At 70 and retired, I'm pretty sure studying math, solving 20 problems of ever-increasing complexity daily, helps my brain practice learning, accustoms it to the process, and develops in it a hunger for more to learn. I think it makes me smarter. 😎🖖

The rebuttal I would offer is that mathematics in school very often FAILS to teach you how to think. Often, there's a focus on memorising formulas or applying heuristics, and a lot less on instilling intuitions and reasoning skills. To a lot of students, high school maths is just a course on arbitrary facts and theorems that they're just expected to accept to be true. I think this is where the anti-maths sentiment comes from. These people think that maths doesn't prepare you for life because, for them, it didn't.

Very well said. “Math teaches you how to think” I was a math major and am now in medical school. I always credit my math background for giving me the problem solving skills that got me through organic chemistry and biochemistry.

There is something deeply wrong about teaching students only contemporary skills Finance, for example, yes we can teach our students to apply skills to the current world But this world is not static, and we know this especially with the great technologic advances we see before us So, what does Mathematics offer? The ability to think of problems at their essence, to deconstruct and to reassemble information into solution Mathematics does not depend on the world as we know it; so, flip all the variables and if you return a new world; Mathematics will be our most fundamental tool at pushing us back to understanding

I see math as a meta skill. Pair this with some decent soft skills and you'll find success in almost any field.

Well the thing is math is the foundation of so many fields.... engineering, physics, astronomy and countless other areas....when you learn math, you are preparing for something else.

I think the actual argument is that the way math is taught in schools does not help students correlate those ideas with real world problems. And thats what people mean when they say "Math doesn't prepare students for the real world". Kids are shown how to find the slope of a line in middle school but they dont tell them how they can apply it for other things.

You can't participate in a lot of "real-world application classes" without learning math. For example, physics, engineering, and computer programming.

People often say things like "when will I ever need the quadratic formula", or "when will I ever need the pythagorean theorem". Even if you ignore the fact that understanding and appreciating the logic behind them is the real important part, I probably come across quadratic equations a few times a week in completely unrelated scenarios. Pythagorean theorem even more often. And not too uncommen - both. People seem to forget that the entire broad field of STEM subjects lean *heavily* on that last M.

I'd go as far as to say that nothing prepares you for the real world. In the long run at least, it always turns out quite a bit different than expected. And the surprises never stop.

In school, many years ago, I found that math was important. What I didn't understand was why they made it such a drudgery. I can't tell you how many tests and quizzes I was asked to complete that were supposed to show me that I didn't understand what I apparently was supposed to learn and they never really showed me how I could learn to see what my teachers saw in these math problems they gave us to solve. Today I use math without thinking about those problems I was asked to solve in the past and I definitely don't remember how to find the square root of a number manually, even though they drilled that so much into us.

Unfortunately all the math teachers I had except one helped students enjoy math. All through High School we worked in abstractions with teachers who obviously had severe communication problems. I didn't start enjoying math till University.

I support your opinion that learning maths makes you thinks better. I'm from Mexico and actually they are a lot of memes that make fun of the reason of learn maths, they are like "day 3423 and I'm not use the general formula to buy something in the store", "day 23432 and I´m still figure out why I don't use a cuadratic ecuation to my personal life", or like "all this I have archive with knowing the general formula" and the we watch a video of a rich person in x3 speed. psdt: Sorry from my bad english but that mas something I wath to share and I don't know if that is only in the spanish groups or is also in the english groups. psdt: You're making a great content, you're my favorite math youtuber, I really like your recomendations books and the motivation videos, I'm currently in the first semeter of the university study math(I fail 2 subjects but, thats okay, I'm not desmotivated by that) and I'm thinking in taught by my self discreth math, because in this semeter I've sets and numbers, but the books I´ve for the course was very bad and the teacher was okay, but the thinks that she teach in the course was dissapointed, so I started searching discreth math courses in youtube and I found one that I liked and I'm trying to at least watch one video to learn more, wish me luck guys.

I’m glad you are questioning the term “real world” like a philosopher, other terms that deserve same questioning include “normies” and “moderates”.

