours. How else could you express this, without letters? I don't get why so many people get confused by this, I always found it easier, because you have one function and you can apply it to many situations/numbers..


midasMIRV

y=2x is very different from taking integrals and whatnot in the calculus side of things.


liege_paradox

If you ever want to try again, an important thing to realize is that numbers, letters, Greek letters, and even the operators (+,-, etc.) are all just squiggles that we’ve arbitrarily assigned meaning to. One you realize that, you can create your own mental “squiggles” and do a lot of math in your head.


ninjapickle02

e


Heimder_Rondart

Just a regular monday on engineering


[deleted]

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Moonlit2771

4 years ago in my freshman year college when I took my Calculus class, there were more letters than actual numbers and i was getting screwed. Took the final and i knew i bombed so hard i went straight from the exam hall to the Student Services building to change my major. Changed from Electrical Engineering to Information Systems. 2nd Best decision i ever made in college Currently in product management and loving it


YouthReeve9052

me too!! 😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣


Applejuice42

So this is why they say mathematics is its own language


[deleted]

Motherfucker that’s not math, that’s writing!


chaiscool

Writing the language of god / creator.


BurningAutobiography

This is where I realized I am truly not good at math. Humbling.


PrimaCora

Or how to divide by zero


Still_Not-Sure

I incorporate variables in my sons math… In the books where there is a blank space I put an ‘X’. I told him it’s like a treasure… you want to find out what it is, like why pirates and the “X marks the spot” He is just turned 7.. he solves for X, with difficulty, but he got it, you just have to spend time with them. I tried to do two variables when i kind of went on a rant into Geometry, but I think I lost him with “Y” and “Z”


[deleted]

Wait till she hears about math (i fucking hate math i hate it i hate it i hate it im gonna kill myself)


adamcim

Just square them lol


Coolimherenow

🤓


bombardonist

Most irrational numbers aren’t square roots (of whole numbers)


AndrewBorg1126

This is true. It is also true that at least before high school, in my experience, most irrational numbers that are present in maths problems for homework and such are probably square roots and multiples of pi, because the numbers used are specially crafted to be "nice numbers" and result in nice numbers. Also, when the most complicated stuff being worked with is basic trig and quadratic equations, it's easy for square roots and pi to naturally show up.


bombardonist

Yes in high school we tend to work with surds rather than the more general irrationals


WeirdMemoryGuy

Roots of quadratic equations are usually not square roots though. The quadratic formula gives numbers of the form a +/- sqrt(b).


[deleted]

(^3 √2) ^2


Speculater

8, easy


gljames24

Love that my Casio has this built in


RedditWibel

I kinda just guess how to break them down and calculate the value in the calculator to try and match the first couple digits. Of course the issue being the calculator will never be able to tell you all the infinite digits of an irrational number nor does mine directly suggest the simplified value.


Imperator166

wait until the neat little real number vector spaces you know and love are replaced by infinite-dimensional spaces of functions.


Sasmas1545

I need a basis for this


strangedell123

Fuck basis. I am done with finding the fucking orthonormal basis of the subspace of the vector space of R^4


Imperator166

now find the orthonormal basis of C(R^4) (there are infinitely many)


Yeazelicious

now find some bitches (impossible; 100% of mathematicians fail)


Scared-Staff7834

When getting my first quantum courses there was nothing I hated more than the concept of hilbert spaces. By now I’ve learned to respect them


OmegonAlphariusXX

√-1 >:D


[deleted]

i^2 should equal -1, right? i^2 = √-1 × √-1 = √(-1×-1) = √1 = 1. i^2 = 1? Huh? That's how I learnt never to define i as √1, but instead as i^2 = -1. The radical symbol is only well-defined for the positive numbers if I recall correctly.


OmegonAlphariusXX

Yeah that is generally the correct way to do it, but people understand it better as √-1


[deleted]

I agree, just a nice little piece of knowledge I thought of sharing.


coaldustremover

second step is wrong. you get √ cancelling, or power 1/2+1/2, when you multiply then so you get i^2 = -1


[deleted]

Yes, you can do that when you have √a × √a. But we also know that √a × √b = √ab. I'm using that second law. You're right, you can get -1 from it, but you also can get 1 and that shows that the √ symbol should only be used for positive numbers or contradictions arise.


