I have this theory that Americans suck at math because they insist on sticking with the imperial measurement system and so nothing makes mathematical sense - Americans intuitively just think in every day units qualitatively. Whereas the rest of the world uses metric, so base 10 math just comes naturally.
Source: I am a US STEM professor. Our students suck at math.
It may be that or it may be that our entire educational system has turned into shit through decades of low pay for teachers weeding out all the best people.
When I was 16, I went to high school in California for half a year as an exchange student. I am from Germany and as a junior, I would have had something like my 4th or 5th year of chemistry in school, but out of necessity (or laziness) I took beginner’s chemistry.
For exercises I had been paired with two girls who used to try to make fun of me (I think; I never really figured out what their deal was), and asked me stupid questions about myself or Germany. I remember they once asked laughingly whether I like oranges because I was wearing a t-shirt with an orange print.
Well, then one day, there we go. Converting exercises. You have students from 9th to 12th grade in groups of 3-4, trying to convert imperial measurements to metrics. And then metrics to metrics. Basically, for a couple of weeks, we just converted stuff like 14 cm to mm or dm. I forgot so much about my time abroad but the most vivid memory I have is of the girls looking at each other (after a couple of days and repeated explanations) and one says “the decimal system just makes no sense” and the other one quietly and slowly nods in agreement. I ask them how it makes no sense. “Well it just makes no sense.” It’s just base 10 everything and the rest is practice, it’s not different from inches to feet. “No but you see this makes sense. There are 12 inches in a foot”, continued by a list of how many shmekels make up a whoopsiedoodle and how many dingelings fit into a hybotron.
I understand how you first have to get accustomed to new units and how conversion might need practice when you aren’t familiar with the prefixes, especially when you aren’t too experienced in the stem field. But I am still flabbergasted by the statement that having a system where everything is just base 10 and then you shift the decimal point around makes no sense. We are talking about fellow juniors here. How do you make it to age 16/17 never having heard of a decimal point or having trouble with base 10 conversion? HOW CAN YOU SAY IT MAKES NO SENSE?! It’s the simplest, most logic based system there is!
My professor for my first real engineering class had an excellent quote, “A good engineer can work in any unit system.”
There’s actually quite a lot of advantages the US could have in math education if we properly harnessed both unit systems. Becoming fluent in both and regularly doing conversions would give students a lot of real world application and simple math practice.
A good software developer can also work with any language, but if you’re going to use Javascript to build an enterprise level software you are guaranteed to have a bad time.
You use what is best for the job and from my understanding there’s really no benefit to using imperial measures over SI, beyond the familiarity of growing up with them. If you were taught SI units from the very start you wouldn’t ever use imperial.
There are actually reasons to use imperial, but it’s all inertia. Industry has a bunch of controls and correlations and empirical equations that use imperial, so the inputs all need to be imperial too.
Of course, you could always do it in metric and then convert at the end. That’s one approach to unit systems.
I have this theory that Americans suck at math because they insist on sticking with the imperial measurement system and so nothing makes mathematical sense - Americans intuitively just think in every day units qualitatively. Whereas the rest of the world uses metric, so base 10 math just comes naturally.
Source: I am a US STEM professor. Our students suck at math.
It may be that or it may be that our entire educational system has turned into shit through decades of low pay for teachers weeding out all the best people.
Clocks and calendars must give you nightmares…
When I was 16, I went to high school in California for half a year as an exchange student. I am from Germany and as a junior, I would have had something like my 4th or 5th year of chemistry in school, but out of necessity (or laziness) I took beginner’s chemistry.
For exercises I had been paired with two girls who used to try to make fun of me (I think; I never really figured out what their deal was), and asked me stupid questions about myself or Germany. I remember they once asked laughingly whether I like oranges because I was wearing a t-shirt with an orange print.
Well, then one day, there we go. Converting exercises. You have students from 9th to 12th grade in groups of 3-4, trying to convert imperial measurements to metrics. And then metrics to metrics. Basically, for a couple of weeks, we just converted stuff like 14 cm to mm or dm. I forgot so much about my time abroad but the most vivid memory I have is of the girls looking at each other (after a couple of days and repeated explanations) and one says “the decimal system just makes no sense” and the other one quietly and slowly nods in agreement. I ask them how it makes no sense. “Well it just makes no sense.” It’s just base 10 everything and the rest is practice, it’s not different from inches to feet. “No but you see this makes sense. There are 12 inches in a foot”, continued by a list of how many shmekels make up a whoopsiedoodle and how many dingelings fit into a hybotron.
I understand how you first have to get accustomed to new units and how conversion might need practice when you aren’t familiar with the prefixes, especially when you aren’t too experienced in the stem field. But I am still flabbergasted by the statement that having a system where everything is just base 10 and then you shift the decimal point around makes no sense. We are talking about fellow juniors here. How do you make it to age 16/17 never having heard of a decimal point or having trouble with base 10 conversion? HOW CAN YOU SAY IT MAKES NO SENSE?! It’s the simplest, most logic based system there is!
My professor for my first real engineering class had an excellent quote, “A good engineer can work in any unit system.”
There’s actually quite a lot of advantages the US could have in math education if we properly harnessed both unit systems. Becoming fluent in both and regularly doing conversions would give students a lot of real world application and simple math practice.
A good software developer can also work with any language, but if you’re going to use Javascript to build an enterprise level software you are guaranteed to have a bad time.
You use what is best for the job and from my understanding there’s really no benefit to using imperial measures over SI, beyond the familiarity of growing up with them. If you were taught SI units from the very start you wouldn’t ever use imperial.
There are actually reasons to use imperial, but it’s all inertia. Industry has a bunch of controls and correlations and empirical equations that use imperial, so the inputs all need to be imperial too.
Of course, you could always do it in metric and then convert at the end. That’s one approach to unit systems.