US Politics Mega-thread - Page 335

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JimmyJRaynor

Canada16647 Posts

June 23 2018 22:35 GMT

#6681

memorizing procedures can be a last resort and can get you through. and it can offer a glint of understanding as you work through the exercises as you mention. your approach is definitely better than giving up and doing nothing. However, what if you were more ambitious....

What if you get your level of understanding to the point where you can derive every formulae via first principles and axioms. What if you can develop the procedures yourself. You never have to memorize a formula or procedure. For example, the quadratic equation.. that negative b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus 4 ac all over 2a?
If develop enough skill to solve ( a*x^2 + b*x + c = 0 ) then you'll never have to memorize that thing.

Plansix

United States60190 Posts

June 23 2018 22:56 GMT

#6682

This website and math. This is like the gun control thread, but less statistics.

Jockmcplop

United Kingdom9495 Posts

June 23 2018 22:57 GMT

#6683

On June 24 2018 06:52 Simberto wrote:

Show nested quote +

Are you talking about learning maths to do physics, or learning maths to learn maths? There is a gigantic difference between the two. Physics maths is a lot more focused on solving problems in a specific subset of conditions that coincide with how stuff works in our real world. Maths maths is a lot more like solving very complex riddles, with a large focus on general cases and figuring out all possible problems with an approach. Physics maths is a lot more focused on solving a bunch of complicated integrals and usually doesn't care under what circumstances an approach works, as long as it works. Maths maths is a lot more focused on proving that stuff is true, while physics maths just uses the stuff that is proven to be true.

Edit: Or are you talking about school maths, which is a lot like physics maths, but easier and even less focused on understanding very precisely what what you are doing actually means.

I'm talking basic math. I dropped it from my education as soon as I could because I always hated it when is was a kid (because I was lazy and my maths teachers fucking sucked). Someone has very generously offered to help me by PM anyway.

iamthedave

England2814 Posts

June 23 2018 22:58 GMT

#6684

On June 24 2018 06:38 Introvert wrote:

Show nested quote +

On June 23 2018 18:41 Howie_Dewitt wrote:

On June 23 2018 14:49 Introvert wrote:

On June 23 2018 14:06 Aquanim wrote:
Introvert, can you clarify whether you are claiming "immigration" or "illegal immigration" is a factor in Democrat strategy? I'm sensing some confusion between the two.

When they all get amnesty it won't matter.

On June 23 2018 14:06 GreenHorizons wrote:

On June 23 2018 13:48 Introvert wrote:

On June 23 2018 13:24 GreenHorizons wrote:

On June 23 2018 13:18 Introvert wrote:

On June 23 2018 13:12 GreenHorizons wrote:
I for one have a long list of laws I think should be ignored, and view many of the laws themselves as an affront to justice. Ignoring them is the righteous thing to do imo.

Also I'm nbever sure if people who make the "but the law" argument are sincere or using it rhetorically. I mean laws get ignored all day every day countless times. It's the reason the freeways aren't just lines of people waiting for tickets.

On the "more Dem voters" that only makes sense in people's heads. First you have to abandon any hope that these traditionally conservative people can be won by the conservative party, After that the numbers just don't add up.

If Democrats imagine their immigration policy as any way a ploy to turn "illegal immigrants" into Dem voters they are failing miserably at both getting immigrants into the country and getting their votes and they always have been.

I honestly don't get how after about 30 seconds people don't realize how foolish the "Dems do it for more illegal immigrant voters" argument is?

There's a lot here, but don't forget that an illegal alien who had a kid gives birth to a citizen. That alone increases the numbers. You do agree that immigration is part of Democratic national strategy?

With less illegal immigrants and lower birthrates, we're on a decline of these voters over a decade. I mean they are failing so miserably at it being a remotely productive vote source you may be right that it is part of the Democratic national strategy. It's just a horribly ineffective strategy if it were working and it's not even working.

Plus the whole conservatives abandoning any hope at winning those kids you describe as if it's not because conservative politics are garbo rather than the kid being part of an elaborate multi-generational vote getting conspiracy.

The whole thing sounds completely ridiculous to me after any thinking about it.

Every time this comes up I feel like I should just sense that there's gas-lighting going on and just leave it. It's talked about endlessly: things like "when will Texas/NC/Georgia/CO/etc. turn blue?" Whole papers are written would and will happen given demographic changes in the next election cycle and beyond.

