A bad scene.

[pipme]

Ok, let us reconvene at this place, years henceforth, when those of you who presently have not, have children doing well in education... Will you deny them the CHANCE, the OPPPORTUNITY to hit their full potential ?
Somehow I doubt that.

 

[Damocles]

You reckon uni is the only chance for someone to achieve their full potential? That is exactly how the government is selling it to everyone. The fact though is that each person going to uni will spent 3 years less doing an actual job. 20 million people? that would be 60 million man years spent on it. Is that really the best use of all these clever people's time?

As the number of graduates goes up, their average earnings are going down. Well what a surprise. The idea that someone does well because they have a degree completely forgets that they had to be in the cleverest 10% of the population to have got there at all. Ending up in a good job very likely had little to do with actually having their degree.

 

[felix]

Strangly enough AdamW, mathematicians are not particularly good at arithmetic. Darts players can beat us every time. Once you got into the sixth form it was all algebra, calculus, vectors, matrices, topology, transforms, power series, iteration, groups, rings, feilds, b****red if I can remember the rest. A number 2 or 3 sometimes turned up in those equations but we only ever had to multiply big numbers as a party trick. 999 x 1001 was always a good one; in fact any variation on (X + 1)(X - 1) = (X^2 - 1) would do.

This is what real mathematics is all about. Long, long ago somebody thought it would be a good idea to teach it in primary schools too. They called it New Mathematics. Great idea except they forgot to teach arithmetic!

actually to be fair, maths departments seem to have a slightly greater number of attractive women than physics departments

This is true, not that it makes much difference. Mars has more atmosphere than Mercury; big deal! Still, just spare a thought for those poor engineers ---

When I think back, those students who couldn't give a toss about politics (most of us actually) were pretty well obsessed with sex'n'drugs'n'rock'n'roll. I wonder whether it's still the same today? I can see one change on the horizon. At my daughter's junior school every year six girl just had to have a boyfriend and those who didn't made one up. (Now that sounds familiar.) So where were the boys? Too busy swapping Pokemon cards! I wonder what'll happen when that generation gets to university.

 

[2scoops0406]

Strangly enough AdamW, mathematicians are not particularly good at arithmetic. Darts players can beat us every time. Once you got into the sixth form it was all algebra, calculus, vectors, matrices, topology, transforms, power series, iteration, groups, rings, feilds, b****red if I can remember the rest. A number 2 or 3 sometimes turned up in those equations but we only ever had to multiply big numbers as a party trick. 999 x 1001 was always a good one; in fact any variation on (X + 1)(X - 1) = (X^2 - 1) would do.

This is what real mathematics is all about. Long, long ago somebody thought it would be a good idea to teach it in primary schools too. They called it New Mathematics. Great idea except they forgot to teach arithmetic!

actually to be fair, maths departments seem to have a slightly greater number of attractive women than physics departments

This is true, not that it makes much difference. Mars has more atmosphere than Mercury; big deal! Still, just spare a thought for those poor engineers ---

When I think back, those students who couldn't give a toss about politics (most of us actually) were pretty well obsessed with sex'n'drugs'n'rock'n'roll. I wonder whether it's still the same today? I can see one change on the horizon. At my daughter's junior school every year six girl just had to have a boyfriend and those who didn't made one up. (Now that sounds familiar.) So where were the boys? Too busy swapping Pokemon cards! I wonder what'll happen when that generation gets to university.

Thanks for that, my Maths isn't bad at all, my arithmetic is frankly quite shocking sometimes. Though I must admit playing darts really helps, I think it's all down to pattern matching, still though some of my less formally educated collegues can beat me hands down, both at darts, and arithmetic. Perhaps that dosen't bode well for the new job