What is Digg?124 Comments
- iRoy, on 02/29/2008, -2/+39Mine isn't.
- Bologner, on 02/29/2008, -3/+38Why is mine hardwired for porn?
- BlueSunshine, on 02/29/2008, -2/+33My brain must have wireless.
- redneckblues, on 02/29/2008, -0/+27What about my Asian?
- jocnnor, on 02/29/2008, -1/+20I think your aunt forgetting a second language pales in comparison to her becoming a he
- dvsbastard, on 02/29/2008, -2/+20Yes, I'm wired for meth...
Wait I think I read that wrong... - klactodjango, on 02/29/2008, -4/+21Your brain is obviously not wired for contractions.
- ChiffX, on 02/29/2008, -3/+19I'll find a way to apply calculus when hunting a wild animal. Just you watch.
- inactive, on 02/29/2008, -8/+18Life is Mathematics.
- sgtbutterscotch, on 02/29/2008, -1/+9And that was our Fun Fact of the Day Presented by Kevin Federline
- inactive, on 02/29/2008, -2/+9In cognitive science, incidents of brain damage are nature’s experiments. If a lesion knocks out one ability but leaves another intact, it is evidence that they are wired into different neural circuits.
- Hobbes24, on 02/29/2008, -2/+8anyone else stop after page 1?
- CharlesSaint, on 02/29/2008, -0/+6I scrolled down the first page and said aloud "***** that!" when I realized it was only one of five. I'll have to read this later when I'm in the mood.
- saska, on 02/29/2008, -1/+6I read that whole damned thing hoping it would tell me why I taught myself stoichiometry, tested out of geometry, and can solve algebraic story problems in my head, but failed calculus four times.
Conclusion? My parents must have dropped me on my head. - boomqweeshaa, on 02/29/2008, -0/+5I like it, or rather, I like it when other people can do it well. I admire math from a distance.
- GeorgeStone2, on 02/29/2008, -2/+7No fair! You'll change the outcome by observing it!
- rolf, on 02/29/2008, -3/+8Like anything, practice makes perfect. I'm sure our brains weren't specifically wired for reading by nature, but most of us will manage to read this post in less than 15 seconds. The problem is that we don't apply much of what we learned often enough to make it a virtuoso skill -- especially higher level maths. Overlearning they call it. Use it or lose it. Too easy to learn calculus these days and then let Maple and all that do all the work. My Aunt almost completely lost an entire secondary language he was fluid in 25 years ago (although relearning it should be much faster for him than a beginner) just because she never uses it anymore.
- sporg, on 02/29/2008, -0/+4" Im not interested in your money I'm looking for ways to understand our world! "
- inactive, on 02/29/2008, -0/+4well, for small numbers (less than 100), the verbal representation is a bit more consistent. instead of "ten" "eleven" "twelve" it's "ten" "ten one" "ten two" etc. or rather than "twenty", "thirty", "forty", it's "two ten" "three ten" "four ten" etc. so 19, 20, 21 would be "ten nine" "two ten" "two ten one". In other words, simply a straight reading of the decimal representation, interspersing the "positional multiplier" at each step, essentially the same as in english for big numbers (although if i recall correctly, they group by 4 digits rather than 3)
i really doubt this has anything to do with math ability however. - swanny89, on 02/29/2008, -1/+5The Universe is mathematics.
- Chocobot, on 02/29/2008, -2/+6Mine sure as hell isn't.
- inactive, on 02/29/2008, -0/+4You could use calculus and physics to model the trajectory of your spear so that it strikes the wild animal
- PricklySponge, on 02/29/2008, -4/+8I hate math
- gr00vy, on 02/29/2008, -0/+4True. But FLUENT. Not "fluid".
- Havoc737903, on 02/29/2008, -0/+3Buried for the article not using ***** paragraphs.
- BlueTunicLink, on 02/29/2008, -0/+3Wait until you get to Diff Eq.
- Bisclavret, on 02/29/2008, -3/+6you sir speak the truth.
- Gloogle, on 02/29/2008, -0/+3I can't even add nor subtract...