I don't generally bookmark things in this thread, but we've had people talk gleefully about how the GOP can't win for much longer, etc.

The in-house discussion on immigration between conservatives is... complex to say the least. For the purpose of this thread we don't have to get that far, we can stick the outrageous position of Democrats on things like Trump's super generous DACA offer that was rejected as bigoted by people like Nancy Pelosi, or how apparently Congress doesn't have to step in to stop Nazism.

I'm supposed to play dumb. "babies can't vote!" No, but the WILL be able to, and if the Democrats succeed in mass amnesty, they'll take that 60-40 split every time. 60% of 12 million is a lot better than 60% of 0.

I mean for someone who seems in tune with Democrat strategy (and highly critical) I'm surprised you don't see this. Plansix's absurd retort is less newsworthy. I mean, wasn't Sanders less keen on immigration (being the kinda left-wing nationalist he is), but had to back down?

Unless I'm supposed to believe that all this talk of immigration and how it hurts the GOP and helps the Democrats is some sort of weird, friendly banter? And of course, we finally have the (in)action of Congressional democrats. Massive amnesty, with as little enforcement as possible. To think that the Democratic party doesn't want sustained immigration because of votes is naive to the point of absurdity.

Democrats say and do a lot of stupid things. Thinking Demographics are going to carry them to victory is one of them. I mean the GOP is an increasingly white party, but it turns out white women sided with Republicans despite Trump being the most openly appalling person (specifically his behavior toward women) they've ever been asked to vote for. Given the choice between the most politically established white woman to ever run and the most disgusting, lying, piece of talking hot garbage and white women picked the pile of hot garbage.

If Democrats think Republicans treating a group like trash is enough to make them vote Democrat they've got another thing coming.

Additionally, legal immigrants tend to poll in favor of more strict enforcement. So you have half of Democrats already on your side, legal immigrants, and Republicans. But 20 years from now Democrats may get a majority of the kids of the illegal immigrants if they even vote.

This whole thing sounds absolutely absurd and foolish on top of just not even working. I mean turning away all those potential "anchor babies" wasn't very helpful of Obama (who's notably left of his party [see the fights with Hillary]) to this conspiracy for votes.

Finally I don't believe for a second in the "mass amnesty" boogieman. Democrats (the politicians) don't actually want that and wouldn't use political capital on it even if they did. They much more prefer the looming threat of peril to motivate the people who can already vote.

Democrats go just as far out of their way sometimes to prevent people from voting. They've even dramatically reduced voter registration drives on college campuses out of fear the people they're registering are to their left and would vote Sanders or not at all.

Democrats love this fight, and all they have to do to keep it going is be slightly less inhumane than Republicans and then they can wait for the votes to roll in to stave off the more horrific future offered by Republicans. That's how you have half of Democrats wanting to lock up what are essentially refugees.

Ok, now I see your perspective a little better. Listen, the debate about immigrants and that they aren't all far left bernie-bros or whatever is one of those in-house discussions I was talking about. There are all sorts of things to be said for future immigrants becoming wealthy and more assimilated (thus trending GOP) or having such large and sustained waves of immigration that assimilation and integration are slow and/or incomplete (prob indicating continued Democrat voter trends). But in either case it's clear that the strategy of the Democrat party is one of importing more voters.

I think the Democrat party isn't as scared of losing leverage, the leverage they would gain from millions more voters is enormous. I think what stopped them when they had all those votes in 2009 (and what stopped amnesty when Bush tried it) is that amnesty without security is unpopular. it's unpopular among native born, and, as you mentioned, among foreign born citizens it doesn't fare as well as one might assume. The simple fact is that the immediate electoral backlash to their ideas would be devastating. It's also why they didn't pass any gun control in 2009-2010. They need enough cover. And they can afford to wait because they think it will work out (they still think and write this way). The American people, as I said, are simply not in favor of amnesty without security.

Also, moving towards nationalized healthcare has been THE left-wing dream for decades. That's what they wanted to do with their new found power. They got punished for that, too.

I'm not sure if my view is more or less cynical than yours, but it's certainly true that, even as the status quo goes on today, they see themselves as benefiting from it, even if they can only use the immigrants as props (think "concentration camps").

