this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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YOU’RE DOING QUADRATICS IN MIDDLE SCHOOL?’
Yes, that's standard at least in Germany
In Spain too, it's also needed in vocational training (FP1, FP2) for carpenters, electricians, plumbers, etc., because it involves necessary calculations in their work, such as trigonometry, spheronometry, vector forces, flow calculations, among others. For office workers, naturally, percentage calculations are not overcome, but even there second degree equations can arise.
Wow. In America, trades people use a chart to look up literally anything that requires math. If you’re lucky.
Most of the time “it looks good enough” is enough.
I've had an economics teacher in the Netherlands who had interest tables and wanted us to them too. For those before calculators, those are tables that list the years on the left, and the interest on top, and then the multiplier in the table.
So, 10 years at 6.5% = 1.877
This was in 2005i sh.
Could you use a slide rule for that kind of multiplication?
Absolutely. But I learned in 2005, and the electric calculator had replaced the sliderule a couple of decades earlier.
But this is something they were great at, but usually not with the same accuracy. It's hard to get more than 3 decimal places out of one, and tables are great for that, you can fill whole books with them.
In my study time it was the only which exists, still no electronic or computers , only in big companies, which worked with punch cards.
I would use an Abacus for multiplication and a Venier scale for accuracy
Had to try to find a source
... The worst part is I'm decent with math by US standards in school and couldn't even solve the middle school one with a quick glance.
Multiply the top by the bottom to erase it. Reverse the square root of something. + Or - threw me right off...
Cause the middle school one is the quadratic formula. You use it to factor 2nd degree polynomials. You don't solve for a, b, and c, you just plug them in.
It is the quadratic formula. It already is the solution. The problem is any quadratic of the form ax²+bx+c=0
That's nuts. In the US the only high school math I was taught was algebra and geometry. Anything more advanced than that was for students in the "gifted" program. No wonder why Americans are so stupid.
not sure why you're getting downvoted for this, I had the same experience with my education in the US. high school class of 08, lol. the school never taught a math class past algebra 1. if you finished it, you still needed math credits per year, so they'd just have you retake the same class. seriously. absolutely abysmal. 95% of the math I do now is self taught. from my "education" alone, we never got much past solving basic linear single-variable equations. most of my class graduated barely literate. really, most of my class simply left, myself included - the dropout rate was astonishingly high around 08, and instead of doing the same classes and curriculum for the third time in my senior year, I opted to simply leave, educate myself, and shortly thereafter start my business.
Maybe you were just at a bad school? Quadratic equations are mandatory in Germany even for the lowest level of graduation.
Until my Abitur (12th grade) I learned about equations, stochastics, integrals and derivatives, vector stuff, etc.
Lol all us public schools are 'bad schools'
Same in Brazil, though public education quality varies a lot.
Yeah it was a middle school thing in Finland too, at least in the 90's.
I did an exchange year in the US in my 2nd high school year, and I was honestly a bit surprised at how… well, simple it all was. I was a senior in the US and I'd learned just about everything they taught that wasn't specific to the US or the English language (and even some of those…) either in my 1st year in high school or in middle school.
In my experience as an American, I've learned the same thing in multiple years, we kind of just chose a point to stop at and did that for our entire god damn school year, never moving on. We could have talked about so much interesting history, but no, we need to talk about WW2 and completely gloss over most other things for the 12th year in a row
For christs sakes I was learning FRACTIONS AND DECIMALS IN MY SENIOR YEAR
Are you sure you weren’t in a remedial school? lol
I will admit the reason my last two years were such a stark contrast to my previous years was because I went from honors down to basic because I went to a vocational high school, Diamond Oaks, and they only had the base classes
But still I never want to have another history class on WW2 again, I don't mind learning the era but I've relearned the same thing over and over again
American schools cover the civil and 2 great wars because those were the last times we were arguably the good guys. Every war since has been a conflict we started by meddling or we had no good reason to be there
lol and saying “we” were the good guys in the civil war implies that we were also the bad guys, so that one cancels.
Yea but the good side won it so alls well that ends well right!?!?!?!
When your history class is written by the same folks responsible for the History Channel circa ~2002-2010.
every year of high school I and the rest of my class ('08) had was the same curriculum repeatedly.
history: ww2 bulletpoints, same as last year. write a paper about how bad the nazis were but how complex the situation was, actually, so don't be so judgemental.
lit: baseball?? books and writing exercises about baseball.
math: algebra 1 over and over. I once got sent to the office for a disciplinary discussion for asking if we'll ever hit algebra 2.
