 -->-- Roger Bacon  [[ThisIsGonnaSuck *takes a deep breath*]]
[[EverybodyHatesMathematics It is also hated by roughly 99.9% of
all people.]] It is the major reason that there aren't more
scientists, doctors, engineers, or Wall Street workers. This is
probably due to the way it is taught: 6 to 8 years of number
crunching, most of which a calculator can do faster and with
less chance of error, followed by massive, abstract
generalizations (algebra and calculus). To make things worse,
students are rarely told ''why'' they need to learn the current
topic: science teachers tend to wait until after you've learned
the math to show you the uses for it, and a lot of math teachers
focus on the techniques rather than the applications. (Or they
try to demonstrate the applications by assigning word problems--
without realizing that "translate this word problem into math"
is ''also'' a skill that needs to be taught, and that assigning
said problems to students who don't have that skill won't help.)
Worst of all, many elem