GOT MATH ??! I need to vent...

[T.L. Buck]

Last week I purchased a burger and fries at McDonalds for $3.58.
The counter girl took my $4.00 and I pulled 8 cents from my pocket and gave it to her. She stood there, holding the nickel and 3 pennies. While looking at the screen on her register, I sensed her discomfort and tried to tell her to just give me two quarters, but she hailed the manager for help.

While he tried to explain the transaction to her, she stood there and cried.

Why do I tell you this?

Because of the evolution in teaching math since the 1950s:
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Teaching Math In 1950
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?

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Teaching Math In 1960
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or $80. What is his profit?

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Teaching Math In 1970
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80. Did he make a profit?

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Teaching Math In 1980
A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20 Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

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Teaching Math In 1990
A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit of $20. What do you think of this way of making a living?

Topic for class participation after answering the question:
How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes?

(There are no wrong answers.)

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Teaching Math In 2005
Un ranchero vende una carretera de madera para $100. El cuesto de la produccion era $80. Cuantos tortillas se puede comprar?
_________________


:D :D

[Ben-Sturman]

Buck, I'm in AZ and that's so dang true and yet so funny I can't quit giggling everytime I think about it. What a harsh truth. Thanks for the laugh. :D

Ben

[Jason Maki]

Did I just log onto "RushLimbaugh.com"?
Ditto's!
I spent major $$$ this summer to send my 5 year old to Sylvan Learning because the public schools tested him and his scores had him just to the upswing side of the bell of Forrest Gump. Sylvan tested him and had him just on the downside of the bell of a Rocket scientist(top 2 percent). They had him reading in two weeks and the public schools said he diid'nt know the alphabet????
He goes to school to be with kids but we are responsible for his primary education, IMO.
Jason

[T.L. Buck]

It has a LOT of truth to it. It is sad but what has happened to our learning process. I learned from the back of my dads hand. Now days it's punishable with imprisonment. Holy Cow!

[Mattfarrier]

You tend to find the average IQ of a mcdonalds server increases at the weekend. this is because the ones that work there during the week do it because that's the only place that'll have 'em full time, and the ones who work at the weekends are students trying to earn some spare cash. Next time only attempt inflicting a complex mathematical equation like this on a saturday or sunday. BTW i tried to get a weekend job at Maccas when i was an apprentice but they wouldn't have me cos my hands wouldn't scrub clean enough !! :D

[Mike Ferrara]

A couple aspects to this I think.

First people are lazy and do what they have to do. I go into stores and gas stations where there are some pretty old folks running the register. The new registers take as input the amount tendered and give as output the change due...so no one even knows how to count your change back to you. Regardless of how they come to the answer there is a right and a wrong way to count the change back to the customer and just stating the return amount and plopping a pile of money in your hand is the wrong way. Many of these people are old enough to have been doing this without the help of machines but they don't have to any more and they don't remember how.

Had you given her the $0.08 in time for her to punch it in she would have had it but she needed the machine.

Then there's this
Teaching Math In 1990
A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit of $20. What do you think of this way of making a living?

Topic for class participation after answering the question:
How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes?

(There are no wrong answers.)

The public school is a great place to send a child for a good solid left wing brainwashing combined with a fairly complete indoctrination into relativism.

[ichabod1]

Hello -

I've been lurking here for awhile, even tried to post a time or two without success, had to get the admins to fix that for me . . . anyway, I had to comment on this subject. I went to a Subway sandwich shop for lunch a couple days ago. The lady running the register looked to be 50ish. When she rang up my purchase she apparently didn't do it correctly to where it would tell her how much my change from a $10 bill would be. She stood there kinda bumfuzzled and finally turned around to a pocket calculator to figure it up. She couldn't count money.


I'll probably be doing most of my posting under the 'business help' section here as my son is leaving for farrier school in just over a week. I will be helping him with his accounting/bookkeeping etc when he gets back and starts his business. Y'all pray for me. LOL

[Kaydence]

It is time for a mea culpa. In attempting to respond to Kaydence's excellent post, I hit the wrong key and sent her reply into the nethers.

My deepest and most sincere apologies. This was a total and complete screw-up on my part. The error is of my doing and has no explanation other than ******ity and lack of attention to detail on my part.

