Are there really people this uneducated?

[Phil Pascoe]

At about 15 I had a friend who brilliant(in the true sense). One day he put in a maths paper that was perfect. He got 99%. He went to complain about the 99% to the master (who was old - it was the sixties and this guy had missed the call up for the second Boer War because he was lame. He had a first from Cambridge). He ruled a bunch of bolshie fifteen year olds with a rod of iron - all he had to do was glower at us. He just looked over his half glasses and said only god is perfect, boy - you might like to think you're god, but you're not.

 

[NazNomad]

... and said only god is perfect, boy - you might like to think you're god, but you're not.

Sounds like he was also Amish? :-D


There's a myth about the 'imperfecton block' in Amish quilts. Apparently, only god can make something perfect, so they'd deliberately put a mistake in their quilt work.

I now describe all my work as Amish. ;-)

 

[skipdiver]

I remember seeing something similar in a museum about Roman mosaics, that they deliberately incorporated a mistake as to not offend the gods. I used this as an excuse for years if i made a mistake at work and said i was an adherent of the Romans principle.

Going back to maths. My partners daughter is about to start training to be a maths teacher. They are offering tax free bursaries of £25,000 to try and fill the shortage.

 

[SammyQ]

phil.p? I concur utterly!! I had a primary teacher, then a Maths teacher in GRAMMAR :twisted: school who both taught us to think laterally like you described, hammered our 'times tables' into us too. Helped me get into MENSA years later. :lol: Long live creative thinking!!

I also believe most older carpenters and joiners were adepts at mental maths, because of the idiosyncratic units we pre-decimal boyos had to use.

Sam

 

[Phil Pascoe]

... and said only god is perfect, boy - you might like to think you're god, but you're not.

Sounds like he was also Amish? :-D


There's a myth about the 'imperfecton block' in Amish quilts. Apparently, only god can make something perfect, so they'd deliberately put a mistake in their quilt work.

I now describe all my work as Amish. ;-)

You wouldn't believe the coincidence there - his name was Hamish.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

phil.p? I concur utterly!! I had a primary teacher, then a Maths teacher in GRAMMAR :twisted: school who both taught us to think laterally like you described, hammered our 'times tables' into us too. Helped me get into MENSA years later. :lol: Long live creative thinking!!

I also believe most older carpenters and joiners were adepts at mental maths, because of the idiosyncratic units we pre-decimal boyos had to use.

Sam

I jacked in Mensa when one day I wondered why on earth I was so unintelligent as to pay £39 p.a. for a crappy magazine. (that'll show you how long ago it was )

 

[bugbear]

He taught us to look for the easy way - if we had to multiply 99 x 7, we multiplied 100 x 7 and subtracted the seven

That trick can be extended; e.g. 102 * 98 is easy (when you know how) - it's 9996

Algebraically (a + b) * (a - b) = a^2 - b^2

so (100 + 2) * (100 - 2) = 100^2 - 2^2 = 10000 - 4 = 9996. Simples.

BugBear

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Lost me totally.

 

[Jacob]

.....
I also believe most older carpenters and joiners were adepts at mental maths, because of the idiosyncratic units we pre-decimal boyos had to use.

Sam

It's the decimal system that's idiosyncratic.
Duo decimal evolved and works best for makers, measurers, navigators, geometers, astronomers, surveyors, time keepers.
The units are based on physical things - inch/finger. foot/foot, yard/stride, cwt/biggest practical weight for one man, agricultural rods, poles, furlongs etc
Makers want to divide by 2, 3, 4 and multiples - hence yards, feet, inches, half/quarter/eighth/sixteenth/thirtysecond

Decimal evolved and works best for counters - accountants etc based on using fingers. And toes - some old systems had base 20, which we retain as a "score".
It was imposed as modern and rational by Napoleon and others but a rational base 12 system might have served us better.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

A late friend, a pharmacist, always said that there were far fewer overdoses with imperial measurements - there were no decimal point errors. (Which as I said in another post my neighbour, a maths teacher, always said were the biggest problem with children being dependent on calculators.)

 

[NazNomad]

You wouldn't believe the coincidence there - his name was Hamish.

Amish Hamish... Sounds like a Viz character. :-D

 

[RogerS]

.....(Which as I said in another post my neighbour, a maths teacher, always said were the biggest problem with children being dependent on calculators.)

Children are still complaining about it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/20 ... -after-be/

".......The main complaint was they were set 'no whole numbers' to work with in the exam, having to work with decimal points, which takes more time and is more difficult to do without a calculator......"

 

[Eric The Viking]

I jacked in Mensa when one day I wondered why on earth I was so unintelligent as to pay £39 p.a. for a crappy magazine. (that'll show you how long ago it was )

Ditto. But if it ever comes up I just say I left because I became really stupid.

The other half got a couple of points higher than me. I always blamed a week of 16-hour days beforehand, then a mad dash to Bath Uni to take the test. She's simply been smug about it for the last 30 years or so.

Who was that economist with the weird name that used to write about half of every edition?

Madsen Pirie! You don't hear much about it (or him) these days. I assume he, at least, has gone totally elite now...

What a really weird outfit though.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I did my tests after an absolute pig of a night shift and an hour and a half drive, so I was rather surprised. Weird? You're not wrong, there.

 

[lurker]

In my younger days
I was asked by a farmer to quote to lay a hedge
We stood in the field and I said that looks about x yards and he was so startled about how accurate I was he gave me the job on the spot :lol:

But it was fairly easy to work out:
I knew the field was fairly old (200+ years) from the stuff growing in the hedge
I guessed it was originally measured out in chains (22 yards)
As a cricketer I knew the pitch was 22 yards long so that distance was ingrained in my mind after spending seasons running the length . It was just a case of mentally measuring how many cricket pitches long the hedge was and a simple multiplication.

 

[petermillard]

I jacked in Mensa when one day I wondered why on earth I was so unintelligent as to pay £39 p.a. for a crappy magazine. (that'll show you how long ago it was )

I jacked in Mensa after I met another Mensan... :shock:

What a really weird outfit though.

Yep.

 

[Jacob]

....
Who was that economist with the weird name that used to write about half of every edition?

Madsen Pirie! You don't hear much about it (or him) these days. I assume he, at least, has gone ....

He is a notorious right wing sh|thead. There's a lot of them about!

Mensa: "I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member." Groucho Marx,

 

[RogerS]

....
Who was that economist with the weird name that used to write about half of every edition?

Madsen Pirie! You don't hear much about it (or him) these days. I assume he, at least, has gone ....

He is a notorious right wing sh|thead. There's a lot of them about!

Almost as many as their are left-wing loonies. That includes those who keep tub-thumping from their little soapboxes on forums where politics are not supposed to be discussed.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

"I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member." Groucho Marx,

I've heard that quote from every single person who has ever mentioned Mensa to me without having done the supervised IQ tests.

 

[doctor Bob]

I'm educated and bright and yet constantly do daft things I regret............... you would think I'd learn after many years but it just seems to be a merry go round.
I'm hopeless with money, seem to have the ability to get it quite easily at times and then lose it as quickly. The strangest part is it really doesn't bother me.