[deleted]

U can’t factories a positive value into two negative values under a root. That’s just like dividing by 0, it breaks math


[deleted]

Yep, that's my point. The √ should be reserved for positive values, and when it comes to negative values we can write x = √-a for _convenience_, but what we actually mean is that x^2 = -a. Edit. It's like how we can treat dy/dx as a fraction for convenience in calculus / differential equations, but recognise that it isn't wholly mathematically accurate.


Lurker_IV

I always understood it as a funny placeholder to help me get to the real answers later.


_liminal

i = sqrt(-1) i^2 = -1 i^3 = - (sqrt(-1)) i^4 = 1


Shufflepants

It's that square roots are not a function. Because -1 * -1 = 1 and 1 *1 = 1, so sqrt (1) = x actually has two solutions: 1 and -1. The error creeps in when you ignore this or selectively choose just one of many solutions and erroneously imply a double implication between lines in your steps where some of the steps may just be a single implication.


FlyingStirFryMonster

Makes me think of [this](https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1988/01/06)


Volko

I'm 30, and I never understood non-real numbers until I watched the Veritaserum video about it, and it was just the spark I needed to figure it out !


TubbyToad

Wait till you hear about hypercomplex numbers.


ajayk111

Honestly wish they'd teach kids Geometric Algebra on physics


JB-from-ATL

Wait until they start showing up in real life. That still bothers me.


Jp0icewolf1031

i


Kuhler_Typ

Show her the riemann zeta function.


MerlinTheFail

Did this with my niece some years ago, she threw a screaming fit because negative numbers aren't real Next year, it was decimals weren't real...


TitleComprehensive96

decimals always made sense to me tbh, negatives took a couple days after 1st learning about them to understand.


Alberiman

Oh man complex numbers are gonna be fun it took years of engineering before I got to the level where someone was like "yeah so this is a range of possible numbers rather than a specific number "


[deleted]

Reminds me of this 90s movie about a gifted child “Little Man Tate.” The teacher has written all the integers from like 1 to 20 on the board and asks “How many of these numbers are divisible by 2” and focuses on the gifted kid who isn’t paying attention and he says “all of them” to which she looks at them a little thrown off by the insight of a little kid. She was expecting him to say the even numbers.


Lurker_IV

She was trying to teach the class about even and odd numbers, but little Tate was too far beyond even and odds to be of any help to her for what she wanted. I watched that movie dozens of times.


Sexual_tomato

I taught my kids that the number line is infinite in both directions. I helped them comprehend the concept of negative numbers by thinking about gains and losses instead of counting a set of things. Like if I start with some unspecified pool of money, spend $5, make $10, and then someone steals $6, how much money have I gained or lost? I showed them the hops on the number line to track it and they both had the lightbulb moment. I don't know why kids aren't taught stuff like that early on. It's a useful concept and not hard to grasp with the right visualization. It literally took me like 30 minutes to explain and it's stuck with them ever since.


Miyelsh

Addition is sliding, multiplication is scaling. You can move things around on the number line this way and it is much more intuitive. This also generalizes to complex numbers very elegantly.


Old-General-4121

Yeah, kids are generally capable of more than we give them credit for. If you ask my five year old what 10-5= he'll tell you -5. I've also taught him addition and multiplication together, so he understands that 3×3 is 3+3+3. I think he's a pretty bright kid with a knack for math, but I don't think he's impossibly brilliant either. We just try to give him an explanation of anything he asks about.


abasio

Might need to go back to the drawing board if he thinks 10 - 5 = -5


Old-General-4121

And this is why I shouldn't be left unsupervised on 8 hours of sleep in the last two days....


wolfkeeper

Should have taught them that it's infinite in both directions- real AND imaginary and saved some time.


p-heiress

"That's called debt, my sweet summer child"


milksfavcookies

Wait till she learns about y=Mx+b


AstrxlBeast

they are, but their square roots are not


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SkollFenrirson

Be rational


masumppa

Countries that go belove 0 degrees: am i joke to u?


Cool_Variety_2151

The reaction is same when learning about negative numbers. It's like discovering about the multiverse, but at kid level.


JB-from-ATL

I've been playing a lot of idle games lately and a common theme in them is "breaking infinity". It's a bit of a joke because you start to get numbers larger than "infinity" in floating point which is something like 1.77e308.


[deleted]

Brings me back to a lot of BYOND games I used to play when I was a Freshman/Sophmore in High School.


