What use is math for the average pleb (outside academia)?

[flying_pan]

Well, for the average pleb (so, an average Joe) only basic calculus is needed, maybe some concepts from geometry.

Anything above is tricky; you usually don't benefit from it directly, but it enables certain things. E.g. good understanding of statistics will allow you to compare different scenarios in your head, like how risky this or that approach really is compared to something else. Or you can approximate some formula and decide how viable some approach is. For example, I crunch a lot of numbers in my head while I am hiking. I don't have anything to assist – I just check whether it will work under different assumptions; later I re-check it with proper calculations, but the basis is always close.
I also find that understanding extrapolation and different progressions (like exponential, linear, square, etc) helps me to reject certain ideas quickly, while people I personally know have to calculate hard and long before seeing the trend.

I also agree that learning math helps with logic and proofs, hence it improves your reasoning, but I am not convinced that it actually helps in a day-to-day life.

p.s. I am not that good in math, though. I studied for 3 years for an engineering degree, nothing as crazy as a dedicated math faculty.

[George the original one]

Knowing math, particularly statistics, helps combat the outright lies that are so prevalent in today's society. Enables investors and gamblers to successfully go beyond playing hunches. Higher geometry helps carpenters and machinists independently improve their efficiency & accuracy. How about the hazards and benefits of compound interest? Linear algebra for min-maxing solutions?

[C40]

I use math all the time. There are the obvious things like for investing, taxes, making wise purchases, and so on. And tons of other non-financial things that depend on hobbies. Even something like roasting and making coffee can include math in a variety of ways - including very complicated heat transfer math (or, in my case, more of just applying residual understanding from my heat transfer courses to how I decide to roast.. but not doing actual calculations)

One of the ways I enjoy it the most is maybe only borderline math - estimations. That ranges from sloppy but very quick math like doing currency conversions in my head (and being able to know nearly instantly that the 140,000 dong price I see means about 6 USD).. to other things frequently tied to physics, like whether that 2x4 would break if I walk up it as a ramp, or if my 250 lb friend does - or if we both walk one behind the other, and would it work better if we stay further apart. It's all math.

[Sclass]

Knowing math, particularly statistics, helps combat the outright lies that are so prevalent in today's society.

+1. The worse the lie the less complex the calculation required to debunk it. It’s amazing how many things can be caught by just counting.

Being able to see an exponential mechanism in something like the proliferation of open source code can give one some vision before a massive explosion in growth. The non math types are shocked twenty years after the fact.

Or the reported numbers of Coronavirus cases? The worse the lie the crappier the calculation required to ferret it out. Some of these reports are an insult to the worldwide collective intelligence...which is actually pretty low I guess.

Which brings me back to the op. There are a ton of people who get by just fine out there with no math. I employed a line of assemblers who barely could keep track not to mention understand the meaning of our statistical error analysis tracking system. Yet, they knew how to get paid, get drunk, get fat, hook up with one another or better with factory workers across the street and start dramatic fights. And show up like nothing happened on Monday. No math required. Not bad at all.

What did I get for my math? About 30% more pay after taxes, a weekend in front of my pc running Monte Carlo sims on the errors they were potentially introducing to our product, and their hatred for “making their job hard.”

Makes me wonder if it’s all overrated. I like being enlightened but I get the idea there’s a big old world out there that can be enjoyed without calculation.

Perhaps being a walking computer is overrated?

[ZAFCorrection]

Having some intuitive understanding of the law of large numbers would save everyone a lot of time, and me a giant headache. With 330 million people in the country, there is always going to be some anecdote or news story that supports your position. But you can't argue math with people when they just want to talk about antifa, or whatever.

[chenda]

I wonder if mental maths ability and/or usefulness has been declining in recent years. Card payments render checking you change obsolete, sat navs calculate driving times, online banking gives you an instant running total etc...

[Frita]

@chenda
One still has to ensure that the receipt is correct. I find many errors, to include higher than listed prices and duplicates, on receipts. I still like to be able to calculate quickly in my head over an app, though my 15 year old would prefer the tech route.

[7Wannabe5]

You have to use math to do many things, because even very intelligent humans can only see about 5 objects at once in their visual field. IOW, that's the limit of the intuitive, beyond which you must or will start counting. Obviously, there is also a limit to how many unique names/symbols you can assign to quantities, so it is "natural" to proceed towards addition and multiplication, as in "How many cows have you?", "Ten and two, my friend." "How many springs have you seen?" " 2 score and 5, my friend." There have been many different systems and algorithms developed towards basic tasks over the course of human history, but they all remain within the boundaries of the structure of the brain and body. For instance, the highest known base system used by humans is 20. I forget which culture used 20, but highly likely it was in a warm region where people could usually see their toes, because what you are really doing when you are counting is matching and short-term memorizing; basically the same mechanism birds often use to distribute worms equitably to multiple open hungry mouths.