Rick

[lindar131]

Okay now...I resent this "older people' and "she looked 50ish". I am 57 and I can do big math in my head. It's not the age, its what they have been taught and IF the have the gray matter to work with. :confused:
Until I was 15, I was educated in Montreal, Canada where you had to learn, understand AND pass the exams to get into the next grade. Today is very different. It is not the student's fault, its the system and the lower value the 'family' has put on education and supporting our teachers so they can teach without spending most of their time trying to keep order in their class rooms.
'Spare the rod and spoil the child' may be old but it has merit. I raised 3 boys and a foster boy and all of them are responsible, capable, intelligent nice men....one just left his business job to go to Farrier School and I am thrilled. He is an outdoor guy and loves animals. He hated working inside, but he can do math in his head! My point is, teach your kids if they aren't getting it at school. Get them tutors if they need it and then accept what they want to do. The money on education will NEVER be wasted. :) Thanks.

[ichabod1]

linda - I didn't mean no offense by saying 'she looked 50ish' . . . heck, I'm 50ish myself. I only meant that she wasn't no teenager with which we're usually associating this lack of knowledge with.

It just amazes me that anybody can't make simple change out of a $10 bill.

And, like mentioned above, don't dare trying giving them the extra coins to try and make it more simple, it just blows their minds completely.

[Post-Equ]

Huh figure I would jump in as a student. I totally understand, doing math in your head should be something everyone knows by the time they leave school. I wish I was a lot better at it then I am. I'm totally an utterly dislexyic, but they threw me in the reading tutoring and ignored math til I was in high school. The school jus kept me behind a year and didn't bother to work on it til later, then I finally got a teacher who wanted to help me figure it out. I ended up finishing what I needed to on the required math an took accounting which is useful and did well (big shocker for my old teachers). My feeling is, if we worked on things like normal math something we might use and not having to do the stuff for algebra and other funny math. Then just stuck with the stuff that would help us in the real world and not just on testing everyone would be better for it, along with making sure we know the stuff before starting on the next part. Of course I was never put in the real world math courses until I signed up for them myself or put in them for college (from what my tests for college said I'm to **** for other more advanced courses.) But all I have to say to that is HA least I can balance my own check book! Ok so now that I rambled on and possibly just made no sense I should go and do that math homework :(

[Forgewizard]

I have been a member of the "Mathematically challenged" all my life. Attended special math classes in public school (known then as I.P.I. - which is Individual something or other- I forget now).

My mother hired math tutors. My ever patient Grandmother would work with me on math. I was a constant irritation to my algebra teacher and even ended up having to split the last year of algebra into two years. Just barely passed my math regents exam by 2 points. While I aced my English, Science and history regents in the high 90's!

My brain just has trouble comprehending numbers. Heck, I still don't know my times tables! I go to the closest multiplication I know, then add (usually on my fingers) from there to get the correct product! I have calculators stashed all over the house, truck, on keychains and in my pocketbook - not to mention using the one in the cell phone and my PDA. All my clients are quite patient while I total their bills TWICE to make certain I heven't erred.

At the start of this profession I attempted to force myself to do equations in my head when totalling the bill, but on the drive home and double checking with a calculator, I often found I had shorted myself.

So I am not embarassed one iota by recognizing and claiming my grey matter shortcoming - calculators are WONDERFUL tools!

My grey matter seems to lean more towards the artsy. While my twin brother is a math whiz and limited in the arts. Maybe that's where the term "two minds are better than one" developed?

Regards,
Kim

[Bill Adams]

My favorite story was the twenty year old fellow who leased a ranch to run cattle on. He had to gather and we went out to shoe the horse, which was about thirty miles out of the way, got set up under a tree and the thunderstorm began about half way through the job. We waited for for the rain to stop but that didn't happen so we went out and finnished, got soaked to the skin and trimed a couple others.
The kid was so appriticative, he said he wanted to give us some extra tor our trouble. So I ran down the list, this much for this one this much for those and let him add it up and put his tip on top. He handed me the cash, I stuffed it a pocket and drove off.
When I counted it, it was ten bucks short of the bill, let alone the "extra", but I know that cowpoke was happy to have given the shoer something more for his trouble, and happy he haden't wasted time going to math class.

