Teenagers’ mathematics and reading skills are in an unprecedented decline across dozens of countries and COVID school closures are only partly to be blamed, the OECD said on Tuesday in its latest survey of global learning standards.

  • Yeah we’re fucked, meanwhile in China they’re doing stoichiometry in third grade. I felt I would never use math too and then one day in law school the professor asked the class to do a quick calculation and called on a student who said “I’m not a math person, that’s why I’m here.” And the professor said something like “all law practice involves math and you could get sued or disbarred for getting it wrong, so you better become a math person while you’re here.” I’ve found it to be true, calculating damages, disbursing funds, accounting, sometines even physics questions, in the context of personal injury/medicine or products liability, even occupational health.

    • tygerprints
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      37 months ago

      It’s funny because I was one of those in school who always said, “I’ll never NEVER use this stuff in my real job!” How wrong I was. And I wasn’t terrible, I got good grades in math but it’s never been my strongest subject. However it does come in quite handy in real life.

      • @interceder270@lemmy.world
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        17 months ago

        I was one of the kids in school who said that and it turned out to be true.

        Reading, on the other hand, was very important to me. As well as history.

    • @interceder270@lemmy.world
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      17 months ago

      I don’t really consider doing arithmetic to be important for lawyers.

      If you can use a calculator, all you need to do is understand the very simple concepts. This applies to the vast majority of people who use math in their everyday lives.