Originally Posted by
Mullah Kintyre
No offence intended but what I wish people would work on in any branch of mathematics is the basics such as you do not express a lower value by using a multiplication of the original, higher value by a whole number. "5 times" what? Does "5 times" mean one fifth, ie 20% of something else, or one sixth being the five x plus the one, ie 17%? The correct method is to use a fraction.
This lesson is taught in secondary school or possibly even primary, I don't remember. I'm not sure what they teach today aside from critical race theory, the new reality of 57 genders and Bruce Pascoe's Aussie "history" but this method of expressing values is becoming very common as the general population is dumbed down bit by bit. It's always disappointing to see supposedly well-educated professional pilots making these errors.
I’m always disappointed by the mistakes and assumptions “well-educated professional pilots” make about the Australian national curriculum.
Maths is poorly understood in the general population and is it really a surprise when knowledge is derided in our society? The other evening I was listening to a popular music radio DJ asking people to phone in with “useless stuff they learnt at school. “Algebra”, “Pythagoras” and other maths areas that I use on a regular basis were mentioned and laughed at. Biology was also cited as being of no use, my wife uses the basics of that subject, along with chemistry, everyday when keeping critically-ill COVID patients alive.
Dr Ben Goldacre’s ‘Bad Science’ has a chapter dedicated to the misrepresentation of statistics to make things look better or worse. Also has a lot of information that anti-vaxxers should probably read before expressing their opinion in public as “fact”.