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What is something other people seem to grasp easily that eludes you? (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 days ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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For me it's time signatures in music. I grew up playing instruments, played in several orchestras, etc. But no matter how many times someone tries to explain time signatures to me, it makes no sense. I don't understand why people place such importance on it. To me, notes have a pitch and a duration, maybe some dynamics. That's it. I don't understand why people try to needlessly complicate it. It doesn't give you anything.

My wife will hear a song and go "Oh neat, it's in 5/8." And I'm like "How tf do you know that, and why does it matter?"

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[–] 1 point 2 days ago (2 children)

it's a good attempt too, because i had completely forgot how to do that (mostly because we were taught something called the "chair method" for long division which tends to take up entire pages) and it reminded me of another thing: times tables.

whet i was in school, we got these arithmetic worksheets with times tables on them once a week, (one meek it was 4×n, then 5, then 6...) and we were supposed to do them while being timed. iirc we had five minutes at the start of maths. i don't think i have to tell you how stressful that is with no intuition as well as fine motor issues. anyway, point being, i don't remember ever doing one for division. we went from pieces of pies, to the chair method, to short division problems. now, i've since learned that apparently the worksheet method isn't a good pedagogical tool, but it still feels like we skipped a step.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    For sure, yeah. I think that honestly division just isn't as intuitive, for people. It's weird. But you're right, maybe none of it is as intuitive as it feels and it was just the school hammering things in 😛

    Like, a classic example, it feels intuitive that 1/3 + 2/6 = 3/9. I know those are fractions and not division, but I think it goes together. And it makes sense why it doesn't work that way if you really dig into it, in this particular example all three of those fractions are actually ⅓, so it's a+a=a, which is only true for a=0. You can draw pictures of pies and stuff, but I do agree it doesn't feel quite as "natural" as addition or multiplication. There is also a giant hole in it with division by zero, which isn't the only time the math runs into and edge, but it is the first one people encounter...

    Well, it's been fun chatting about math with you anyway!

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