Edit: and so we are this point today, where the progressive activists are louder and louder about immigration, and how illegal immigrants should get all sorts of perks, that border control is bad, etc, etc. The upper floors of the party must decide what is worse... refusing the acknowledge the activists in their own party, or moving too far to the left on this issue? I think that many of the correctly see that moving too far on this issue puts Trump closer to the "average American" (a phrase I hate) than they are. However, it would appear that the future 2020 contenders already know what they think, for the most part.

I would hope that the Democrats simply want to import more people from other countries to increase our population and keep our country younger (in terms of average age) and more productive to concentrate and solidify the economic power of the United States when its most competitive rival's population dwarfs its own. Surely, some of them must know that immigrants are a net benefit to the people in this country in the long run.

However, the levels of ineptitude and obliviousness that the Democratic establishment has shown leads me to believe that they may actually view immigrants as essentially guaranteed Democratic party voters. As much as I dislike the Republican party, it's very difficult to not see the Democratic establishment as willing to take the side of immigrants for some nebulous political power play.

However, introvert, you seem to have skipped over GH's point that the Democrats will do the minimum in securing the votes of immigrants because they believe that the immigrants are likely to vote for them anyway. It's just like why they throw some empty platitudes towards African-Americans, without actually letting them speak up through traditional routes. They can do that because the Republican party's view on race is so atrocious that all the blacks can do in the short term is to vote Democrat, which hurts a bit less. They vote 90% Dem or some ridiculous number because they're forced to by your party's positions.

In other words, I agree with your conclusion, but the idea that they want amnesty is misguided due to your observation of Democrats pandering to immigrants. I think that they only care about immigrants enough to do what they are doing now, and amnesty is more than they feel obligated to give to immigrants for becoming their voters through the elimination of the Republican party as a safe voting option for them. TL,DR: they don't actually care enough about the immigrants to want amnesty for real.

Edit: the Dem establishment never ceases to provide me with new disappointing choices that they make.

What the Democrats (or any party) do for constituencies after they have their vote is different. But you need their votes first.

Show nested quote +

On June 23 2018 20:25 Liquid`Drone wrote:

On June 23 2018 13:18 Introvert wrote:

Yeah sorry, I think you're normally perfectly reasonable (even though I disagree with your opinions) but to me this is 'kinda deranged conspiracy' theory. Democrats do not want more immigrants because of political gains 20 years from now, the reasoning is 100% grounded in the combination of the belief that accepting immigrants/asylum seekers is the morally right thing to do coupled with the experience that their lives are not affected in any significantly detrimental way.

I think the anti-elitist anti-immigration argument has some validity to it. (Basically, elites live in areas where they are exposed to cultural (and even economic) benefits of immigration without being negatively influenced by locally increased crime rates/ghettofication, poorer people see their neighborhood rapidly change in a way that is not entirely positive. At least in Europe this seems to be the case for most countries with significant immigration). But the 'importing voters' argument isn't grounded in reality. I've had a lot of political contact with a lot of leftists, including more 'clandestine' topics, like how to 'frame the message', 'which opinions we should voice in public' (people who consider themselves communists not being willing to state that publicly, for example). Never, not once, ever, has anyone been even remotely close to arguing that we should accept more immigrants because it's politically beneficial on a long term scale. (And immigrants vote for leftist parties in Norway, too, even if it's less polarized than in the US). It's 100% an invented motivation.

I've seen you make this argument several times before and really wish you'd realize that you're just wrong here. People saying that 'states are gonna turn blue' aren't saying 'this is why we support immigration', they're simply attempting to predict future voting results based on demographic changes. It's a piece of political analysis, not a political argument.

I'm going to be a little short here so that you can pick any specific part of what I say and focus down on that, if you wish.

First, I'm not sure where people are pulling "20 year master plan" from. The Democrats have moved left on this issue over the past two decades, and moving especially fast over the last 10 years. I hope that much is obvious. I do acknowledge Democrats didn't always used to be this way, not all of them. I've been talking about what they say today i.e., the years and/or days surrounding this one. There's a lot of history here, from the NIA of 1965 to the 1986 Reagan amnesty, but I didn't make reference to either of those two things.

Don't even go all the way and say that Democrats want to "import voters" just adopt the line used by those having the debate on the left: that the combination of a left-moving base and the rise of activist immigration groups are pushing the party that way. But don't say they aren't considering it electorally.