[jacob]

@7wb5 - Check this out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger-co ... ng_Systems

Fun fact: Danish is one number system (notorious for making absolutely no sense to the rest of Scandinavia) that retains base 20 even though I think most of the collective memory/understanding has been buried by time. For example 50 = halvtreds (modern pronounciation, makes no sense since a lot of pertinent math has been clipped, literally means half of sixty which 30?! but ... ) = halvtredsindstyve (2-3 generations ago, means half "something to do with 3" "something" 20) = halv tre sinds tyve (half tre times (means interest) 20), so now we're getting somewhere.

This makes sense once one recalls that halv-N means (N-0.5). For example "halvanden" (an actual word still in use) is 1.5. However, there's no longer any halvtredie, halvfemte ... words in use except in clipped and contracted forms of 50, 70, and 90. FWIW 53 in the modern vernacular would be treoghalvtreds (one word) which is literally 3+2.5*20 in the old vernacular.

There are also some archaic terms still in use for groceries like buying onions or flowers or whatever. Snes=20, dusin=12, and gros=12*12. Someone selling in bulk is said to be dealing in "gros" (e'n gros).

[GandK]

It helps you identify jerks.

If you drive an expensive car you're probably a jerk, scientists say

Seriously, though: outside of my programming career, in my adult life I have almost exclusively used financial math. I've used that extensively, though, and some of it I had to teach myself. As a homeschooling parent, this has influenced my decisions on how we do math, especially practical examples. Also, my own parents were very cagey about money until after we'd left the nest, contributing to my financial ignorance. Ergo, both my sons have access to our family budget and have been present at budgeting discussions from very early on.

Edit: I take that back. Although I haven't "done" statistics personally, understanding statistics has proven invaluable for separating data from anecdata. I enjoy anecdata, but one needs to know the difference to not be led astray by every passing Internet shiny.

[Alphaville]

I took several math and physics courses in college and due to lack of use I have completely forgotten it all by now. Nevertheless, I hope the analytical and problem-solving skills have remained functional even if applied to other realms, and I still have an intuitive grasp of the concepts.

As for average Joes:

I was once trying to build a hoop house in “ye olde homestead.”

I picked the line that faced the prevalent winds to build the entrance. Drove my stakes into ground.

Then I had to throw a 20 yard perpendicular line at a square angle from the corner.

How to do it? My math was sooooo rusty. 90 degrees... I started thinking about making a large compass to trace a perpendicular.... what should I use for it.. 2 large sticks... hm...

The friendly “uneducated” peasant who was helping me listened to my speculations and said: “just use 3, 4, 5...”

I felt so dumb.

[jacob]

The friendly “uneducated” peasant who was helping me listened to my speculations and said: “just use 3, 4, 5...”

Ha! Ironically, or perhaps to the point, I think it requires a fairly high/long engagement with mathematics to experience that "3,4,5 duh moment" insofar one DID NOT learn it as a trick. It is, in my opinion/experience, not something that a mathematician would trivially create... yet something mathematicians would instantly grok. However, I think it's that "grokking" that speaks to the power of deep mathematical understanding. One starts seeing relations that are otherwise not obvious. This can be somewhat useful to understand patterns in an increasingly complex word insofar a trick is not previously existing.

For example, one rule of building construction as found in the Bible famously sets the ratio between the diameter and the circumference of a circle, that is, pi, to 3. This off by about 5% but obviously served as a guide for construction [materials] for thousands of years. 3,4,5 happens to be exact... unless the building surface is not exactly flat, so non-Euclidian, such as would be the case for really large projects, such as long distance travel and timekeeping. Mathematicians would understand/foresee the problems this could cause ... and why. Others would not.

Hint to those not familiar with speed squares: 3^2+4^2=5^2 ... one of the few integer Pythagorean solutions which are non-obvious unless you look for them. It's called a Pythagorean Triple. It's to square triangles what 22/7 is to pi.

[7Wannabe5]

Someone selling in bulk is said to be dealing in "gros" (e'n gros).

Thus the grocery store. BTW, I should have typed that 20 is the extent of primitive or common or "natural" human systems. The Babylonians used Base 60 system due to need to combine Base 5 and Base 12 systems for trade purposes, but they had to use tables in order to multiply up to 59 X 59. This is why we are still stuck with 60 minutes in an hour*. The Base 12 system is useful because 12 is divisible by 2,3 and 4, but it is kind of archaic that kids are still often taught to memorize up to 12 X 12.

* I think it is highly disorienting for us moderns to try to conceive of time in other terms. For instance, consider dividing the day into 10 periods. I mean, the trauma of semi-conversion to the metric system was enough to drive Americans to obesity due to portion control confusion.

@OP:

Also, how else can you calculate dH/dt* towards maximization of QofL?

*and also thereby note that @peak bliss = @bottom despair. Oh, to be once again approaching the undefined!

[naturelover]

I learned a ton of math and physics in my education.

I don't remember most of it. Statistics and my data analytics skills have always come in handy though.

[fiby41]

For instance, consider dividing the day into 10 periods

The French tried using the decimal system for time keeping after the revolution. A day of 10 hours, an hour of 100 minutes. There was some other culture with days divided into 60 hours and an hour of 24 minutes. Back when a meter was the length of a forearm and foot was the length of a foot, a second was the time between two blinks which came about to 1/24th of a minute.