My experence with the McD clerk was the $4.95 total that I gave her a five dollar bill for then stood there and watched her stand and wait for the computer to tell her to give me a nickle. I jokingly asked if she couldn't figure that out by her self, and she replied that "they haven't taught us how to do that yet".
On the other hand, one may notice the result of my delinquency from English class. Oh for a spell check on this site.
Bill

[Jason Maki]

I enjoy the typos and misspellings. I attmpt to decipher if it the error was added for affect(or is that effect? or a typo?), a lack of knowlege, a lack of concern or just a plain old typo...adds a level of mystery, ya' know?
jason

[Skinfaxi]

If you think having an ***** teenage serve you poorly is bad, then you will hate this....I did.

This monday my 50ish female BOSS couldn't add 8 + 8 in her head! First she guessed 12, then she got a calculator....I am not making this up. It happens all the time....sigh.

[Douglas_Armstrong]

From my Grandmother's 9th grade math book: Watson and White Copyright 1911. (yes I'm a pack rat)

Problem:

A horse trotted a mile in 2 min. 15 sec....(pretty goooood)

a. During that time, the race track, on which the horse was traveling, moved how many minutes and seconds in its rotation about the earth's axis?

b. Estimating a degree of longitude at the place to be equal to 50 miles, how many miles did the race track move while the horse was trotting the mile?

Amazing how things have changed in nearly 100 yrs..... hmmmmm


Doug
MSN: info@farrierpro.com
Email: doug@farrierpro.com

[Dianne Lemmon]

You know why women have trouble with math?

For years they have been told that this [________________________] is 8 inches.


(joke my Mom once told me)

Dianne

[Bill Adams]

Problem:
A horse trotted a mile in 2 min. 15 sec....(pretty goooood)
a. During that time, the race track, on which the horse was traveling, moved how many minutes and seconds in its rotation about the earth's axis?
b. Estimating a degree of longitude at the place to be equal to 50 miles, how many miles did the race track move while the horse was trotting the mile?


Doug,
Did the horse have toe grabs?

[Jason Maki]

If he can trot a mile in 2:15sec the real question is how much is his breeding fee and where is he standing at stud!
Jason

[tbloomer]

Problem:

A horse trotted a mile in 2 min. 15 sec....(pretty goooood)

a. During that time, the race track, on which the horse was traveling, moved how many minutes and seconds in its rotation about the earth's axis?


Answer = 2 min 15 sec.


b. Estimating a degree of longitude at the place to be equal to 50 miles, how many miles did the race track move while the horse was trotting the mile?


Answer = 28.125 miles

Tom Bloomer, CF

[brian robertson]

A 2:15 horse in my neck of the woods goes to the Amish after 5 starts with no money. Now a 1:59 horse brings a check home regularly like a school teacher.

[Douglas_Armstrong]

Hint: 1 hour = 15 degree's Longitude....

[wwhite1973]

Originally posted by Dianne Lemmon
You know why women have trouble with math?

For years they have been told that this [________________________] is 8 inches.


(joke my Mom once told me)

Dianne

Dianne,
After careful examination of above line I must inform you that, that is NOT 8 inches. It is exactly 10 and a quarter inches! :D

Wayne

[EileenHughes]

a. 33' 45"

b. .27 miles

I'm guessing speed at equator to be rounded off to 1125 mph.

Is it right Doug?

[Douglas_Armstrong]

That's what I got.... back in 1911 they did not offer answers to "ALL" the questions.

Interesting read though.. I test my kids with some of the oral questions...just to make them think....

Please do not reply with calculus based physics questions.... I got straight D's for two years in college.... (D for done) I was way too busy being engulfed in Electronic and Software Engineering course work.


Doug
doug@farrierpro.com

[EileenHughes]

To be perfectly honest, the only reason that was at all familiar is because I use Ray's math series (re-prints from 100 or so years ago) in our homeschool.....if you can get through those, you'll really firm up the grey matter. :)

[Dianne Lemmon]

Dianne,
After careful examination of above line I must inform you that, that is NOT 8 inches. It is exactly 10 and a quarter inches! :D

Wayne


Wayne,

Ahhhhhh, thank you for validating my joke. I was wondering if it had been intentionally ignored!

Dianne

[J.H. shoeing]

Doug

I feel your pain. I tried to be engulfed in the dust of a ropin' pen while in college. I bet that my "passion" didn't end up paying as well as yours.

But my wife did really well in all her studies and she lets me use a calculator to figure my invoices and she makes deposits.

Jeff, CF