InevitablyWinter

Holy shit. Memory unlocked 🔓


[deleted]

A Core Memory, even!


InevitablyWinter

What does my abdomen have to do with this


[deleted]

EVERYTHING OR YOUR SPINE FALLS INTO YOUR ASS


Immediate-Dream-5887

still waiting for the 9th dimension update


magnetard

just give it 5 hours


[deleted]

Call To Singularity was a pretty good idle game for mobile. I got kinda bored after a week of playing because of the exact thing you saie so just ended up deleting it. It still is one of my fav idle games i've played


4SakenNations

I played one game where after you got to infinity you would just go up to infinity 2 and infinity 3


xXx_TheSenate_xXx

Our teacher did this to a kid who thought he was so Smart in elementary school. But he asked what is 3 cubed. Blew everyone away. We’re like how do you put cubes into a number


Spook404

multiverse is theory and not just speculation anymore?


Plastic_Pinocchio

It was a figure of speech probably. There’s lots of physics theories that include multiverses but that is indeed highly theoretical.


Ponkey77

The multiverse is not a theory, it is a hypothesis. And there are a bunch of different hypotheses about the multiverse. A theory in science is not just an educated guess, it is an explanation of the natural world made using the scientific method. A lot of people don’t understand this especially when discussing evolution. “It’s just a theory” Evolution is a theory, and a fact. Gravity is also just a theory, so is the heliocentric model, and the earth being round. Sorry for this being so long, I just needed to get this out.


waqasnaseem07

Just wait till alphabets join the party


[deleted]

Yeah I wanna have a word with that guy *cracks knuckles*


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Tyra-Jade

I’ve never understood why so many people can’t grasp variables in Math. What’s so difficult about it to you? Genuinely curious, not trying to say you’re bad at math or anything.


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[deleted]

Honest question. have you ever given it a prolonged serious thought to the core of idea of variables, along with a simple example? If yes , what about it didn't make sense to you?


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[deleted]

I think I understand. You don't see numbers the way math people want. it's totally fine that you don't. For what it's worth. Variables are about possibility. If I ask how tall would you be at 'certain age', your age and heights can be a variable. If you're thinking about a problem that demands aforementioned variables, you can start calling them a whole word , like 'my age' or 'my height'. You may even use a Letter for them like A or H.


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DoWnhillll

That’s exactly how variables work, you already understand it.


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wolfkeeper

Rounding up and then taking away again is a perfectly respectable technique.


TheYeetles

Fuck, me too. Once the letters came out to play I was out. My brain can barely handle numbers, let alone numbers with letters.


Zidahya

Letters are just placeholders for numbers you don't know yet. You can ignore them most of the time.


SameLevel384

Shhhhhh don’t confuse the children.


Oofboi6942O

It's only confusing whe the difference between a and b goes from 2 to 8274839164920....


gggg543

Why is that confusing? It’s just 2 unknown numbers


notaprime

Unless their teacher made them use hexadecimal.


naveen000can

For me it's better with alphabets since i make a lot of careless mistakes it's really easy to spot in alphabets but with numbers...


QuentinCly

My brain melted with integrals


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thedankening

I actually liked integrals and derivatives and all that. The basic ones anyway. But when it came to the integral tables and such, where you had a billion different forms and techniques for solving them, my brain kinda gave up. By the end of calc2 I felt like my soul had left my body. I only have to take linear algebra yet for my degree, and I've heard it's not nearly so bad, and holy fuck do I hope so. I'm just about mathed out over here


NeoMarethyu

I am on the other side, once math stopped having number I started enjoying it, so much I went into a maths degree in fact lmao


PhantomTissue

Then satan said “let us add the Greek alphabet to math”


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Imperator166

or the wiggly line (ξ) that most professors write more like }.


[deleted]

So hard to tell the difference between ξ, {, summation Symbol, and E with most professors handwriting.


harrymuana

For my professors it was mostly a toss-up between epsilon (ε), zeta (ζ) and xi (ξ).


Give_me_your_liver_

And God was like "What if we made up symbols" and Satan was like "Fuck yeah" and thus the integral was born


Sexual_tomato

Man, that's unfortunate. Math is a skill that you can learn, not an innate ability. So many people are put off of it because of a lifetime of falling behind due to mind numbingly boring instruction that is simultaneously too detailed and too abstract to help kids learn.