Or, you could even concede that the status quo benefits one party at the expense of the other and how useful that fact is in explaining the behavior of Congressional Democrats.

Today there is a lot of talk among Democrats about their "coalition." How they moved away from the blue collar Ohio voter and towards the urban areas and minorities. I think many lefties you would talk to actually believe the things they say. Do realize here I'm primarily indicting the top ranks of a political party. As I've already said, the opinion of the citizenry is fairly consistent: a pathway to citizenship for those with more roots here, a more merit based immigration system, and control of the border.

I'm more understanding of Europeans who think this couldn't possibly be the case. It's far less understandable for Americans who keep track of politics, who talk about changing demographics, who constantly wonder if a growing Hispanic population is going to flip a state, to pretend that a political party doesn't consider its electoral future when debating its stance on immigration. It used to divide both parties, not any more.

I'm not sure what we're not supposed to believe isn't the case, if I'm honest.

Given how far to the right the Republican Party has shifted on the issue, it just seems to make sense to me that the Democrats would slide to the left in response. The Republicans are - by necessity - pissing off one group of voters in favour of another, it only makes sense that the Democrats - by necessity - would shift to gobble up those disenfranchised voters. Yes?

Voter shifting is a weird thing, I admit. In the UK demographics can shift from huge immigration, and have in a couple of places, but there's no evidence they vote overwhelmingly for one party or the other, whereas in the US there seems to be a definite bias. I guess that does change the political calculus.

But is it not equally likely that, rather than a cynical calculus, the Democrats' actual views on immigration have shifted a bit?

In the same way it seems that Republican attitudes have shifted, in becoming so much more toxic and vociferous.

How big an effect did the Tea Party have on the Republicans overall? It seems to me that they're a way bigger influencer than immigrants, on the general makeup of US politics today.

Plansix

United States60190 Posts

June 23 2018 23:07 GMT

#6685

Both parties favor immigration reform. And the public does too. There an anti-immigration wing in the Republican Party that has been actively killing compromise bills for about 10 years. It is there way or the highway. Their master plan is to keep the issue burning until they get a large enough majority to slam into place “merit” based immigration.

The problem is that their plan will never work. Their immigration plan would be harmful to several sections of the economy, including farming. The other parts of the Republican Party dislikes their plan, so it has no hope of passing.

Without Obamacare to rail against, all the conservatives have left is immigration. Especially after they blew up the budget with their tax cuts. If immigration reform goes through, they barely have a platform.

FueledUpAndReadyToGo

Netherlands30548 Posts

June 23 2018 23:14 GMT

#6686

On June 24 2018 07:57 Jockmcplop wrote:

Show nested quote +

This guy has great videos on a lot of things math. It's not really a course but if you want to know some specific topic he usually got you covered, he's got a huge range of topics by now.

https://www.youtube.com/user/patrickJMT/videos

GreenHorizons

United States22991 Posts

June 23 2018 23:30 GMT

#6687

On June 24 2018 07:22 Simberto wrote:
You can learn maths through memorization. It is in exhausting and tiresome process.

You can also learn maths through understanding. The first step is to realize that what is not important is to solve the problem ahead of you right now. What you need to do is try to understand it more thoroughly. Try to find the underlying patterns, not the specific use algorithm. The problem with doing that in school is that you have an exam every few weeks, and memorization helps you to deal with that exam in the short term, while making understanding harder in the long term.

The main thing necessary to understand maths is that if you feel the need to memorize a complex algorithm, you have probably missed the point of what people try to teach you.

A problem with this is that your brain tries to prevent you from doing that. Deep thinking and understanding use a lot of calories, so your brain tries to find an easy way to skimp on that thinking and save calories. Fight your brain. It is stupid. You save a lot of effort and energy in the long term if you don't learn maths through memorization, and it has the added benefit of not making you completely bored out of your mind and hating maths.

Edit: Also, skip excuses like "I am not a maths person" "No one in my family was good at maths" "I never liked maths anyways". Those are all ways of your brain to try to trick you into not spending calories on thinking.

To parry this back to US politics a bit, is that we know different people have different preferences for taking in information. We can all learn through any method, but some of us have developed neural pathways that better integrate information via particular ways.