Learning resources are SO much better today! I'm retaking Calc 1-3 now (retired and have the time) and I think I am learning so much more than back in the day (in my case 1967-71) because of all of the resources available such as online utilities like Symbolab, KZfaq etc. To me, these things bring the subject to life and create so much more appreciation for the subject because you can put your finger on a question and actually find the answer. BTW, I saw your video on the Leithold calculus book...it's the very book I had in college. I appreciate the newer books so much more.

Spot on. Life is hard and full of obstacles, surprises and problems. The key is to find all possible solutions and options . Math helps with mental health too because it teaches how to think logically. In my humble opinion , Pure Math, Physics, Chemistry and Ancient Greek language learning are probably the hardest subjects to master. If you can excel at these, then you will be on the right thinking path.

Fifty years after high school and college, I frequently use algebra to balance my checkbook. I use statistics and probability to critically evaluate the public debate about different social issues. How can one be a citizen, let alone member of the town council, in today's world without high school math? How can one be a STEM professional or just understand modern physics without a year of calculus? How can one understand compound interest and household finance (budgets, investments, mortgages, car finance) without algebra?

I could not have said this any better myself. This is why I'm pursuing a math degree: to expand my mind, to expand myself. Matters like career prospects with a math degree are secondary. As "the deepest, richest subject on Earth," mathematics should *never* be cast aside but be alongside other valuable subjects. Very eloquently spoken, Math Sorcerer!

Dear math Sorcerer: I am one of those old guys who studied math in the 1960s. To be sure math books were difficult to read and understand but we learned math anyway. We believed that learning math was just as important to our future as being able to read. What math studies were like was we learned various processes to start with known facts and through various processes we could arrive at a the correct solution. This set me up for a big surprise when I took differential equations. We used Boyce and Diprima's second edition. On the first or second page we ran into a second order ordinary differential equation. And our teacher asked us to guess at a solution. This was a fundamental shift from how we learned to solve problems. I didn't know how to guess at an answer, but as time went on I learned how. I went on to learn a lot of physics and spent my life as an engineer working for the Department of Energy. Now I'm an old man who loves math more than most other things. I agree with you people need to learn math to live their life and be able to solve problems. Take care my dear friend your pal Rick

I've worked at a small community college inside its math department for 15 years. One of the things that I've noticed over the years is the shift towards hiring and promoting professors who have math-education degrees versus those that come in with a degree in just mathematics. As of matter of fact, many of the older professors who have a masters or PhD in mathematics who retired are being replaced by professors who have a masters in math-education or a PhD in education. Being an assistant and having the opportunity to sit inside professors' math classes with different educational backgrounds; I can definitely tell the difference in rigor between professors that have a degree in math-education versus a professor who has a degree in mathematics.

It irks me that the term "Math does not prepare you for the real world" did have an affect on my relationship with mathematics. When you're so much younger and a lot more impressionable, ignorant one liners like these are incredibly damaging. It built up my resentment towards it, and slowly, I cared less and less for it. Pride and ignorance generally are a dangerous cocktail, and I had plenty of it back then. Math humiliated my pride because I didn't get it, and my ignorance kept me from wanting to understand it. Math, to me, is a lesson in humility. To your question: Being taught "life skills" has a very large range. If it were taught, it would be nice to have one singular, half semester course nearing your senior years in high school to get a better guage on where your decisions after high school can take you. Just a bit of exposure can help in the long run.

As a self-taught programmer, I learned to code before I learned much math. Once I decided to learn some math, applying it came a lot more easily to me than most people. Why? Because I already knew how to think, to understand a problem and break it down to its most fundamental parts, to generalize solutions, to apply concepts. I learned it from programming; you might just be biased toward math because that’s where you personally learned to think. I agree that everyone should learn some math, and everyone should learn problem solving, but math isn’t the only field you can learn problem solving. Also, I think the reason people don’t like the math they learned in school is because it failed to teach them how to think. Back in school, I learned to do arithmetic in my head, plug in variables to solve equations, memorize formulas I’ve long-since forgotten-everything a calculator and a search engine can do. Since then, I’ve built up a mental catalogue of when to use various concepts, but not really how; I can look that part up whenever I need to. I’ve learned logic and combining concepts from programming. Maybe you learn this in college-level math courses if you go into a STEM major, but most people (including me) never took those. Their experience with math is becoming a living calculator, not a human that understands the world. TL;DR: You can learn to think from fields outside math, like computer programming or science. And most people never even learned to think from math classes, just memorized formulas and became a human calculator. Either lower-level math should teach people how to understand and apply it, or some other class (preferably all of them) should teach people how to think.

