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midnight_mechanic t1_j0i5hu0 wrote

Reply to comment by Juliuseizure in NASA's DART asteroid smash flung 2 million pounds of rock into space by shellystarzz

As someone who has worked many years in the construction industry, the number of full ass grown adults I have had to teach fractions to is triggering.

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MostBoringStan t1_j0igko4 wrote

This made me remember a job I had for a short time a few years back. I was in the shipping department of a machine shop. The one guy wanted to train me how to cut some pieces of metal on one piece of equipment.

Before we got started, he pulled out a tape measure and started asking me where on the tape measure 1 3/4" was, or 2 3/8" was. I was really confused because I'm a grown ass man and have known how to use a tape measure since I was a child.

Then he laughed and said he just wanted to make sure because a not insignificant amount of people he has worked with had no idea wtf they were doing when it came to tape measures and fractions.

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midnight_mechanic t1_j0ih1u0 wrote

I had a folder with spare copies of a chart of fractions and their decimal equivalents I would hand out to people on the first or second day of training.

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Uden10 t1_j0it8kh wrote

This... this is concerning. Not that I can talk much since I had to learn imperial units for volume and weight in college. I never memorized them in primary school despite being American.

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gender_nihilism t1_j0jj9ue wrote

I still don't understand what's so hard about fractions. I'm absolutely terrible at math, but even I can multiply, divide, add, and subtract fractions far faster than I can decimals. I even find myself converting decimal units into fractions to do the math in my head, then write out the result and convert it back to decimal. I guess there are benefits to your math tutor being a retired carpenter.

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midnight_mechanic t1_j0jl2p3 wrote

It's not hard. While some of the folks I taught this basic math to were just plain dumb, most turned out to be capable, hard workers.

I think it's more a reflection of growing up in extreme poverty, in a broken home, young gang activity or childhood immigrants that had to learn English and everything else in school.

One dude I taught fractions to was this beast of a man who just got released from several years for selling crack. This dude could pick up and carry 2 full size oxygen bottles across the yard like nothing.

He learned quickly and was super willing to work his way up. He grew up selling drugs, skipping school was in a gang as a kid and only had his mom who could barely put food on the table when he was a kid. He told me he was bullied in school for showing up in old clothes and ragged shoes and wasn't till he started selling drugs as a kid that he first could afford a nice pair of sneakers.

He eventually got picked up for selling coke one weekend, but he was a hell of a shop hand while we had him.

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