- BlueTunicLink, on 02/29/2008, -0/+3That's because our brains are part of a supercomputer solving the answer to life, the universe, and everything.
- NSNick, on 02/29/2008, -0/+3Except that complex numbers are needed for ***** like electrical engineering.
- thetedster180, on 02/29/2008, -0/+2I totally thought that said meth not math
- noumuon, on 02/29/2008, -0/+2except that's not what it equals. 0.987654320 repeating. you're close, but still wrong.
- sleepyjjk, on 02/29/2008, -1/+3I read through the whole article, and I think it's quite interesting, especially if you're into neurology, human evolution, and philosophy.
There's this one philosophical question whether or not physicalism is the same as consciousness (or mentalism). Meaning, if you knew the physics of consciousness, does that mean you truly understand consciousness? There's this article which describes how it is not possible to do that and used the example of how we can never understand a bat even if we understood the wiring of a bat.
I believe that we can understand consciousness, at least to a good degree, if we did understand the physical explanation of it. This article addresses some of those things. - samssf, on 02/29/2008, -0/+2WTF.
- inactive, on 02/29/2008, -2/+4this is how our brains are wired. http://tolppa.apina.biz/3346.jpg
- DestroyFascism, on 02/29/2008, -0/+2Damn it, I was fine until I went to grade school. Then I got confused!
- EtherGnat, on 02/29/2008, -1/+3I'm sure there are many factors, but I can testify to the cultural aspect from personal experience. In college I tutored math and chemistry, and the "dumbest" students I assisted were Asian. Hear me out before you digg me down.
I'm not saying Asians are dumb (far from it). Every ethnicity and culture has an equal number of people with math and science difficulties I'd imagine. Usually they don't pursue degrees that require a lot of advanced math and science, though. Some of the Asians that I tutored could not have been expected to succeed on raw ability, but they were amazingly dedicated. They came in for tutoring twice as much as other students, worked their asses off until they understood, and they got good grades. It was inspiring.
In our culture I think many have the attitude that they're not going to do something because it's hard. From what I saw of the Asian culture they were dedicated to doing things even when they were obscenely hard (or maybe BECAUSE they were hard). Obviously that doesn't apply to everybody, but from what I've seen on average Asians are more dedicated to academic achievement. - thanhpham, on 02/29/2008, -1/+3yes, me have done this!
- Gizza, on 02/29/2008, -1/+3I read the first page then went to click next and realised it was 5 pages. Then i just skipped through to read the cartoons.
- sougly, on 03/01/2008, -0/+2True. And the further you go in math, you'll realize that the things we label have an underlying structure that we continuously discover more and more of. We're not inventing anything in pure math.
- KingBroseph, on 02/29/2008, -0/+2What about some savants that can calculate decimals more places than a calculator without having to really think about it? Or the savant that named Pi to the 25,000th place just from his head? There appears to be something in our brain that is wired for numbers.
- duality, on 02/29/2008, -1/+3"It would take a million beans to express the number "one million", but using decimal system, we only need 7 decimal places."
Woohoo for the decimal number system that can represent quantitative values in O(log n) space. - Gigaman2003, on 02/29/2008, -1/+3depends on your language, some asian languages have been proven to help.
- sougly, on 03/01/2008, -0/+2You're bad at math.
- samssf, on 02/29/2008, -0/+2I think it's the other way around... he became a she.
- Solis, on 02/29/2008, -0/+1Seriously, I'm lucky if I can even add anymore. Multiplication and dividing is beyond me. Subtracting is even very difficult. I'm hardly wired for math at all.
I got lost after 7th grade and was never able to catch up again. I don't even know if it's possible for me to learn math anymore. Do they even offer rudimentary mathematics for adults? Least I don't think they do where I live.
I need to move.... - jpmoney03, on 02/29/2008, -0/+1You stole that and you know it.
- cowkicker, on 02/29/2008, -0/+1SSSSSS
its maths, not math. - passedoutghost, on 02/29/2008, -1/+2Easier to learn number system? Everyone in the world uses Arabic numerals.....We only use Chinese characters when writing documents like the West.
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