Ah, but see, there's the rub.... One can easily solve a single equation with a single variable. But if there are 2 variables involved, you need 2 equations in order to solve for both X and Y. Add a Z, and now you need 3 equations in order to be able to solve for all 3 variables. If you don't have at least as many equations as variables, the best you can hope for is to solve for one variable in terms of all the others. And of course, solving multiple equations for multiple variables involves a bunch more work, because of all the substitution of one variable's solution back into the other equations to solve for the next variable. And why is it that I'm really good at Math (excluding Linear Algebra and Differential Equations), but only OK at languages, and cannot read/play music at all????
And long before any of that happens, I've hit a wall. My brain just doesn't work that way. Now maybe, just maybe, if someone could explain to me why any of this would be important to me, I might have gotten through that wall (and probably hit the next one), but there are no guarantees. Maybe your math axons were so dominant they ate the others?
Garamet, surely you realize that calculating a tip at a restaurant, or determining how much a "__% off" coupon will save you on a purchase are indeed forms of simple algebra. Your X in those cases is just the value that you're trying to determine. So are you really saying you never do those things?! I find that rather hard to believe.... Hell, even simple arithmetic can be expressed as an algebraic equation... X = 4 + 5.
As I say, I'm find with x. It's y and z that are the problem. Why is it necessary to turn a simple arithmetic problem into an algebraic equation?
If you can do that, then you can also do the y and z. You just break down the problem into separate equations. And once you solve those, you place them into the y and z to get x.
And aside from squeaking through the final exam, what practical application does this have to everyday life? High school kids would be better learning how to calculate compound interest, understanding insurance deductibles, why a balloon mortgage is a bad idea, stuff like that. Practical math. Algebra should be an elective for the eggheads.
Hmmm.. if someone held a gun to Dayton's head and told him solve an equation correctly and if he doesn't he has to have pre-marital sex?
Okay, but it's all about numbers. There's no "x." Because you let "x" in the door, and the next thing you know you're knee-deep in "y" and "z," and there goes the neighborhood.
It's not necessary, but rather another way of looking at algebra. Maybe showing the algebra can be as simple as 4+5 = x will take away some of the fear-inducing mystique that some people have regarding it.
Maybe it's the way it's taught, but I'd bet if you polled high school kids about which subject they hated most, the majority would say "math." Because it's that aura of mystery that at least my teachers gave it. I'm not afraid of letters; I respect their primary purpose. Flip it around the other way: What if I replaced some of the letters in this post with numbers, and you had to decode them before you could read a simple sentence? You might find it amusing at first, but ultimately they'd be speed bumps.
Not necessarily. I don't freak out at the sight of Umlauts, or accents grave, aigu, or circumflex, the cédille, etc... Those aren't letters, and they weren't part of my initial language training, but I have still been able to take them in stride. It's a matter of having the mental flexiibility the allow for secondary purposes for things. Algebra could just as easily use Greek letters or the WingDings font characters as variables, and it really wouldn't make a difference.
But accent marks are enhancements to letters to help in pronunciation. They're not substitutions. What's easy for you isn't easy for everybody. All I'm saying.
Interestingly that is similar to what I use when tutoring other students in Algebra/Pre-Algebra. I've some people become so fixated on the x, y, z that they think x, y, z always have to be in the same place or be the same number(s). So I will use symbols to show that the variables can be any number needed to arrive at the correct answer. If the problem (for simplicity) is: 9 + 2a = 18 - 2 I will show it to them as: 9 + (2 x Φ ) = 18 - 2 and then let them see that the letters are simply place holders, and not any different than using symbols to substitute for numbers.
? IIRC isn't w used as/for a/the 4th dimension or variable in equations going past x, y, and z? X, y, and z being the 3 dimensions we can control &/or deal with in daily life, and w representing time. ?
I had an algebra teacher who did this. We used a different letter in every problem. By the time we hit functions and did g(x) and f(x) it wasn't that big a deal.
Great - algebra can be that simple but I'm guessing it gets quite a bit more complicated than that, or it wouldn't have taken me two fucking years to squeeze by with a D average. If I could just solve the fucking problems instead of labeling it with all those properties and procedures maybe I would like it more.
Signed up for it freshman year of college. I realized it was far too easy when I did the first homework assignment on one side of a piece of paper and got a perfect score while other people were struggling with twelve pages, both sides. Dropped it in favor of Abstract Algebra. So, not a hostage.
Wow, ya'll had a lot of different algebras! I only had to take college algebra and statistics. I was gonna have to take calc 1-3 for a chem degree, but then decided on neuroscience. Apparently algebra & stats is all you need for that.
Hmmm... that makes sense. I just to be a math and science major, so I have to take just about every math course there is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hrm-rPSCIBw Yeah, I wish I had a dime for every time math was so simple I asked for harder stuff. I would have exactly (X + Y) - 1/7xyz x 412 cubed + (-8)<abc/X7 kilograms.