[fiby41]

The Babylonians used Base 60 system due to need to combine Base 5 and Base 12 systems for trade purposes

It is interesting also how different people solved the same problems. We've not found evidence for centralized top down administration (palaces, edicts) to enforce it, but the need for standardized weights and measurements when going from city to city was met with cubes in the ratios 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 (binary weight system, powers of 2):

[Smashter]

The egregious recent math gaffe on MSNBC with Brian Williams and Mara Gay (NYT) shows how math can be useful in preventing embarrassing moments on live TV

https://twitter.com/EnergyLawProf/statu ... 3384961025

TL, didn't watch — they discuss a tweet that claims Bloomberg could have given a million dollars to every US citizen instead of spending $500M on his presidential campaign. They are off by a factor of 1,000,000!

[ertyu]

And being an informed citizen that can actually understand the gaffe as opposed to getting hooked by its emotional appeal goes a long way, too.

[Generation-X]

The most obvious effect of math for the average pleb living in modern times is the difference in pay.

Knowing math, rudimentary or advanced, is only the first step. The real difference in pay comes when the so-called rudimentary math, such as algebra, is paired with another set of knowledge to solve real world problems.

i.e., most everyone knows how to add and subtract. But an account, by pairing the knowledge of IRS tax rules with basic math operations, can earn a living.

Some have managed to make millions in the lottery using math - https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/art ... o-winners/ (I myself have used math to earn some lunch money at a casino for about a year.)

As others have noted, math is the fundamental language used in solving many of the world's problems - and this is where the math pays.

[fiby41]

Music! In some languages like Japanese it's not just what you say buy how you say it that gives it meaning. The word for teacher if stressed on the other vowel means stupid. In Russian zAmok and zamOk spells the difference between castle and lock. Intonation spells the difference between a question and a statement in most spoken languages.
Sanskrit uses the binary number system for a syllable can be either intonated (1) or not (0).
Conventionally three syllables have always been grouped together for defining the symptoms and measuring the repeating pattern in a meter. We've 2^3=8 possibilities:

Let 000 be n
Let 001 be s
010 j
011 y
100 bh
101 r
110 t
111 m

Ever seen a tiger attack, or lion hunt on nat geo or gif of a cat playing with its food? Well art imitates life and it is described by the meter called zArdUla vikridita (diacritics śārdūla) meaning a 'playful feline'

111 001 010 001 110 110 1

is the binary while its symptom is:

If the sun (representing the number 12, one for each month) drawn by his horses (7, for each colour of the spectrum) is seen galloping in the order m s j s t t it is known to be shardula vikridita.

12+7=19 is the number of syllables per repeating pattern.

Example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTvefVjGKk4&t=1m11s is from 'A Century on Economics' or a hundred verses on economics by Brother Hari (lit. Bhartṛhari) although the text itself is atleast 15 centuries old.
As a rule a symptom is in and of itself an example of the chanda (meter) it is diagnosing so as to not leave a shred of doubt in anyone's mind.

Anushtup is however the most widely employed having 32 syllables in each verse.
2^8=256 combinations are possible of which 1 is the shlok. It gets its name from the first verse of this subset was uttered spontaneously in sorrow https://www.valmiki.iitk.ac.in/content? ... b=1&scss=1

The symptoms of a shloka are
1 Know that every 6th syllable is 1
2 every 5th syllable is 0 everywhere
3 in the even quadrant the 7th vowel is long
4 in the odd quadrant the 7th vowel is 1

A quadrant is 32/4=8 syllables.

In binary representation

XXXX 011X XXXX 010X
XXXX 011X XXXX 010X

Click randomly on any part of any video in the playlist
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 0AEF6ED448
Each of the 700 verses of the Bg and 24,000 verses of Ramayana has 32 syllables in each verse, no more no less as above.
Bonus: if you take the 1st syllable of every 1000th verse of the Ramayana you get the Gayatri mantra of the RigVeda which is encoded in the 24 syllabled Gayatri meter.

One might counter question in the spirit of original post what use is use of math in encoding texts on topics other than maths / to people other than mathematicians:
1 Besides grammar this science of encoding is 1 of 6 requisites for studying the Vedas
2 Aids to memory:
The Vedas have come down in disciplic succession by oral tradition before a writing script was invented to write them down. Palm leaf manuscripts have a half life of 150 years only. Birch bark a few centuries more. Cloth and paper transcripts can be burnt which takes us to...
3 Survivorship bias: Alexandria by Romans, Baghdad house of wisdom by Mongols and university of Nalanda was burnt by Islamic fanatics. The reason a large part of literature exists extant in poetry maybe because it is what survived
4 Music is more enjoyable than a few other things
5 Spaced repetitions: when each verse of a work is in the same meter you can rearrange and reorder verses to ensure you've understood how one comes from the other. ie there is no loss of meaning/comprehension with each successive transmission. There are various methods of doing this with their own technical names like ghana pAtha (lit. Density reading.)
It's 3 30 am I should really be sleeping.