I studied mechanical engineering (diploma)in the late 1970 to 1982. Things were so diffrent then, slide rules and log tables were been phased out and we had only basic computers. I hardly used mathematics in my working career. Years later when my daughter was in her last year of school, I ways trying to help her with the math. I soon realized that I was struggling with the math because I was super rusty. So now I have motivating myself to relearn what I forgot and possibly more. I can now feel that my outlook in life is beginning to change for the better.

I was recently reading an article about how our brain perceive the the world and came up on a line which I may never forget , it said " New experience does not change the way these networks function - their overall activity level, for instance. Learning takes place, rather, through a process of matching the preexisting neuronal trajectories to events in the world " . Looking back at my school life , the only reasoning that I can remember told by my teachers why I should study is to get high marks, to get good college and to get a good job. Now I think they were teaching what they were taught , doing a job of preparing new good workers who won't question the system . I don't know if schools like these are there but every school in the world should start with understanding and working on children's mentality , making everyone realise why any subject is important or how can they ease their lives with such knowledge . If possible, connecting some subjects to the natural world and the possibilities that they can create by using their knowledge. In my opinion , we humans are a lot more capable than we imagine but the system of this world is holding the majority back. Feels like the majority upcoming generations are all gonna spend their life span and chances under the umbrella of social media, tik tok , insta , internet porn etc. and have week mentality.

Totally agree! Pure math is especially neglected in America: many STEM students can’t solve problems unless they’ve seen a similar problem before. Maybe calculus ought to come with a strong dose of real analysis.

Spot on. The 'real world' is just jargon to sound more profound. Logic, problem solving and thinking skills are the primary benefits of math. Those who say we should be teaching something other than math are usually fearful of math and poor at it. Algebra is always hidden within accounting or any budgeting processes. But, it's character building, too. I always taught my HS students: "One thing math will teach most of you is learning to do something you don't like because you have to, not because you want to."

Awesome video, keep it up! Looking forward your next one!

Though not a math major, I took a lot of math courses. This has served me well, through 5 distinct careers. I tell my students that math helps them learn to follow rules. People who follow rules have lower rates of morbidity and mortality. Making up your own traffic rules, for example, may lead to sudden death. Most importantly, math has given me freedom. I have been able to choose where to live and what to do with confidence. I am never cheated with number tricks. My first loan was quoted 100x too high because the banker flubbed the percentage calculation. My SCUBA instructor trusted me because I was able to do pressure-volume calculations off the cuff. At a conference, I caught an algebra flub and instantly got the presenter back on track. He became a valuable mentor. Shopping friends do get annoyed when I unit price in my head.

The real struggle is trying to balance math and the real world. Honestly lost a lot of friendships and relationships cause I was too busy doing a proof or just wanted to read a book and ghosted people. It sucks but at the same time, I am the type of person who requires a certain amount of isolation everyday.

Soviet Union was excellent in maths. Yet couldn`t engineer a single decent car, Tv set , radio or washing machine.

I've heard a lot of people who said they only started to like math and find it interesting when they learned how it could be used and applied in the "real world." But there are also lots of people who prefer pure math, which is logical and elegant, to the real world, which is complicated and messy.

