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Mathematics, reading skills in unprecedented decline in teenagers
(www.reuters.com)
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this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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Though I'm loathe to admit it, I actually have found mathematics useful in my career (which I never believed I would when I was in school!). Although I worked in healthcare, I often had to calculate figures such as equipment costs vs. insurance reimbursements in my head. I was surprised so many of my younger colleagues couldn't do even simple calculations like 10% of a bill in their heads, I had to do it for them.
As for reading, I really believe you won't make it far without good reading skills. Maybe you can luck into being a mega-rock god or something where it isn't necessary, but otherwise I think I am more worried about people without reading and writing ability than people without math ability.
I'm just going to point out the easiest way to help someone develop better reading skills even when they don't want to work at it: always leave the subtitles on on the television. Always. There's studies showing that reading speed and comprehension increase when subtitles are routinely left on.
Yeah I have to do that anyway, since I can never understand most of the dialogue and my hearing isn't what it once was. And god forbid they have an irish or some other accent, I can't make out a thing without the subtitles!!
I always had subtitles on when playing video games as a kid.
It really enhanced my reading comprehension and writing.
That's a good way to get better at reading comprehension. In fact, it doesn't matter what you read, just that you read. I'm even a fan of comic books (at MY age) and graphic novels, sometimes I even pick up a section of the encyclopedia just to sit and read for fun.
Yeah we're fucked, meanwhile in China they're doing stoichiometry in third grade. I felt I would never use math too and then one day in law school the professor asked the class to do a quick calculation and called on a student who said "I'm not a math person, that's why I'm here." And the professor said something like "all law practice involves math and you could get sued or disbarred for getting it wrong, so you better become a math person while you're here." I've found it to be true, calculating damages, disbursing funds, accounting, sometines even physics questions, in the context of personal injury/medicine or products liability, even occupational health.
It's funny because I was one of those in school who always said, "I'll never NEVER use this stuff in my real job!" How wrong I was. And I wasn't terrible, I got good grades in math but it's never been my strongest subject. However it does come in quite handy in real life.
I was one of the kids in school who said that and it turned out to be true.
Reading, on the other hand, was very important to me. As well as history.
I don't really consider doing arithmetic to be important for lawyers.
If you can use a calculator, all you need to do is understand the very simple concepts. This applies to the vast majority of people who use math in their everyday lives.
I guess it's relative. To some, simple concepts that can be done in a calculator is serious math.
You are loathe? Or you loathe?
I assumed it was the same word for both, but apparently "loath" is the noun and "loathe" is the verb. So it would be
you loatheoryou are loath.It's just an old expression, "I'm loathe to admit....." I realize it's not grammatically correct, it's something we old timers used to say.
I should've said, I am loathe to admit it. You're right. It's an old expression - I don't know if people really use it anymore outside of us boomers!
Millennial - definitely use it.
But I'm basically a boomer at heart, so there's that.