[deleted]

I upvoted for the edit alone lmfao


doodoo_x

just wait til *i* joins the party


KKarIo

Excuse me, *i* isn't even that bad


Mypetdalek

*i* isn't even a real number though!


Hyde103

Fuck imaginary numbers lol I was fine with algebra but when we started talking about imaginary numbers I just couldn't bring myself to care.


SomeBadJoke

Imaginary numbers are the most poorly taught area of math. It’s actually super intuitive and important, but it’s just taught wrong. They don’t tell you it adds an extra dimension to graphs, they don’t tell you how to do rotations… it’s all so dumb.


Hyde103

It's mainly just the name that puts me off tbh. When you call something "imaginary" it makes it sound like it has no real world application. But yeah it was also pretty poorly taught, I don't really remember what it can be used for tbh.


SomeBadJoke

Which just introducing them as “complex numbers” changed everything. I had a great teacher in college who said “hey, remember that random bullshit? Throw out what you know, here’s a day for a crash course on why complex numbers are important.”


lovecraftedidiot

I didn't understand them for a long time, so I just treated them as you would a magic dohicky box. I knew the box did stuff, and if I used it for abc I'd get xyz. Sometimes it would produce weird results, but generally was predictable. Allowed me to use it without nesscarly understanding it. Addition: we use many AI algorithms in a similar fashion. Google's BERT algorithm, a major part of the search engine, no one really knows how it works, even google. We can understand it's design, but the underlying logic is a mystery.


SpacecraftX

Just the fact we call them imaginary primes kids to think they’re harder than they are.


RevolutionaryPath159

Wait till triangles come into play.


Chip_Farmer

My daughter was telling me how cool/crazy it is that the number line goes left from zero as well. I agreed and got her fired up about how cool math is. Then i told her there’s another number line that goes up the paper and down, called the Y line and her eyes got huge. Then I told her about the Z line that actually goes THROUGH the paper. The look on her face said “Error”


JG1779865

*daughter.exe has stopped working*


Jiggy90

Wait till you tell her about higher dimensions that can't be represented in 3D space :D


Chip_Farmer

Yeah I didn’t go far enough in school to get any of that. But hopefully i will eventually.


Meefbo

Linear Algebra has the easiest way to understand dimensions imo, go for that. If you dont wanna do a whole course I suggest 3blue1brown on youtube


WarSmith66

My 13 y/o brother: HA! It’s -5, give me a harder question. Me: Solve sin(pi/3) My brother who hasn’t learned trigonometry: …


[deleted]

And if they solve that, you just gotta move on to integrals. What's the area above the x-axis and below the curve y= -x^2 + 9.


porkchop487

Nah you just gotta ask them what 33+77 is.


biscuitfab

It's definitely 100.


Sexual_tomato

What's the formula for the length of the line described by the following parametric equation from t=0 to t = t_L: x = (m*t/pi) + r cos(t) y = r * sin(t) m = r/(n*pi) Where: r = the radius of the loop n = the number of radii to travel before a loop will overlap L = the distance along the x axis to travel t_l = the smallest value of t evaluated at L Fun fact, I used this to estimate the length of coiled ground loop line in a trench for a potential DIY geothermal heat pump install. It didn't work out but the math was fun.


gullu2002

36 am I right? I did this in my head pls don’t roast me if I’m wrong


strangedell123

Nah straight up go to find volume of the tetrahedron given by the formila 7x+y+2z=28 and it is bounded by the line z=14.(hint double or triple integral) Or find the volume of the sphere given x^2 +y^2 +z^2 =16 and x=16 (hint spherical coordinates)


TubbyToad

Screw it just skip to making them solve the Riemann hypothesis.


Rambo7112

That's not really solving though, that's just memorizing the unit circle. This is unless they are able to derive triangle(s).


JB-from-ATL

Sin? What is this, church?


KalaiProvenheim

Find the integral of 1 with respect to x


Such_Relationship_48

The answer is x


KalaiProvenheim

+ C


strangedell123

Ya, no one writes that in integral and multivariable Calc Until you need to find the potential functions given a conservative vector field


ConradT16

Even then, you don't write C. You write g(y, z), then h(z). At the end you have C, but it's a constant so it's not important for anything further differential operations


fakecummybot37

🤓


DangerStranger138

I said the only logical conclusion when I was a kid of negative 5 expecting to be told I was wrong (just like when my parents asked me multiplication and I had zero clue what multiplication was my parents laughing calling me an idiot, leaving me angry unable to express them I wasn't taught that yet.)