In his book called 'Learned Optimism', Martin E. Seligman, Ph.D., talks about the fact that our nation, and most of the developed world, is experiencing an unprecedented epidemic of depression - particularly among young people. He asks the following question: "Why is it that in a nation that has more money, more power, more records, more books, and more education, that depression should be so much more prevalent than it was when the nation was less prosperous and less powerful?" He explains three forces related to the answer of the above question, which are as follows: 1) Depression is a disorder of the "I," failing in your own eyes relative to your goals. In a society in which individualism is becoming rampant, people more and more believe that they are the center of the world. Such a belief system makes failure almost inconsolable. 2) Individual failure used to be buffered by the second force, the large "we." When our grandparents failed, they had comfortable spiritual furniture to rest in. They had, for the most part, their relationship to God, their relationship to a nation they loved, their relationship to a community and a large extended family. Faith in God, community, nation, and the large extended family have all eroded in the last forty years, and the spiritual furniture that we used to sit in has become threadbare. 3) The third force, the self-esteem movement, is the most surprising and less congenial, which started in California in 1960s. In 1990s, the California legislature sponsored a report that suggested that self-esteem be taught in every classroom as a "vaccine" against social ills, such as drug addiction, suicide, welfare dependancy, teenage pregnancy, and depression. The self-esteem movement is a movement with teeth; this is the movement underlying the demise of IQ testing, lest children who score low feel badly about themselves. This is the movement underlying the end of tracking in our public schools, lest kids of lower tracks feel badly about themselves. This is the movement that has led to less plain old hard work. I personally believe that it is mainly due to the third force that we have so many students today (mostly very weak in fundamentals of mathematics) in classrooms asking ridiculous questions such as "Why am I learning this (any topic in math)?", "Where will I ever use Algebra (or any topic in math)?." As a result of this pushback by students/parents, the standards are unfortunately (and constantly) being lowered instead of being raised or kept the same at least. The issue has to do with 'High Expectations'. For instance, if you are a teacher/professor and teach a class of students and tell them that you have high expectations of them, (i.e., raising the standards) the students will rise up to the level expected of them and be successful in learning the material taught versus if you tell them that it is OK not to do well (in mathematics for example), and OK to fail (i.e., lowering the standards), then their performances will suffer and they will not do well as expected [provided that they put the ample time and effort, and work hard to be successful in either of the cases]. The solution to this problem should be to accentuate the fact that mathematics is a discipline where one can learn crucial transferrable (general - solution-to-the-root-cause approach) skills such as self-discipline, hard work, critical/rational thinking and questioning that are far more important than shallow (specific - bandage approach) skills such as doing taxes, getting loans and mortgages. Because if you learn the core skills of mathematics you can handle not only the shallow skills well but almost any skills (related to any subject one can think of) in life!

Biggest regret i ever had was not studying maths at my college level, instead i opted for commerce...to cover it up now at the age of 49 I started studying maths on my own....bcoz maths is the only subject that opens up your mind, improves the thinking process....thats what i think....tnx

This is a very good video and since I recently got a job in industry. I think your accuracy is very high and relatively true ! Your videos have changed my life without a doubt.

Great vid as usual. Logic and reasoning are hard to teach in courses like History, English , or Art.

Thanks! Keep doing ya thing man!

Thanks, really interesting video. Without math one will never reach true enlightenment. Math is basically reality in a nutshell. I believe people are afraid of what they do not understand. Numbers will always be there whether you like it or not, we should all be greatful for the beautiful knowledge that is being taught from our fellow math sorcerers!

I completely agree with this video. I think what school fails at is showing my math is important and getting people excited about math. Too many people only learn that maths is a chore in school.

The biggest secondary benefit I found from teaching myself maths, is confidence with fractions. It might sound strange to some, but being confident manipulating rational numbers and expressions has given me a told that works in so many situations. This is in addition to confidence in looking into complex problems and applying logic to solve them.

Great video! Motivating, thought-provoking, enlightening. Really awesome. Congratulations. IMHO, no matter what *we* think and no matter what *universities* and *professors* will ever think, math (and physics) will always be required by *employers* because the *real world* will always be running on math.

There are many great mathematician including FIELDS MADELIST who grow up in a Strong mathematical femily background . Their parents are mathematician, physicist , engineers, computers scientist , math teacher or professor.

I double majored in Biochemistry and Math as an undergrad. When I got to Physical Chemistry, which only required up to Calc 1 for pre req, I was the only one in the class that could understand some problems because I'd had multivariable calculus (Calc III).

