I LOVE your question. Even the under educated use complex mathematical calculations every day, and they don't even know it..
To wit, you wanna make a left turn, but there's a car approaching. You CALCULATE, using highly complex trigonometric equations, whether you can turn safely WITHOUT the guy plowing into you, and you don't give it a second thought.
excon
This post was edited by excon at October 22, 2016 9:33 AM MDT
What you say is true to an extent ... But I don't think you are using math. .. I think its all an analogue of maths based on experience ... With Smart phones. .. scanning tills in shops etc I think mental arithmetic had died ... I do think that using real maths had become the preserve of the few ... The coming priesthood if you will
A bleak prospect. If you can't use mental arithmetic and basic algebra a calculator won't help you because you won't know how to ask it to do the "sums" to solve any but the most basic real-life number problems.
Even the professional scientist using a powerful computer to "crunch" vast arrays of very complicated equations, still needs to know the equations and how to solve them. The computer is only a tool!
"Coming priesthood if you will"... I hope "if you won't". Society needs all the numerate people it can find!
For they are The Superiors. They are The Evolved Autistics, a step beyond "normal" humans. Let us pray to them and ask them for their solutions and calculations and computer programs. We shall dust their Star Wars figure collections until the robots can do that for them. Then we shall prepare their food as they have no time to stop the calculating. They are lord. They are Gods. They are The Superiors.
This post was edited by Benedict Arnold at October 22, 2016 4:40 PM MDT
I only use math once a week when I do the grocery shopping - figuring out the best value on assorted sized packages and stuff like that, Cheers and happy weekend!
There is no way to measure that. I use what is needed for what I do. Sometimes that requires real calculation and other times it is done without awareness............just like most of us I presume.
I don't regard arithmetic as mathematics - but that may be because the schools I attended did not dress up basic money "sums" as maths! The difference is that arithmetic is the basic manipulation of numbers, while mathematics is concerned more with concepts and rules, with the arithmetic being the tool to complete the task in a real situation.
However, are we actually performing mathematical calculations when we do something automatically like estimating whether it's safe to drive out onto a main road? The speed and direction of an approaching vehicle can be subjected to numerical analysis, but is our brain genuinely performing mathematical calculations in controlling our reflexes and actions?
A useful analogue to my question came in another thread recently, when someone posited that cats and dogs can understand complex trigonometry and calculus, necessary in chasing a ball or trying to catch a mouse. Of course they can't - though some animals appear to us to have a rudimentary counting skill when looking after a clutch of young, they would not even recognise the symbols.
Or take the case of a bat echo-locating its way from deep in a cave to find and catch its insect prey among the rustling foliage in nearby woods. This is perhaps the most difficult problem of any in the Animal Kingdom. The physics involved - acoustics and navigation - are all formidably mathematical, to say the least. Does the bat's few grammes of brain know decibels, harmonic analysis and three-dimensional vectors? Of course not. And it works by instinct coupled with what must be a fine memory for difficult acoustic images, in complex feedback systems working at many times a second with voice and hearing to synchronise and control a good many muscles.
So something else must be happening in the brain.
For a human analogy, perhaps you are very good at ball games. If I were to throw a ball to you from a fair distance away, it would follow a parabola dependent on the force of my throw and the elevation angle at which I threw it - but you could be barely able to add up a till receipt, yet still catch every throw. However, even if you hold a PhD in Mathematics, if you had to calculate knowingly the ball's trajectory to catch it you'd never be able to do so in time!
So do we "do" maths every day? No, unless as a conscious process in our work or something. We perform actions that can be subjected to numerical analysis, but that's not the same as performing that analysis numerically by instinct or even by the practice you put in for the ball games.
The brain - ours or in any other animal- is a marvellous organ, and I would love to know how it does "calculate" the right reactions to stimuli; but I doubt very much it is really doing it numerically.
I suspect most of us really use very little mathematics daily, unless in a professional field like science or engineering. Concrete problems in daily life relies mainly on simple arithmetic in any direct sense, such as in shopping or measuring a piece of furniture; even though some of the objects we take for granted cannot exist without a vast amount of mathematics in their design - such as the computer you are using now, and the mains electricity supply powering it.
(On another forum I saw the question, "What would the world be like without trigonometry?". You can take that seriously, in a philosophical way; but I think it was from a school-child unable to understand the subject, and some twit had replied "Awesome". I commented that I don't know if that meant "awe-inspiring" or "awful", but without trig we'd be unable to talk about it by computer. Would not even have electricity.)
excon 