this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
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[Moved to Piefed] Ask

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What's a basic skill your shocked more adults don't know? (lazysoci.al)
submitted 4 months ago by CheeseToastie@lazysoci.al to c/ask@lemm.ee
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[–] Mothra@mander.xyz 27 points 4 months ago (8 children)

Math, and I mean basic math: adding, subtracting, multiplication, division. Basic understanding of fractions, basic understanding of percentages.

I'm not amazing at math but I consider this basic and with relatively regular day to day application. I'm not saying people should be able to make these operations without a calculator on the fly, I certainly couldn't in many cases. But I would expect people to know what math you need to apply to, say, calculate a 20% discount. I would expect people to know if, say, two thirds is more or less than three quarters. But no. Nope

[–] Landless2029@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

People being bad at math isn't a new thing but it is getting worse now with everyone having a calculator (phone) in their pocket.

Also. Great time to dust off this old gem.

[–] Mothra@mander.xyz 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure if having a calculator available makes it worse. The calculator only does the operation. It doesn't reason which operation needs to be done, it just does what you tell it to do. And that's where people fail at, understanding the concept behind the operation.

[–] Landless2029@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Yep. I agree. Knowing the logic behind math, namely what values need to be where in a formula and processing it in order, is a problem.

I think this is one of the reasons a bachelors degree in comupter science is so highly valued for too many jobs. The degree has a good amount of math requirements even though they're not needed for programming. I think the reason behind that is succeeding in that much logical thinking means you can learn/follow the rules/syntax of coding languages.

In the business world they hope people with that much understanding in math have a good head on their shoulders.

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