this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2026
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Like was it a meaningful debate or a flat out flame war? And what was the main theme you were arguing over?

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[–] FishFace@piefed.social 5 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Right here on Lemmy, someone argued with me for weeks that the mathematical conventions on order of operations can be proven, and that all calculators obey them. You can find calculator manuals with explicit examples that don't obey the conventions, and as a one time mathematician, his attempts at proofs are pathetic. Anyone who persists with him no matter how polite, will be faced with rudeness and condescension.

I found the guy on Mastodon where he peddles the full suite of common mathematical wrongness (he thinks 0.999... ≠ 1) and recently he tried to do an inductive proof in an "educational" thread and got completely schooled by someone else. He was unable to understand that he was wrong.

He claims to be a maths teacher, but his ability ran out at school and he's to arrogant to realise.

[–] Crackhappy@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Were you arguing with Terrence Howard?

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 2 points 2 weeks ago

Lol, he's not quite that loopy!

[–] HoneyMustardGas@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Mathematics will always fascinate me. I am too wise to argue with experts on it. I am not that naive. I love the YouTube channel Numberphile. It really kept my attention better than "college math" lol.

[–] FishFace@piefed.social 2 points 2 weeks ago

Numberphile has some great stuff :)

[–] DomeGuy@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Being cursed with a memory good enough to recall some of my math teachers, I'm absolutely willing to believe that someone as comically incompetent as you describe could be a math teacher.

[–] AskewLord@piefed.social 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

i had a horrible math teacher for two years in high school. there are tons of awful teachers out there who know nothing about what they are teaching... they are just doing a rote job and teaching blinded from the same textbook for decades on end.

about 80% of the teaching staff at my high school were of that ilk. They just wanted an easy boring rote stable job and they got summers off to party/travel... and I meet teachers who basically say this is why they wanted to teach.

I think I had like 3 teachers in secondary school who actually knew what they were teaching.