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I don’t pretend anymore, I just calculate on a computer or phone.
Once my friend with a PhD in Mathematics calculated the wrong tip in his head.
I don’t trust anyone to be able to do math in their head, especially not myself.
The study of mathematics requires surprisingly little arithmetic.
Similarly, don’t expect much help with history questions in pub quiz from someone with a history degree.
“You have a whole ass degree, why can’t you tell me when Garfield was president!!?!?!??”
“It’s not like that … my thesis was on medieval crop rotation “
I have a friend who has a PhD in medieval Malian history and he trounced me in french history trivial pursuit 😭
I gave a geography degree and absolutely can’t tell you where shit is on a map.
But if you need a watershed modeled I’m your guy.
Was John Arbuckle his vice president?
It is only surprising if you think mathematics is more or less equivalent to arithmetic.
I was “bad at math” all the way through school and it wasn’t until I realised how wrong this is that it finally clicked. I still cannot calculate shit unless I have pen and paper but I usually have access to this when solving integrals. I went into a math heavy program at uni without any issue.
I remember reading a while ago that it is actually a problem in education that the only ones who pursue math degrees ate those who could easily grasp the arithmetic heavy parts of math, resulting in a narrow presentation of what math really is throughout school.
I’m about to get a PhD in math, and I am not the best at mental arithmetic either. I used to be really bad, but teaching has forced me to improve by a lot. It was very annoying for me to go back and forth between my notes/computer and the blackboard whenever there was a big multiplication, so I just slowly got better at doing it in my head. Also, it had the added benefit of letting me improvise more.
My college roommate got insanely good at it when he set an alarm on his phone that required him to do some calculation before he could turn it off. After about one semester, he was doing those half asleep lol. I think he finally decided on an alarm that would need him to walk outside and scan a QR code to turn off.
Another method to get good at mental arithmetic: At the supermarket checkout, pay in cash—and do your best to minimize the number of coins you end up with. Start calculating right after you’ve put your groceries on the checkout conveyor belt: Pour all your coins in your hand and then calculate in advance which coin combination you would give for which grand total that might result (or just for the decimal places thereof).
Judging by how many people say I should calculate restaurant bills it must be pretty surprising… I always relate the scenes of my PhD supervisor trying to split up a bill at a table full of mathematicians :P
Arithmetic is useful, but they should teach it through Slay the Spire or something.
Keep math class for the fun stuff.
I had to learn how to do maths with a computer and work around the limitations of not being able to draw the funky symbols to be able to do it.
I don’t fuck with it when it’s got the symbols though, I let a intern or junior “learn” on that 🫣💀
With a masters degree in mathematics, my response when someone wants me to do mental math is something like, “I can barely even count”, in reference to combinatorics, while I pull out my phones calculator.
Yeah when you get to university level maths you start pulling out calculator to check whether 2+2 really is 4 or you just made a mistake
That’s when my grades started to plummet. I thought calculus would be a breeze since I had always had good grades before that (till the end of secondary school).
…then came the endless stream of memorising theorems and proofs. Not a single digit in sight, just the entire Greek, Cyrillic and Klingon alphabets.
As someone who studied engineering: I always use a calculator because I learned over those years to NEVER ever trust my mind maths, even for basic stuff like 3x5
I trust my mind math if I need approximate and it’s not super important. My brain is really good at back of napkin math but if I needed the actual answer or otherwise need precision, I’m pulling the calculator out. If I want to know where a falling object is roughly going to land, I’m good but if I need to know how much wood I need for a project, I should do the work of making the drawing and manually add it all up with the calculator
Indeed i trust people who work with high level maths even less for mental math than, say, someone who works as Front of House or a Barista.
Take the tax and double it. That’s close to 20%. I use that trick to make sure I’m doing the math correctly.
Tax rates are variable by location and may not be ~10% in some places.
A more accurate way is just to divide the subtotal by ten (move the decimal one place to the left) and double it. This gives you the actual 20% value.
This is the way. Move it one over, multiply by 2, round it up to the nearest whole dollar, done.
I always round up, but that’s because I have to do less math my head lol
it’s easier to just not tip
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If you ever want to see a group of educated adults struggle with basic addition and subtraction, join a game of Dungeons and Dragons. I swear all math skills vanish the moment you have an audience.
Hey! It’s practically algebra and it can be hard to do when you’re group hallucinating
I just go with the excuse that I’m getting into character (I’m playing a barbarian).
I don’t play high int characters because I know when my pay attention pills usually stop working
Might I suggest playing a Kender?
(For legal reasons I must state this is a joke and not actual advice. Never bring a Kender into your game without the explicit permission of all participants. @[email protected] shall not be held liable for any derailed campaigns, lengthy lists of banned in-game actions, or lost friendships as a result of ignoring this warning.)
Based on the wikidot entry, this is just a species of how I usually play my characters
My current character is a wild magic sorcerer tiefling who actively pisses off a coven of hags and passively pisses off a demon lord. At level 7, he has 44 HP and is usually found on the front lines. Our poor healers have to revive him every third round or so. He’s very much a “it’s not about surviving this fight, it’s about taking you out with me” type. He’s a glass cannon who should not be in the front lines at all. He also has what seems like an infinite supply of Hellish Rebuke and uses it at every opportunity
I love doing math in my head when I’m alone, but when other people are with me I feel pressured & my mind panics & shuts down. I think it’s a holdover fight or flight response from childhood in overpopulated classrooms where inevitably there’s one kid in the classroom who answers all the questions first and everyone else gets left behind, feeling empty-brained.
“…37. That’s what you got, too, right?”
“…Yeah…”
If it’s super important, throw in a: “do you think we need to double check?”
After that, it really is on them.
Okay but what if you’re both just pretending?
I got you.
And if we’re both pretending?