Great video! Keep it up sir

After listening to an audio version of "A Mathematician's Lament" I think it makes good points about how Math should be taught in such a way that is more fun and interactive. A simple example would be using ken-ken or mathdoku to teach and reinforce basic arithmetic.

I knew a childhood friend he was this math wizard. I mean he made straight As in school, especially excelled in math and I was lousy in it. He still liked to hang out with me. He got his degree in math and computer administration and headed a major computer firm making six digits. I always sucked in math so I had to work exceptionally hard to make good grades--NONE of it came easy. Every step of the way was a major struggle. But I always remembered my friend and he was an inspiration to get me through school.

I love your videos they are so inspiring!!

I agree. Learning mathematics and solving mathematical problems will help to improve your critical reasoning and problem solving skills, both of which are important for many areas of life. Too, there is so much emphasis on grades in high school now that students too often resort to the easiest way to solve it (i.e. finding a similar example and following the step-by-step procedure) rather than taking the time to allow their minds and their problem-solving capacity to grow. I don't blame the students for this as much as I blame the system and the culture at-large. Hopefully, our society will not make the mistake of replacing deeper learning for "practical" skills - we can take a "both and" approach rather than an "either or" approach.

I head this constantly in my household growing up and it played a role in my avoidance of difficult math and math heavy science, especially after my difficulties with geometry early in high school. I did so well front loading humanities and social science credits as I referenced in another video comment section, but to this point only have college algebra and statistics at the college level. In our house the people who used math on a daily basis were othered even though it is and was a progressively larger proportion of the economy.

I learn Maths as a language.. I am doing the same as I learn Japanese... I already speak French and English fluently.. for me Maths is just a language and the beauty of the language comes effortlessly.. I can communicate naturally with those amazing people out there, who can speak Maths.. I teach Maths to those lovely kids.. I teach R programming using the reasoning I built over time thinking Math.. that is my real world so far.. if you read it so far, don't forget to build your own real-world.. maybe learning some Math might come in handy! Who knows..

Wow your vidios are amazing.Glad I came across it.

I wonder if the changes in the content of math books you mentioned were due to the wider availability of calculators and computers, which can help negotiate the trickier aspects of math.

We can also apply directly math proof to software engineering tasks with Coq or Agda and similar systems. That is real world stuff and they use that for airplanes engineering and other area.

People in Cuba and North Korea are excellent in maths, yet thy live in poverty, because nothing of the maths they have studied can be multiplied in tangible gain. Application in practical fields is the way for maths to go. Just because 0.5 per cent of people need it, doesn`t mean you need to torture everybody with it.

I agree! And it helps with "grit". In order to get better you have to work hard... perseverance!

As an applied mathematics student I can assure you that math courses are not only very useful to understand real life problems (in my case physical problems related to quantum mechanics and structured materials, but also financial problems and so on) but they are also the only ones you can take in college that teach you something special: learning how to solve problems and how to handle concepts with an increasing level of difficulty is a skill that boosts your intelligence, forms your mind and stays there within you, even if you happen to forget the specific definition of a vector in a Sobolev space or whatever.

I really love what you said. 👍👍

عقب ما حليت هالكثر مسائل في الرياضيات و الكيمياء و الفيزياء و الأحياء و طايفه امتحان المستوى للجامعة ثلاث مرات في اللغة الانجليزية و الرياضيات و مرة منهم للكلية علشان رسوم الدراسة النصف تم الحجر في أميريكا من قبل ٢٣ سنة ما في فراغ في المخ و المرارة عندي لاتعمل إلا ٥٠٪ و تم الإزالة بعملية بسيطة في أميريكا و عدت إلى الكويت بعد ثلاث سنوات تقريبا و أعاني من صداع و الحساسية المزمنة من الغبار فقط النوم العميق يغلب في فصل الصيف و الخريف المطلوب أقرر أكمل طب أم هندسة أم تقاعد. لما كنت في المرحلة النهائية ١٢ سنة دراسية امتحنت الاولمبياد شكلي الكتاب المراجعة السريعة عجبني من أحد الفيديو المقاطع اللون الأخضر للغلاف الكتاب راح أراجع ممكن أدرس جميع المراحل التعليمية.

