Math makes no sense
(Written last night, while offline.)
I have figured out why I hate math, and why I gave up on it when I was a child. Because math has a logic all its own that is utterly foreign to anything I can make sense of. What's more, the more complex the math, the more fucked up the logic. I can't get my brain to think in the ways needed by math to think in, and it frankly boggles my mind that any human being is capable of thinking in those terms.
This rant got started when I asked Brooke the simple question of "How many zeroes are in a googol?" Now, I knew a googol was 10 to the 100th power, and that meant nothing to me, hence why I asked the question. She told me that the definition I had already told me how many zeroes were in it. Long story short, it turns out 10 to the 100th power means a 1 followed by 100 zeroes. Which makes absolutely no sense at all. Her explanation was that 10100 is the same thing as "1 followed by 100 zeroes." I don't see how this is possible; 10 has one more zero than 1 does. It would make more sense, in any sane kind of logic, to call it 1100. But apparently 1 to the zeroth power is 1 or some shit like that. I don't know... I got so confused by and pissed off at her attempted explanations, because it has become a definite pattern: I ask for a simple answer to a simple question, and she tries to act like a math teacher instead, lecturing me on how to do shit I'll never be able to do, ultimately serving only to confuse and irritate me. I can barely add, subtract, multiply, and divide easy numbers without a calculator. And every time I attempt to understand something math-related, I just end up completely confused. My brain does not work in a way that can process the bullshit twisted logic of math. I'd have better luck trying to decipher the fucked-up logic of Republicans than that of math. Whenever she tries to explain something math-related to me, it's like something is interfering with the translation. I hear the words, and each word makes sense on its own, but the words just don't translate into images or any other format I can comprehend. It's like trying to fit a square peg into a triangular hole.
So that's it. I give up, again. I am never again going to try to understand this shit. It's not worth it. I have calculators, and computers. If something happens where there are no more calculators or computers to use, it really won't matter anyway because that will mean civilization has collapsed and I'll soon be dead anyway. I've decided I was right the first time around, when as a child I decided there was no use trying to understand this math shit; I'm just not capable of understanding it. Don't even attempt to explain it, I will ignore any attempts to do so. What's more, it makes me feel stupid. I know I'm not stupid, but trying to understand this crap, and being utterly unable to do so, makes me feel stupid. Which just pisses me off faster.
And the next time I ask Brooke for a simple answer to a simple question, if she tries to pull the teacher routine on me again I'm going to respond, "Cut the crap and just give me a straight answer."
This was cross-posted from http://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1063015.html
You can comment either here or there.
I have figured out why I hate math, and why I gave up on it when I was a child. Because math has a logic all its own that is utterly foreign to anything I can make sense of. What's more, the more complex the math, the more fucked up the logic. I can't get my brain to think in the ways needed by math to think in, and it frankly boggles my mind that any human being is capable of thinking in those terms.
This rant got started when I asked Brooke the simple question of "How many zeroes are in a googol?" Now, I knew a googol was 10 to the 100th power, and that meant nothing to me, hence why I asked the question. She told me that the definition I had already told me how many zeroes were in it. Long story short, it turns out 10 to the 100th power means a 1 followed by 100 zeroes. Which makes absolutely no sense at all. Her explanation was that 10100 is the same thing as "1 followed by 100 zeroes." I don't see how this is possible; 10 has one more zero than 1 does. It would make more sense, in any sane kind of logic, to call it 1100. But apparently 1 to the zeroth power is 1 or some shit like that. I don't know... I got so confused by and pissed off at her attempted explanations, because it has become a definite pattern: I ask for a simple answer to a simple question, and she tries to act like a math teacher instead, lecturing me on how to do shit I'll never be able to do, ultimately serving only to confuse and irritate me. I can barely add, subtract, multiply, and divide easy numbers without a calculator. And every time I attempt to understand something math-related, I just end up completely confused. My brain does not work in a way that can process the bullshit twisted logic of math. I'd have better luck trying to decipher the fucked-up logic of Republicans than that of math. Whenever she tries to explain something math-related to me, it's like something is interfering with the translation. I hear the words, and each word makes sense on its own, but the words just don't translate into images or any other format I can comprehend. It's like trying to fit a square peg into a triangular hole.
So that's it. I give up, again. I am never again going to try to understand this shit. It's not worth it. I have calculators, and computers. If something happens where there are no more calculators or computers to use, it really won't matter anyway because that will mean civilization has collapsed and I'll soon be dead anyway. I've decided I was right the first time around, when as a child I decided there was no use trying to understand this math shit; I'm just not capable of understanding it. Don't even attempt to explain it, I will ignore any attempts to do so. What's more, it makes me feel stupid. I know I'm not stupid, but trying to understand this crap, and being utterly unable to do so, makes me feel stupid. Which just pisses me off faster.
And the next time I ask Brooke for a simple answer to a simple question, if she tries to pull the teacher routine on me again I'm going to respond, "Cut the crap and just give me a straight answer."
This was cross-posted from http://fayanora.dreamwidth.org/1063015.html
You can comment either here or there.