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65 Comments
- ajv570, on 04/08/2009, -2/+44Well then why on average do 5/4 people have problems with fractions
- dwtc, on 04/08/2009, -0/+26"Just two days ago at my office we had a good laugh with a colleague who had forgot how to use the riccati equation to minimize an objective function."
You office parties must be a real hoot - minorthreat, on 04/08/2009, -0/+22BREAKING: Study shows Adult brain can process words effortlessly.
- Kosh, on 04/08/2009, -0/+12Yeah, or try writing 3/3 with decimals. .9999999999999999999999999999999999999999.... is just a mess
oh wait... - 2uantuM, on 04/08/2009, -1/+12I got a good laugh from watching you stroke your own ego on digg.
- rolf, on 04/08/2009, -1/+11Decimals can't really express many fractions. 1/3. 2/3. 5/7. Not too elegant there.
But I do prefer metric over standard measurements with their retarded fractions. I find it easier to do 10.4cm - 3.24cm in my had rather than 3-57/64" minus 1-3/8". - SumoSniper, on 04/08/2009, -0/+9I have another idea, rounding errors.
- UnFriendlyFire, on 04/08/2009, -0/+6How, exactly, would you cut a pie with decimals?
- AndrewMoyer, on 04/08/2009, -0/+5Oh yeah, well... I can make my calculator say "BOOBIES" upside down!
- cheddabobb, on 04/08/2009, -0/+5The riccati guy is definitely cooler than you.
- cowman80i9, on 04/08/2009, -8/+12Fractions difficult? Maybe for 3rd graders.
- Alli3388, on 04/08/2009, -0/+4I can say with absolute certainty that my brain is the exception to the rule.
- Jeepinator, on 04/08/2009, -0/+4you can't express all fractions as a perfect decimal. Sure 1/4 is 0.25 but what about 1/3 which is 0.333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333...you get the point.
- djwesty, on 04/08/2009, -2/+6I looked at that fraction and, without and conscious though, encoded it and this seemed so right
Then after conscious thought..... - GrooTheWanderer, on 04/08/2009, -0/+3As Douglas Adams pointed out, we can do differential calculus so astoundingly fast that we can catch a flying ball.
- elnerdo, on 04/08/2009, -0/+3It will be enjoyable to count the number of people in the comments that need to brag about their math skillz.
So far I've seen two.. - ChronicJ, on 04/08/2009, -3/+6You must be the coolest person on Digg.
- isaactwito, on 04/08/2009, -1/+4Just do acid. You will think fractals. It's awesome.
- sousademiami, on 04/08/2009, -1/+4As someone who took differential equations in college, I would say it's unfair to label anything contained in the curriculum "trivial."
- sousademiami, on 04/08/2009, -0/+3Thank God engineers get to work in feet and decimals!
- XkenX87, on 04/08/2009, -2/+53/4 of statistics are made up
- blackinthmiddle, on 04/08/2009, -0/+2Curious, why did they run the study on adults? Most people, no matter how bad they were at math, become good with fractions over time. I would think it would make more sense to run tests on kids.
- humperdeath, on 04/08/2009, -0/+2Well, half the time I can figure out fractions very quickly, half the time it takes a bit longer and the other half the time I can't figure it out at all.
- PlanckTime, on 04/08/2009, -1/+3I am curious though, without explaining much about it, the article suggested that the brain has the easiest time processing the fraction 1/6. Is there something specific about that number that is easier for our brain to comprehend? Does it have to do with so many things around us being values of 6 (60 min- hour, 24 hours - day, 360 degrees - circle). Or am I simply reading the article wrong?
- hokie47, on 04/08/2009, -0/+2I was like fractions are not that bad, but that was before I had to due matrices with out a calculator back in college. One little mistake and the whole thing is wrong.
- jikmo, on 04/08/2009, -0/+2Huh, at most colleges, math & science professors don't allow calculators in any of their exams once you get past the freshman year courses.
They're also completely useless for all the classes.
But if you're a physics major who's never gone without a calculator, I'm a bit worried for your future as a physicist. Being able to do quick approximations at various limits completely symbolically is pretty much what physics is about.