You can use math to prepare for a career in actuary (e.g., Baruch), teaching (most colleges), and even a career in other fields, Statistics (e.g., Howard University PhD in statistic) Biostatistics (Columbia University PhD in Biostatics). Though colleges will accept students with strong math background or an undergrad degree in math. I found out recently that math major had the highest average LSAT score in 2018. So, some are studying law.

I think the case can be made even stronger by rethinking which math topics are taught. Maybe calculus doesn't make the most sense as a first "real" math class. I always thought discrete math made way more sense and required way more logical thinking skills than calc. In a lot of ways it's a lot easier too. So it could be easier to teach in high school and have way more benefit than calc.

Math is probably the BEST subject to teach in schools.

If you're composing and playing music, you're doing math. If you're composing and creating art, i.e. using perspective, you're doing math. And of course, if you're doing anything related to science; engineering, medicine, earth and life sciences, even gardening, you're doing math! Are you writing a story that has a beginning, middle, and end (structure and plot), and you want it to make sense logically? Hello! Like it or not, you're doing math here too.

As someone who WANTS math to be taught rigorously in schools, I would challenge everybody to visit, perhaps even teach at a low income, inner city urban high school where many students are uninspired with math and school in general to contrast your ideals of math education with the reality of convincing students that it is a worthwhile endeavor.

Well, it depends. At our learning center for homeschooled teenagers, we offer math classes that center around daily life. These classes address creating and living within budgets, calculating the cost of interest on a loan, etc. We've also arranged internships in which students visit a local business and see how math is used in terms of expenditures and profits, gross vs net. We also teach them how to do their taxes. Of course we also teach Algebra, Geometry, and Pre-calculus :)

Great video

even though i knew it was a baitclick title, i'm still happy that it turned out to be a clickbait title

Math definitely does prepare you for the real world in fact everything you do in life involves math.

I feel like people who claim this are often the ones who don't want to learn basically anything and even if they were teaching them about the dream taxes in school, they would chuck it in as well. Btw any non-perverted person who studied how to do taxes will tell you that it is the most boring and frustrating thing ever.

the books written in the sixties , seventies and eighties were more difficult then now because of Nicolas Bourbaki mathematiciens Group. If you want to read famous math books take a look to french ones, i think that French teachers and academy are the best one in the world for teaching mathematics.

Math is here to stay. Finally finished my undergraduate from UCF in Math Education this year. I am planning to teach for a little bit before I start my masters :)

As Galileo was claimed to said "If I were again beginning my studies would follow the advice of Plato and start with mathermatics..." My field is metallurgy and picking up the 1948 addition of Metals Handbook by ASM at age 13 clearly showed mathematics was a prerequiste. The major difference now is we have good people like Math Sorcerer and other KZfaqrs to guide us all - in the 1970's we had only books and some rare people. We will always have mathermatic - computer and information science has established permanency.

Great video, I agree on all your points~ Math is perhaps a subject closest to the truth. I'm also a Magic The Gathering fan, some of the first edition cards are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars...Go Math~👍

"Plenty of people have studied math and become successful"? Plenty of people have studied math and not become successful, and plenty of successful people had little or no schooling at all.

Around the world, there is one significant problem with teaching mathematics and finance in a same school year: there is a ton of mathematical terms that are used incorrectly or incorrect mathematical terms used in laws that regulate finance. This added complexity of mathematical meaning vs legal meaning is often directly adding to the belief that one is theoretical and the other is practical or "real world". It gets even worse if you have mathematical meaning, legal meaning and common meaning as three different things. First time this was explained to me was at university of mathematics, no highschool teacher wanted to deal with "what something means outside of the scope of what they teach".

I didn't appreciate math until I began seriously teaching myself computer science after earning a degree in an unrelated field. Math taught me problem solving, and diving deeper into the subject has totally transformed how I think about everything in life, including my day-to-day routine. This way of thinking even tremendously helped me on the LSAT.

The love of mathematics is the square root of all evil.

I fell for the nonsensical idea that math wasn't necessary for success in life. The fact that this idea is proliferated so heavily is a tragedy and is only pushed as an excuse for people to think they don't need to get good at math.