One problem with the current US education system (probably applies elsewhere) is that it's designed to make interchangeable parts, rather than capable and informed citizens. So rather than reasonably catering to different learning style preferences and consciously improving lacking ones (not strictly through forced practice), we just shove people into a mold and if their learning preferences don't fit we break them to fit or into pieces.

That's to say that memorization works sufficiently and even well for many people's practical needs, but for those who struggle to learn that way it's important to have other options, but not at the expense of demanding people for whom memorization is adequate to abandon what works for them altogether.

DarkPlasmaBall

United States44051 Posts

June 24 2018 00:16 GMT

#6688

On June 23 2018 23:58 Excludos wrote:

Show nested quote +

0.001 == 0.1% last I checked

Reminds me of this infamous Verizon situation:

+ Show Spoiler +

Very true. A math student can become quite good at learning the procedures and concepts needed to succeed on a math exam or for a specific class without necessarily becoming good at problem solving or knowing how to use math to answer a real question that organically formed from a real-life scenario.

On June 24 2018 06:14 Gahlo wrote:

Show nested quote +

On June 24 2018 06:13 Simberto wrote:

But to be honest, 15% of something is not the easiest calculation to do in your head. You can't just divide by something like if it were 20% or 10%, instead you basically need to divide by 100 (ok, easy), and then multiply by 15, and that, while possible, still takes some effort. Someone who is in any sort of STEM field should be able to do that at least roughly with a bit of rounding, though.

With regards to fractions, i also notice this a lot. This is definitively not a uniquely american problem, nor is it a new one. The big difficulty is that you need to actually understand how fractions work for them to become useful, and you can often just dodge having to learn that by using a calculator. Furthermore, fractions are often not seen as "actual" numbers, so even if fractions lead to an easier calculation, the students still find it necessary to convert the result into a decimal. At which point it is often easier for them to just do decimal calculations at the start. This is enhanced by the fact that a lot of adults don't use fractions for anything noteworthy, and that calculators often default to giving a decimal as an answer. (Modern ones don't do this as much, though). So for a lot of students, fractions are this very artificial thing that is only used in math in school. And they think that a rounded decimal is a much better answer then an exact fraction, because fractions to them are not actual numbers and thus can never be the result of a calculation.

And they can get away with never learning to use fractions because outside of the explicit education in fractions, teachers usually don't care if they get the correct answer as a decimal or as a fraction. This, however, leads to great problems once the students have to do fractional calculations with variables involved. The operations are exactly the same as when doing fractions involving numbers, but if the students never learned to do those, they basically stand no chance. Also, fractions are very useful when multiplying them, but students need to actually be able to understand how to use them correctly for this to be useful, so if they missed out on that, they just do stuff in a much harder way (or let their calculator do it instead)

With regards to the decimal into percentage problem, you can see the case where something is widely used, but often poorly understood. Percentages are something that people use daily, but often don't actually understand what it means. Once you understand what the percent sign means (1/100) and what the decimal point means, those problems evaporate. But since they are often used without understanding, people get into problems because to them changing from decimal to percentage is just a completely arbitrary operation, and arbitrary stuff that you don't use often is easily misremembered.

I just find out what 10% is and add half of that.

Yup, most people I know do exactly that if they want to get really close to 15%. Otherwise, they'll just take an easy 10% calculation and "add a bit more" or take an easy 20% calculation and "remove a bit" to get reasonably close enough through estimation.

On June 24 2018 06:21 KwarK wrote:

Show nested quote +

This is true and really cool. The democratization of knowledge is probably the best thing to come out of the internet. YouTube videos on literally everything.

A very good point, and I know many groups of students (usually honors students) who are so frustrated when they have a bad math teacher that they use YouTube, Khan Academy, etc. to learn some material on their own. Being "forced" to develop that kind of independence and responsibility and maturity for students to take it upon themselves to learn the material ends up being a legitimately useful skill to have in the future when they can't rely on a mentor to walk them through a problem... even though having a competent math teacher who could at least be useful as another resource and could help guide these situations would probably be even more helpful.

On June 24 2018 06:22 Gorsameth wrote:

Show nested quote +

It requires actively wanting to learn, which is a problem for many suffering from a education deficit in the first place.

