Sorry Left AND Right, No Job Requires A College Degree(forbes.com)
forbes.com
Sorry Left AND Right, No Job Requires A College Degree
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johntamny/2013/02/10/sorry-left-and-right-no-job-requires-a-college-degree/
2 comments
A quote from the article: "President Obama regularly talks up the need for more math classes 'to equip our children for the future.' The latter is odd and a bit dated, particularly when we consider that computers and calculators have largely made the need for math knowledge something of the past."
This is absolutely false. What computers and calculators do is arithmetic, not mathematics. To do math above the trivial, you still need a properly trained person.
This doesn't argue against the point of the article, which I agree with. But the fact that calculators and computers can do arithmetic shouldn't be used to argue against math education. That would be like arguing that, because computers can spell-check, we no longer need readers, writers or literacy training.
This is absolutely false. What computers and calculators do is arithmetic, not mathematics. To do math above the trivial, you still need a properly trained person.
This doesn't argue against the point of the article, which I agree with. But the fact that calculators and computers can do arithmetic shouldn't be used to argue against math education. That would be like arguing that, because computers can spell-check, we no longer need readers, writers or literacy training.
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I recently read a comment saying
Thus if you never did school algebra, you just think advanced math is just sums with bigger numbers. If you did do school algebra, you think advanced math is just using more variables in bigger equations. If you did calculus you just think it's more convoluted differentiation, or integration. If you did calculus of variations, you think ...
Well, you get the idea.
Yes, computers these days can do arithmetic much better than people can. And given the equations to manipulate, they can do the school algebra and calculus better than people can.
But that's neither what advanced math is, nor what advanced math gets used for.
Sorry Forbes, you certainly don't understand math, or the math. While it may be true that jobs don't require degrees, in many cases they certainly need the skills that degrees are supposed to impart. Whether they succeed in that, or whether they're now just a mill for turning out bits of paper, that's another question.