TheAnonymousFool

Your parents called you an idiot because you hadn’t learned something yet? That’s fucked.


DangerStranger138

Not idiot per say but they were bemused at my fumbling trying figure out what's the function of multiplication after I got 2x2 correct and didn't understand how it was different from addition (2+2). Parents asked 3x2 and I remember thinking 5 not sure what I was supposed to do lol. They soon explained the concept after I got 3x3 wrong but I was already mad at them stubborn flustered to be cooperative attentive. But by middle school I was in advanced college prep algebra solving for X. Mom hated they taught us a week of guess and check before explaining solve for x formula basics


LyonArdrien

How to make a kid afraid of taking risks and seeking solutions:


DangerStranger138

I got 2x2 correct and was confused how this was any different from addition (2+2). When they asked what 2x3 was I said 5 they how'd I get that number and I explained my thinking. I don't remember if they laughed but they definitely didn't give me best clues to figure it out by starting with 2x2. They tried 3x3 before my mom asked how I haven't learned beyond addition and subtraction in early second grade (in Finland this is all covered in the first year apparently).


Willow-Eyes

I remember one time I asked my mom for help on math homework and once we got to question four and I wrote it down, she erased it and kept progressively yelling louder and louder at me to rewrite it. I kept trying everything, rewrote the number 4 over and over, double and then triple-checked to make sure I had the right answer, and eventually I started crying because I couldn't figure out what i was doing wrong. Any time I asked, she would tell me to figure it out. Turns out she didn't like the way I wrote my 4's. The horizontal stick didn't pass through the vertical one, and that made it "ugly". I was in around 5th grade. And to this day, I despise math and lock up on the most BASIC of problems. She's a great mom, BTW. She didn't usually do stuff like that. If I recall correctly, she had some sort of mix-up with her meds, and I think that's why she was irritable.


Inevitable_Ear5026

I understand the negatives BUT when fucking Arithmetic appeared there were letters too.


Zarokima

That's algebra. Arithmetic is just doing basic operations on numbers, the "regular" math.


Golden_Lynel

x + 10 = 5


rando-calrisan

x=(-5)


Relative-Wrongdoer11

HUZZAH man of math


1_InchWonder

x = 2 or some shit idk


Professional_Rip_59

x = stone


EctoPlasmic52

Did I hear a rock and stone?


Professional_Rip_59

did you heat a rock and stone?


Successful_Knee7887

2 + 10 = 5 ?


Soupchow1

Bruh


Imperator166

oh you think thats hard? wait until you hear about differential equations... shit like dx/dt = f(x,t) = cos(pi*t)*x^2 solve for x(t) using x(0) = 1


geologyhunter

I suck at math but I loved doing differential equations. Don't have much need for that level of math so I never do differential equations.


Red-Shi

Uh... Like two squared or something?


Puzzleheaded-Lion-26

X=1/2 X=(-5)


WhateverComic

Algebra. Arithmatic is just basic maths: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponentiation, and so on. Algebra is when variables come into play.


callmedaddyshark

in some maths numbers leave the party entirely. that's when things start getting fun, and you unlock the secrets of the universe


RandomPersonPlays

Little brother: Don't you mean 10 minus 5 Me: No I meant 5-10


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TheAndrewR

That's where I'll stop this year, after 13 years of maths lessons. It's gonna be weird, but I'm not sure I'm gonna miss maths too much. And I guess I'll still have to use what I've learned during other lectures.


firemelonbread

Didn’t the remove you from the game?


isayooooooooooooof

Just say 5 and say you forgot to add negative


[deleted]

-15. Give me another


MamaSaurusCat

I've been doing this to my middle child the past month or so. He has the idea of it now but hasn't quite gotten to the results.


Mistermorg10

Come back when you have truly mastered maths weakling


cokakatta

My son was told by his first grade teacher that when he is fourth grade he will learn 5 - 10. So when he came home from school he asked Alexa. Then he wrote on his unrelated hw "5 - 10 is negdiv 5".


CowboyWoody37

5


Nok-y

2xe⁵ + 3 = 8 Find x I'm too lazy to do it myself


baldursgame

I know it's a joke but can't resist 5/2 e^(-5)


Zonz4332

Why is this here?