I think math will spread to more disciplines since the computational world is becoming more accessible thanks to computers (think computational neuroscientist, consumption behavior analysts, etc.). Data is money. But not just data, I believe there’s a shift in the way research is done in physics, it’s heading towards numerical simulations. I’m studying in physics and computer science and I see it everyday.

I am glad someone finally said this. I totally agree

Who are those people saying math is not the real world? Duh! math is everywhere!

I hear this anti math rhetoric all the time and it just doesn’t make sense to me. I work in Sales which is highly competitive and the best performers have a strong mathematical base. It teaches you how to think in a maleable yet precise manner which is key for objective communication with an infinite variable of individuals. It teaches you how to set objectives and stay focus. It feels like some individuals wanna keep the average citizen away from these fundamental critical thinking skills. You need to know how to measure when you start learning how to cook!! And math skills to truly understand the ins and outs of your finances!!

@The Math Sorcerer : my experience in the 60s was not good in maths class's i remember a post on the subject someone said math is not a coat that fits everyone' and i agree with that statement some people progress faster than others myself i got to a level where i could not grasp the complex theories/functions/equations ect' Algebra was & still is a foreign language to me , but at the age of 68 i think what i call practicle maths should be taught for what we the lay people have to deal with everyday out here , i mean how many out of a normal class will be a nuclear phyisist' i feel we where overloaded with stuff including me will ever use , i'm not the smartest person but school never taught me anything of value i could read+write leaving juniors & do basic math , i left school at 15 to help out with the family transport business i could strip & rebuild a 6 cylinder diesel engine by 16 , i moved on with my own fabrication & engineering business , i realy do think practicle maths should be taught first off if the student wants to advance in the direction of say NASA aeronautics nuclear move up the leaning ladder why stress students out with levels of math complexity they must pass which they will never ever use , Anyway hope you have a relaxing week end ........... LB

Math is WONDERFUL as a supplement to a career path, but terrible as a career path on its own. Unless you're in the top 1% of the 1%, you probably want a plan B. I found that out the hard way after getting my BS in math and I ended up stumbling into accounting, which is kind of unusual. Most math people tend to go into engineering or computer science. But I can't tell you how much I hate checking programs for syntax errors, so computer science was not going to happen. I love proofs even though I'm not good at them, and practical math applications never had much appeal to me. I don't think I would have enjoyed engineering any more than I do accounting.

I don't choose to go to work. I have chosen to do my own study.

Excellent video.

People are quick to refute math, but don’t understand that it’s the bedrock of our entire society. 99% of the things we take advantage of on a daily basis whether that be driving a car, eating, or even sleeping in your nice warm home on a winter night, is made possible because of math.

From a computer science perspective, I think math should be taught AFTER or at the least in conjunction with my CS courses. I'm in my senior year of CS and I put off taking Calc 3 and Linear Algebra till now even though I love math. But taking them now with my perspective being CS versus when I was taking Calc 1 and 2, Precalculus and Trig, and my perspective being just pure math is completely different. Learning about lines, curves and planes in Calc 3 makes me think about how I can code that up and how I can use it. And the same with Linear, I'm thinking about how I can use the techniques in a computer graphics perspective and more. While I think learning math is 100% necessity, knowing why you need it and how to apply it isn't. But it probably should be because if it isn't then at the end of the day you're just using some formulas and blindly applying them through memorization.

There was home economics in high school in the 90s. Is it gone now?

I agree with all of your points, but I would add that it shouldn't matter at all whether or not math prepares you for the "real" world. Math is worth exploring in its own right even if there were no applications. Everyone's motivations are different, but people shouldn't be compelled to avoid studying things just because they are directly applicable to some cookie cutter job. There's nothing wrong with doing something because it is interesting or intellectually pleasing. On a different note, math needs better communication. The fact that people view math as having few applications is insanity considering all it has given us. Wireless signal transmission, financial markets, infectious diseases, etc. Name a topic and there's mathematics behind it. Not just calculus either, deeper and newer theory. This is unfortunately lost on the general public, and from leading researchers all the way down to primary school teachers we need to do a better job of showing this.