Nah, it's not about wading through the math to get the right answer to 200 digits. Most of the interesting problems in physics are way too hard to get answers to that kind of accuracy even with super computers. It's about cutting through the ***** nth order terms that you don't care about to be able to see the big picture. - Quizboy, on 04/08/2009, -0/+2Well the study only covers understanding and equating fractions. I think adding, multiplying and dividing fractions would yield completely different results, at least it would for me :(
- sjuraud, on 04/08/2009, -0/+2Yeah, had to look up "Riccati Equation" on Wikipedia. All I have to say is Alphabet Soup.
- cheddabobb, on 04/08/2009, -0/+2It wasn't a study of how good adults are with fractions compared to others. It was a study of brain scans that showed that adults don't need to process as much once they have seen the fraction already. The scientists would show an equation of 1/6, and then show equally valued fractions, then fractions that were slightly different in value. The adult brains didn't have to do as much processing when they had seen a repeated value, which was shown on the brain scan.
- jfitz369, on 04/08/2009, -0/+2If fractions are so easy for adults then why did a major bank name itself Fifth Third Bancorp?
- jikmo, on 04/08/2009, -0/+2wow, lot's of big words in that comment for an anexanhume
No, you're just kind of being an ass. - BlanceBlackula, on 04/08/2009, -0/+1Funny, I always thought 5/4 of people were schizophrenic......
- noughtsInaName, on 04/08/2009, -0/+1Considering how much mathematicians struggled trying to define "number", this isn't too far-fetched
- du1834, on 04/08/2009, -0/+1It appears you are giving 1100/10 percent
- warriorscot, on 04/08/2009, -0/+1There is a difference between intuitively being able to work out proportions and fractions and being able to understand mathematical representations and being able to manipulate fractions on paper. I don't see how this knowledge should alter the way children are taught fractions.
- rolf, on 04/08/2009, -0/+1Yeah, that god for the foot/inch system. USA, Liberia, and Myanmar know where it's at, compared to the rest of the world>.>
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric/ - JakeyG14, on 04/08/2009, -0/+1Why without a calculator?
I haven't had a non-calculator exam since I was 15 years old (I'm at uni studying physics now). - noughtsInaName, on 04/08/2009, -0/+1Maybe adults are just less curious than children
- nativecarvers, on 04/08/2009, -0/+1wow 2 out of three people think fractions are easy
- jikmo, on 04/08/2009, -0/+1Breaking: The average person doesn't understand the importance of research!
BTW: MinorThreat is an awesome band. Ian MacKaye is a genius. - JakeyG14, on 04/08/2009, -0/+1That must be an American thing, or having calculators all the way through is a British thing, as I know people from other science courses in other unis who have never gone without their calculator. Man, I'm partially dependant on Mathcad now a days too lol.
I mean, I can do the math without a calculator, it's just slower and MUCH less accurate. To me, understanding why the numbers are there and what magnitude they should be is more important then being able to accurately crunch said numbers manually. - Mewchu11, on 04/08/2009, -1/+2Huh?
- toastjam, on 05/12/2009, -0/+1.125 inches?
Or just switch to metric... :P - Kosh, on 04/08/2009, -0/+1@humperdeath: Congrats, you got the joke.
@Jeepinator: No. Educate yourself: http://qntm.org/?pointnine - Wittyfish, on 04/08/2009, -0/+1And in an unrelated note: all the test subjects have taken years of learning fractions as children. Yup, no confounds here.
- inactive, on 04/08/2009, -0/+1Were fractions really that hard to learn? As a child learning about them, they didn't seem confusing at all.
- jikmo, on 04/08/2009, -0/+1Probably. The brain strengthens circuits that are used commonly.
- humperdeath, on 04/08/2009, -0/+1if 1/3 = .3333333 forever, then 3 * 1/3 = 3/3 = .9999999 forever, therefore .99999999 forever exactly equals 1.0
- jikmo, on 04/08/2009, -0/+1Really.
Nothing about seeing the numbers 2/5 & 1/4 and being able to recognize pie charts of their sum tells me that you understand anything about how a field of quotients is constructed from equivalence classes of ordered pairs with some crazy addition and multiplication rules.
First imagine that you understood all those words and that sentence made sense to you. Now imagine that instead of all that, I instead gave you a bunch of pictures, told you that a/b + c/d = (ad+bc)/bd and that 1 1/5 is a "mixed number" and 6/5 is an "improper fraction". Oh, also that a/b > c/d if ad > cb (assuming all positive integers).
That ***** IS confusing. Hell I didn't "understand" fractions until the end of my sophomore year of college! Before then, they were just magic, and I tried not to think about what was going on there. -
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