PE: no, none whatsoever.
art: watch whatever movies, free form ungraded discussion aka nobody does shit.
science: watch vaguely sciencey documentaries and write a paper about an animal's behavior and habits.
electives: none, a myth we heard whispers of amongst older friend siblings.
foreign language: Spanish 1, every year.
i left right before my senior year and started working. I've never been sure if that was the right call or not but my friends that graduated are borderline illiterate to this day and completely math averse for sure. so I don't think another year of ww2 baseball algebra would have helped me much more.
I'm American, I definitely learned this stuff in 7th or 8th grade. Granted, I didn't use it past high school, and I forgot it before I finished college, but that's definitely when I learned it.
Bro I’m American and they didn’t even mention algebra until 9th grade, the fuck you mean quadratics in middle school
Math is personalized in American schools. There's on grade, advanced, gt, and accelerated. Each level above on grade is how many years ahead your class math is. Depending on how large your school is, gt and accelerated math students will take math with the grades above them.
On grade would be quadratic in 9th.
Yeah....I am american and almost done with my associates degree....and I still haven't learned "quadraitcs" idk, standards are wired
It's Algebra 2. I just checked and only 6 states require it. Crazy. I was in a state that didn't require it but finished Calculus 2 at graduation.
Ahh...okay, so far I've done pre-algebra, Diploma didn't require it and associates degree looks like it doesn't either, Bachelors will.....probably.
Idk what middle school really is because it's not been a thing at any of the schools I've been to, but it's definitely something you do a lot earlier than calculus. If calculus comes in in your last three or four years of high school, quadratics are what you're doing for at least two years before that.
Middle school is usually grades 7-8
It's the step between primary and secondary school that a lot of countries have, also known as intermediate school, junior high school, junior secondary school, or lower secondary school: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_school
South east of it is mordor
I thought Mordor is part of it?
In Hong Kong too, though the dividing is a bit different. High school is like the last 3 years of secondary school, and middle school is like the 3 years in primary school and 3 years in secondary school.
We also have vector and matrix on top of calculus in high school if you take the elective course. The compulsory part contains geometry, complex, probability, etc.
If you want, we have some samples. I took module 2. Compulsory Module 1: Calculus + Statistics Module 2: Algebra + Calculus
Yeah seriously WTF, I didn't even learn basic Algebra until freshmen year of high school! We never even got to the math with the fancy letters in it. I have no idea what those cursive f, d, and w characters mean.
Cursive big f: "integration", which can be interpreted in two ways. One is "area under the curve" for some part of the curve. Other is "average value of a part of the curve multiplied by the size of that part of the curve". Curve being the function, the graph, f(x), however you wanna call it.
Normal d: "differentiation" (from difference), infinitely small change. Usually used in ratios: df/dx means how much does f(x) change relative to x when you change x a little bit.
Cursive d: "partial", same as normal d but used when working with higher dimensional data like 3D. Can also mean "boundary" of something. Example: boundary of a volume in 3D, like wrapping paper around a box. Or, boundary of such wrapping paper itself, if it's not perfectly connecting.
Omega: just a Greek letter used as a variable, in this case there's a history of it being used as a sort of "density" variable in the field of differential geometry. The college row in the meme is kind of translating the high school row from a function to a 3D volume.
It's just calculus where admittedly my own education stopped but it's still very helpful in finding values in real-world things like change of value in time. I still hope to one day develop a working knowledge of it, myself. u/...mir below me did a good job of summarizing the two main introductory concepts in much the same way i've read others simplify and describe the subject in classic 100+ yr old books like "Calculus Made Easy by Sylvanus Thompson." I suspect it's not as intimidating as it seems once a person gets past some basic fundamental concepts.
Anecdotal, but I grew up in the US and I learned this in middle school as a gifted student. Others have mentioned it depends on the state/curriculum. I imagine in other countries they also divide their students between standard/honors/gifted-type tiers; they certainly do in the Netherlands, which is where I did my graduate studies.
"Gifted" education in the US means they burn us out with weird "critical thinking" extracirriculars and then berate us when the senioritis hits two years early.
I learned algebra around the same stage of my education. But to be fair, my parents were spending money to keep me learning accelerated math.
I guess you can see this earlier but in Europe you cover it in middle school
My middle school student worked on them last year
In senior year at my high school depending on what math track you go in you can be doing AP Calculus