And that is indeed the downside; many students haven't yet developed an intrinsic motivation or a level of responsibility that may be necessary for doing this. Many students shrug and say "The teacher is supposed to be the expert, is supposed to be helpful, and is supposed to help motivate me... if none of that is happening, can you really blame me for being disengaged and disinterested?" In many cases, it's quite hard to blame students who are in that situation.

On June 24 2018 06:38 Jockmcplop wrote:
Does anyone know a good place to learn maths online?
I've always had good mental arithmetic, but I can't even do math at the level of your average 16 year old. Its frustrating cos I want to learn physics but all the maths puts me off.
Sorry for the OT post.

For basic/ middle school/ high school math, Khan Academy is a great, free online resource to get started

DarkPlasmaBall

United States44051 Posts

June 24 2018 00:33 GMT

#6689

On June 24 2018 07:22 Simberto wrote:
Also, skip excuses like "I am not a maths person" "No one in my family was good at maths" "I never liked maths anyways". Those are all ways of your brain to try to trick you into not spending calories on thinking.

Without fail, every single Back To School Night at every high school I've taught at always has a parent of one of my students ask me an awful, harmful question about this. Usually it's something like "Mr. DarkPlasmaBall, I'm not a math person and neither is my spouse, so we don't really have any big expectations for our child in your class. What can you do for a case like ours?"

My response to them is to smile and say something like this (ideally tactfully, professionally, without raising my voice, directly, and in a politely-and-good-naturedly scolding sort of way): "Well, the first thing I'll do is ask you to stop saying things like that, especially in front of your child. [I turn to the entire room of parents at this point, so that I'm not just singling out the one parent who asked the question.] Some of you may not consider yourselves to be good at math and you may not like math, but you're not allowed to give your children an excuse to not try in my class. My job is already hard enough, and we need to all be working together to make sure that there aren't mixed messages between home life and school life. School is hard enough for students who are actually motivated and confident in their abilities; it's even harder for those who are told that they don't need to care. All of my students can succeed in my class, so let's continue to communicate and make sure we're on the same page."

RenSC2

United States1048 Posts

June 24 2018 02:01 GMT

#6690

About the whole demographic destiny thing. I feel like the first time I really heard about immigration in that context was actually after the 2012 elections when Romney lost and Republican thinkers said that they needed to change messaging/positions when it comes to immigration because they really lost the latino vote. It was after that point where I really started to hear democrats crowing about demographic destiny. Then 2015 primaries came around and the people who started off with amnesty in immigration (Bush, Rubio) got walloped and the least immigrant friendly person took charge and completely changed the idea of Republicans being more pro immigrant.

So I think it was mostly democrats latching on to a Republican talking point in their 2012 postmortem and saying, "told ya!" The thing is, it is an incredibly stupid and short sided idea if any democrat thinks they are going to import voters.

Do democrats really think that they're going to bring in a bunch of conservative (pro-life, anti-gay) catholics and win consistently in 20-30 years? Party loyalty doesn't go very far. Democrats used to be the party of Dixiecrats and Republicans used to be the party of Lincoln. Look at where black people mostly vote now. All it takes is a little realignment and a huge swathe of latino immigrants will start voting for the other side.

If the latin population keeps rising to the point where Republicans can't use anti-latino dog-whistles anymore, then they'll simply drop the immigrant stuff and focus their messaging on abortion, "Christian-rights", and the economy. Latinos vote overwhelmingly for democrats right now because they're the lesser of two evils. In 20 years, don't expect the lesser of two evils to carry over as party loyalty.

Demographic destiny is an incredibly stupid idea when both parties are fluid in what they support. Can we put that idea to rest, on both sides?

KwarK

United States42263 Posts

June 24 2018 02:08 GMT

#6691

Pretty much.

Republicans think that immigrants should be treated like shit from an ideological point of view. Democrats tend to think that immigrants should be treated slightly less badly, also from an ideological point of view. It's disingenuous to argue that you're treating immigrants badly because you don't want them to vote Democrat when the reason you think they'll vote Democrat is because you're treating them badly. If the Republicans dropped all of the animals/rapists/vermin rhetoric then the problem of immigrants voting Democrat would resolve itself.