As a philosopher of science that likes to dabble in mathematical logic I think mathematicians and philosophers are very often on the receiving end of exactly these kinds of criticisms .... both disciplines teach you how to think but it can be very hard for people outside the practice of these disciplines to appreciate their value.

I think the problem is that so many kids are taught by their peers that "math is hard, therefore you shouldn't like it" and it makes kids not want to even try to learn it. I'd say all but 1 of my teachers in school taught with the style of "this is how to do this, any other way is wrong" and not "this is why we do this" and I can say that the class with the teacher that explained 'why', everyone did much better. In the latter, the teacher would give marks for wrong answers so long as the student showed a logical line of reasoning, whereas the former was very much "this isn't the way I showed, it is wrong." While the technology isn't inherently bad and can be a great tool, the line between actually trying for yourself first and just looking up the answers is blurred, so not much learning is actually happening. They've realized they can just take out a calculator and check their answers, go to Wolfram to solve hard questions for them, or have a word processor correct their spelling and grammar, and have the attitude "why do I need to learn it if the technology to do it for me is so readily available?"

Math degrees can lead to very successful careers such as database administration, financial analysis, and market research analysis; aeronautics, biomedicine, defense, IT, engineering, statistician. The list goes on and on. A math degree is gold. If you ever want to become a doctor (MD) you need to take calculus.

Thank you so much for making this video. I hear people say this all the time and of course it's complete BS. Thank you for debunking it!

I am currently studying math in seventh semester with OK results. I LOVE this shit, at least some of it - I am, for some reason, a huge fan of quite abstract algebra topics without being interested in their real applications whatsoever. If it is applicated, I HATE it. Just to say that I am not the greatest expert, but also not some random guy who took the harder one of the two math classes at school. But if it is about learning how to think and to state thoughts clearly, I would argue this is an argumentation to do computer science. Its idea is just that - to think in algorithms. Maybe, math is also about understanding. It is very little mass to learn, but you have to actually understand it. When there is some lecture about history or internet or whatever, it will be a load of mainly simple information. When there is a math lecture, you will find yourself in the situation that theoretically, all in this lecture you have to remember in the exam is basically the fact: 0) This is a space with functions, remember? 1) This is, let us say, an affine variety 2) A variety is a space with functions (yes, this is a thing, it is a legit approach for varieties) with some open affine coverage But now, you have to actually understand what is going on. Good luck. I have been able to, I would argue.

My math teachers were always astoundingly horrible at explaining the practical usages of math of which there are very many. The “best” answer they could give is you’ll need it in college. That’s not to say math in and of itself can’t be of interest to some people.

Teach math needed together with real world practical stuff. for exemple: In AI you need mathematics to do stuff, like Entropy for example. Mathematics is the language of the universe. You can translate everything in mathematical equations that you can understand and use. You can reproduce a certain phenomena using math together with hardware and programming

I think when people say they don't prepare you for the real world what they really mean is that they don't really draw the line between math and the real world, and that is true. There could be so many practical applications for math in projects and instead it's literally just practising algebra most of the time. I mean sure that is important just like practising your runs is important in basketball, but people are motivated to play basketball not just do the preparation.

Market for professional teaching is very big in india . A highly skilled and specialized math teacher can earn as much as a surgeon or a software engineer .

Some persons will say the same thing about history or literature. If a topic doesn’t have an immediate, hands-on application, it’s useless. Unimaginative drones! Furthermore, math is found in many fields. When I was a graduate student in history, a book on US slavery, “Time on the Cross” by Fogel & Engerman, had been around for a little while. There was a volume of historical narrative and interpretation and a second volume on methodology, which as I recall was mostly math. It is probably still in the library, if you want some light reading. I should add that their conclusions on the profitability of enslaved labor were subject to hot debate. I have recently discovered your videos, and find them very engaging.

What happened to Grothandick..?

It would be helpful for the motivation of maths-students to explain to them where, why and how the specific math topic is usted and needed.Math- people often falsly believe that everbody should be over the moon to learn math no matter what.They get annoyed, when asked why one should learn and practise a certain topic.This attitude should be changed and math should be taught in a more approachable fashion.