What Happened To Numeracy?

[ToraToraTora]

https://news.sky.com/story/all-pupils-in-england-to-study-maths-until-18-under-rishi-sunaks-new-mission-12779266
Not sure what the PM means by, pupils will study Maths until 18, I assume he means the ones that are still in education. Anyway I find it shocking that:
"Around eight million adults in England have the numeracy skills of primary school children, " - so what happened? Why are we so innumerate as a nation? I'm not talking about Calculus here just basic 'rithmetic.

[Zacs-Master]

'Interesting you pick on the imperial measurements I used rather than the actual issue'

I pointed out in my B&Q link that there is no actual issue.

Going back to Percentages and Parsecs, where do you see the line in being able to work things out between these two?

[jno]

the news may be full of percentages; I'm not and I don't need to calculate them; nor, to the best of my recollection, did I need to in my working days. I'll leave that to the people who write the newspapers. All I need to know is that 100% is everything and promising to give 110% is blather.

[Tilly2]

What about the sales, Jno? You know that '50% off' is a bargain but 'Up to 50% off' might not be so good.

[ToraToraTora]

09:43 not sure what you mean by "the line". Anyway, I am not a very good mathematician. I have a good grasp of the basics and it has stood me in good stead in my life and career this far. Yes I could get by knowing less but I like to know more. I do work in IT so number bases and Quantitative methods for example are of regular use. eg computers use binary and rather than having streams of 0s and 1s we use hexadecimal as a short hand to binary, 1 hex digit = 4 binary digits thus every byte is 2 hex digits and with practice you get to automatically convert between the two. One thing we do regularly is convert between Hexadecimal and decimal, we also have to do arithmetic in hex regularly.

[Zacs-Master]

'I do work in IT so number bases and Quantitative methods for example are of regular use.'

As I said earlier, I think this has swayed your opinion on the value of knowing 'workings-out' behind the Math. It is to your credit that you want to know and I think this is where we diverge. I never did have the thirst for knowledge in this area of learning.

[carrot99]

bobbinwales 5.09
"Carrott... there the same thing to me. Maybe your thinking of 12 metres square?"

Bobb it says 12m² which I believe is 12m x 12m ie 144 square metres. I'm sure that is what I was taught.

[10ClarionSt]

Morning all. I have just returned from measuring the diameter of the galaxy. You're not gonna be happy because lots of cosmic dust and rocks got in the way most of the time making the measurements somewhat inaccurate. But I can now do that mathematical genius thing called the 5x5 Magic Square Trick. It really does impress friends and family. Try it. A good test of mental arithmetic, so, numeracy required!

[10ClarionSt]

Anyway, just in case further clarification is needed, here is a little help with things.

[Zacs-Master]

'Bobb it says 12m² which I believe is 12m x 12m'

No, that would be, for example, a rectangle measuring 3 x 4 meters.

12 square meters is 144m2

[Peter Pedant]

Not sure what the PM means by, pupils will study Maths until 18,

it doesnt add up

haw haw haw

[Zacs-Master]

Sorry, mistake, 12 square meters is the same thing.

[douglas9401]

Does anyone have the formula for the forces in a tailspin? :-)

[carrot99]

Zacs are you saying that 12 square metres and 12m² are the same thing?

[ToraToraTora]

N square metres is the area of whatever shape it is in square meters. N metres squared is a square NxN.

[carrot99]

TTT sorry to harp on but was I right in thinking

"12 square meters and 12m² are a bit different if you're ordering carpet!"?

[douglas9401]

Does the shape of the meter matter?

Asking for a spelling pedant. :-)

[carrot99]

I don't know Doug but the witty one liner is your metier :)

[Peter Pedant]

12 m x 12m
My maff master - Sarky who was an ex tea planter and spoke swahili - to the other kids who er spoke swa.....anyway

said numbers didnt have units ( we were 12) they were numbers only and so you had to strip off the units

let x be the number of metres

only we used to torture ( early data torture?) for the strip "let the length in metres be the length" etc

he had a thing about 'in'

"let the time in minutes" - - - got him yelling

But 50 y later he was right - numbers are numbers and need to be connected to the real world

jsut um saying

[ToraToraTora]

carrot//TTT sorry to harp on but was I right in thinking

"12 square meters and 12m² are a bit different if you're ordering carpet!"? // yes but 12m² does mean 12 square metres NOT 12 metres square. 12 metres square is a square 12x12=144 square metres. 12 square metres(12m²) is any area in any shape that adds up to 12 square metres. m² is the symbol for square meters NOT meters square.

[ToraToraTora]

doug "Does the shape of the meter matter? " - no, eg 100m x 1cm is still a square meter. A circle of diameter 31.8 is also a square metre.