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Re:Summation of the multiples 3 or 5 from 1-999 by lutusp on Sunday August 26, 2012 @01:33PM (#4435599)
From the article: "No wonder people easily dislike mathematics, who would want to add so many numbers?"

But that's not mathematics, that's arithmetic. This may seem like arid pedantry, except that many people are exposed to this kind of bonehead arithmetic in elementary school and think that's all there is to mathematics. That's a shame, and a correctable error.

Mathematics isn't "2 plus 2 equals 4". Mathematics is Avatar:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRdxXPV9GNQ

Mathematics is hitting a target on Mars, within a new meters, after eight months of travel:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcGMDXy-Y1I

Mathematics is beauty:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set

I wish people could be taught mathematics before arithmetic, not after. But this contradicts centuries of scholastic tradition.

Re:Summation of the multiples 3 or 5 from 1-999 by obitus on Sunday August 26, 2012 @02:13PM (#4435732)
To quote you back "But that's not mathematics, that's arithmetic".

I can see your point of view, but arithmetic is one of oldest fundamentals of mathematics. This is the way I was thought. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic

Its like the old saying "Its not what you say, but how you say it". In this day and age, people generally get the perception that mathematics is all about counting.