Liquid`Jinro

Sweden33719 Posts

June 24 2018 02:13 GMT

#6692

On June 24 2018 07:57 Jockmcplop wrote:

Show nested quote +

If you want the full classroom setting (and a really, really good teacher):
https://www.youtube.com/user/professorleonard57/featured
From pre-algebra to calculus (I don't think he has any trigonometry posted yet).
EDIT:
There are a lot of other people posting terrific content to youtube as well.
Less purely educational, but quick mention of http://www.3blue1brown.com/ who posts a lot of really cool videos on mathematics in general.

http://www.khanacademy.com is also terrific though occasionally the structure will be kind of weird (they aim to cover pretty much everything so it makes sense that you sometimes run into semi-dead ends where they don't have connecting content).

If you need textbooks, this site is amazing:
https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/

http://www.edx.org
http://www.coursera.org
http://www.udacity.com

These all have tonnes of math courses, generally adapted from actual universities (udacity not so much, their content is produced specifically for them and is less general - i.e very programming focused, especially machine learning/data science).

http://www.udemy.com has tonnes of courses for everything. Haven't used.
http://www.brilliant.org kind of a learn by applying focus, seems good but have only trialed it.

If you want more advanced stuff then MIT has a ton of their content available for free:
https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

gobbledydook

Australia2600 Posts

June 24 2018 04:38 GMT

#6693

I swear I see some story about a kid selling stuff in their front yard so their family member isn't left to die by the US healthcare system, or raise money for cops or whatever and it's celebrated. Black kid in the Bay sells some water, better get the police here ASAP!

She sells weed for dogs (and people) for a living btw. She is the epitome of what's wrong with commercial cannabis.

we invented calculators so that we wouldn't need to do arithmetic ourselves.

KwarK

United States42263 Posts

June 24 2018 06:00 GMT

#6694

On June 24 2018 05:29 GreenHorizons wrote:
It's scary how many people I've gone out with that aced calculus but struggle to calculate a tip. I was recently out with a material engineer grad that actually just gave up trying and used an app. Something tells me the frequency of our math issues go deeper than just the education. Decimals into percentages and fractions are notorious areas. "I don't do fractions" is something I heard every year in math class from 3rd grade till high school.

In other news, it looks like BBQ Becky has a new friend, Permit Patty

https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/1010577297227862016

I swear I see some story about a kid selling stuff in their front yard so their family member isn't left to die by the US healthcare system, or raise money for cops or whatever and it's celebrated. Black kid in the Bay sells some water, better get the police here ASAP!

She sells weed for dogs (and people) for a living btw. She is the epitome of what's wrong with commercial cannabis.

I have mixed feelings on this one.

Obviously you shouldn't call the police on anyone you don't want to be shot. That goes pretty much without saying. So she was wrong to call the police.

However, the image I have in my head based on Patty's interview is of a lady using her kid as a prop to engage what was essentially street begging. Shouting at passers by to buy incredibly overpriced water because here's a child and it's for a good cause etc. I can see how that'd be incredibly annoying. I wouldn't confront them or call the police or anything because I'm far too British and middle class but I probably would move to a more expensive neighbourhood where people didn't do that kind of thing, thus contributing to urban decay in the area I left and pricing out the undesirables in the new area.

I don't see racism there, I see classism.

GreenHorizons

United States22991 Posts

June 24 2018 07:00 GMT

#6695

On June 24 2018 15:00 KwarK wrote:

Show nested quote +

They weren't begging, they were hustling. There was a baseball game nearby and the little girl wants to go to disneyland.

Typically conservatives would call this the entrepreneurial spirit being crushed by big government.

I'm sure the water she was selling was cheaper than it was in the stadium too. There's certainly a race component as well. It's not as if she had gone down there and saw a little white girl selling water for disneyland tickets her response would be to call the police, nor would she expect the police to do anything.

She hid in shame because she knew what she was doing (or pretending to do) was shameful.

Operator: "911 what's your emergency?"

Permit Patty: "There's a little girl selling bottled water across the street from the Giants game"

Operator: "..."

Permit Patty: *whispers* "She's black"

Operator: "The SWAT team is on the way"

(Not the actual transcript)

iamthedave

England2814 Posts

June 24 2018 07:44 GMT

#6696

On June 24 2018 16:00 GreenHorizons wrote:

Show nested quote +

Are you SURE that's not the actual transcript? Seems legit to me. Save you didn't mention the helicopter and sniper teams, but I'll give you a pass on that.

