Re:Russian Peasant Multiplication
by smallnamespace on Friday November 10, 2017 @12:09AM
(#15668080)
For some reason, I immediately groked calculus and why it would be useful (maybe because I liked physics and the relationship between velocity and position is an intuitive one), but the point of linear algebra was a complete mystery to me.
Why are we multiplying these big matrices of numbers, and what is this complicated determinant thing? Why would anyone ever care what a kernel is, and what are these subspaces that keep getting referenced?
Now every other somewhat mathy problem I see can be broken down into linear algebra and I wish I had learned it better (and that it was taught with more intuition).
I completely suck at calculus, but have a great need for kernels. I am an intermediate programmer/musician and I use them for audio convolution[0].
My early school math involved memorising multiplication tables. Later on, there was rote memorisation of other aspects of math that I just never understood - you just "had to", and none of the teachers could explain why.
It was for this reason that I hated math, and it wasn't until I started understanding some of the more fundamental relationships many many years after school that I finally got it.
While this is but one anecdote, and having heard similar stories from others is just more anecdotes - there does seem to be research backing up that a lot of people don't understand the fundamental relationships between numbers and how math works.
I see Common Core math trying to teach relationships between numbers - showing that by being able to break down large unwieldy numbers you can get something that while it might have a bunch more steps, they're at least feasable without counting on fingers/toes or trying to remember times tables.