I think it's quite likely the cops wouldn't have been called on a white girl doing the same thing. Perhaps even very likely.

m4ini

4215 Posts

June 24 2018 10:09 GMT

#6697

Seems like republicans don't think it's funny to be at the receiving end of the discrimination-stick.

Only got the german source here so i won't bother linking it - Sarah Sanders got thrown out of a restaurant, on behalf of gay people working there. As in, she was asked nicely to leave by the owner, because the owner values honesty, compassion etc.

Some republicans are already in full mental gymnastic mode to justify the baker not serving a gay person, but gays not serving an anti-gay person/government is "the end of a democratic america".

Kinda ironic if you think about it objectively. It's okay to discriminate against people if you state that you believe in mystical fairies, but it's a scandal if you do it based on your own morals. I can't be the only one seeing the irony there.

edit

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44588939

To not be entirely without source.

Gahlo

United States35118 Posts

June 24 2018 10:17 GMT

#6698

On June 24 2018 19:09 m4ini wrote:
Seems like republicans don't think it's funny to be at the receiving end of the discrimination-stick.

Only got the german source here so i won't bother linking it - Sarah Sanders got thrown out of a restaurant, on behalf of gay people working there. As in, she was asked nicely to leave by the owner, because the owner values honesty, compassion etc.

Some republicans are already in full mental gymnastic mode to justify the baker not serving a gay person, but gays not serving an anti-gay person/government is "the end of a democratic america".

Kinda ironic if you think about it objectively. It's okay to discriminate against people if you state that you believe in mystical fairies, but it's a scandal if you do it based on your own morals. I can't be the only one seeing the irony there.

edit

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44588939

To not be entirely without source.

A local source: https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/23/politics/sarah-sanders-restaurant-kicked-out/index.html

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said she was kicked out of a Virginia restaurant by its owner because she works for President Donald Trump.
"Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington, VA to leave because I work for @POTUS and I politely left," Sanders posted on Twitter Saturday.
"Her actions say far more about her than about me," Sanders said. "I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so."
When reached for comment by CNN, Sanders referred to the tweet she posted.

The owner Stephanie Wilkinson told The Washington Post in an interview Saturday that she "would have done the same thing again."

It was only a matter of time before they got a taste of their own medicine. Live by the golden rule, die by the golden rule - it's not a golden ruler you get to hit people with. Sucks that there was a need for it to happen at all.

DarkPlasmaBall

United States44051 Posts

June 24 2018 10:22 GMT

#6699

On June 24 2018 13:38 gobbledydook wrote:

Show nested quote +

we invented calculators so that we wouldn't need to do arithmetic ourselves.

Sure, although you might be surprised as to just how many adults wouldn't know what to type into a calculator to generate a 15% tip. For example, a sizable percentage of customers would try doing something like dividing by 15 or .15.

That being said, phones nowadays have "tip calculator" apps which lets the user just plug in numbers without needing to type the math equation. It obviously takes longer to take out the phone and use the app than it takes someone who's decent at arithmetic to move the decimal place and add half, but I guess the results are what matters. It disappoints me to watch someone use that app, and when I show them the quick 15% trick they usually respond positively to it, sometimes shocked that that's all you need to do to find the tip.

m4ini

4215 Posts

June 24 2018 10:38 GMT

#6700

On June 24 2018 19:22 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:

Show nested quote +

As a european, this concept of tipping in the US (not tipping itself but how it's done) is maybe one of the most foreign things of the US to me.

Don't get me wrong. If the waiter did his/her job properly, i tip. I don't do maths though, i just round it to the next big number depending on how much i spend on the meal. Trying to do math to figure out how much i'm voluntarily giving someone to appreciate a job well done seems very.. american to me. If i have two coffees and it comes up to 7,40eur, i'll give a tenner and leave the rest. On a 94eur meal with my wife i'll give 100 and leave the rest. My barber takes 8 for a haircut, i give 10 and leave the rest - and so on. Only if the meal comes up to like 99eur, i'll give like 105/110 depending on what money i have in paper in my wallet.

Over here tipping is voluntary to appreciate a job well done, doesn't seem to be the case in the US really. If i'm expected to tip a certain amount, just put it on the bill then.

Sidenote, i'm also in the 10%, plus half of that camp, for example checking discounts in electronic stores etc.

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