logic has nothing to do with math angst

One of the sadder realizations I came to recently is how much one's app choices (when not bought in hysterical sale mode) tell you about them as a person. What you put on your homescreen, for example: my laptop's desktop has two files on it, one a cheat sheet for my server, while my phone has seven screens that I'm slowly but surely organizing in a kind of desperate hope that I can follow two conflicting impulses and fail. I want each screen to be thematic, but I also wnat the stuff I use most to be within a click, which is painful as my three most used items other than email and messaging and mp3 player are a Office Suite 8, Math Pro, and Sudoku, and Office 8 needs to be on the Office Things page and math pro and sudoku need to be with the games, because as a human being, I find doing simple arithmetic and gazing in satisfaction at my high scores more rewarding than pretty much anything short of breathing.

This is a lesson in what putting vulnerable children into math competitions from an early age does to them.

It also showed me my arithmetic is not nearly as fast as my simple multiplication, since from an early age we were not taught arithmetic tables, due to reasons with it being plus and minus I suppose, but we were multiplication tables, and that sticks. Arithmetic, even simple arithmetic, i stop to count. With multiplication, I honestly don't even remember tapping in the number sometimes, it's that automatic. I remember arithmetic drills from an early age mocking us about using our fingers--dear teachers K-6, screw you, it works--but multiplication had a soundtrack, sometimes with rhythmic dancing, and for the life of me, I resent that this was not a feature during those miserable third grade tests where Travis, wherever he may be, beat me by a second every goddamn time (and used his fingers, I saw him). And at the end of the year he got to drink a Coke in class (I remember this like it was yesterday) while I sat there in seething resentment and plotted a course of life that would one day lead me to Calculus AP and differentiation.

How to get girls into math; see above. It works.

I wonder if I just wrote all that to explain that in case anyone should ever see my phone and wonder why math pro is on screen two (to the right) in a prime position outranking Pandora, they will know the reason why is logical.

Comments

[azurelunatic]

I am currently hoping that addition tables as jump-rope chants worked sufficiently well for the little dude (who is no longer technically little as he's taller than his mom now; not sure when he'll pass me).

[seperis]

*resentful* I want addition tables. I want a song and dance and clapping game to those, darn it. Why does multiplication get all the good stuff?

[nagasvoice]

Well, being an ooold fart, we didn't get singing or clapping for anything like math. Math was be quiet. LA, the joy--we got timed drills on paper tests, on all the operations. I'm afraid I started to resent the heck out of those things, I still hate 4 and 5-digit adding and subtracting, and still have never quite unlocked the 8 timeses in an automatic manner. I can DO it, but I have what I would call a mental stutter on arithmetic operations. I got through that stage somehow or other, and found out I *much* more enjoyed geometry and calculus. Still don't get statistics, but I blame that in poorly-handled college classes that skipped a lot.

[azurelunatic]

Timed drills suck so fucking much I just can't even.

[azurelunatic]

My 2nd grade teacher rocked the fucking house, and had us chanting "One plus one is two! One plus two is three! One plus three is four!" et cetera in service of rote memorization. Arizona schools being Arizona schools, the little dude was struggling with addition and also sitting still. So I added a jump rope.

[luminosity]

I find doing simple arithmetic and gazing in satisfaction at my high scores more rewarding than pretty much anything short of breathing.

This happens when I make anagrams. Over and over and over.

[seperis]

It's like a drug and beautiful.

[akacat]

my three most used items other than email and messaging and mp3 player are a Office Suite 8, Math Pro, and Sudoku, and Office 8 needs to be on the Office Things page and math pro and sudoku need to be with the games

I solve that sort of issue by considering "things I most frequently use" to be a vslid category.

Of course, that requires that apps like Office 8 to be on both the "ASAP Things" and "Office Things" tabs/pages/whatever, but it works for me.

[seperis]

Double organization themes are useful.

[fyrdrakken]

The themes I've used for my home screen include "useful shit" (first screen to the left - banking apps, financial-tracking, note-taking, task list, Google search bar) and "time wasters" (first to the right - Amazon shopper and Kindle, YouTube, WinAMP, BBC News). Oh, and a screen for every mapping and locating app (second to the left) - this including the sky map (up in the "sky" on the screen, with the other maps and locaters down on the "ground") and a couple of moon phase trackers I threw in next to the sky map just on general principles. The home (center) screen has just the stuff I was accustomed to having at the bottom of the screen on my Blackberry (Contacts, Twitter, Facebook, Camera) and I threw in TFLN just to fill out the row, but I think I should move that to the "time-wasters" and stick ElJay on the home screen in its place. Oh, and a very pretty rainbow-colored battery monitor in the top corner of the home screen.

I put stuff on the other screens, but I never think about them being there. They're just there to fill up space - when I want to get at an app that isn't on the four screens I use, I open the tray and scroll down for them.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

On my old phone, I never used all the screens, but being in love with Dean the S III means I am totally into the entire interior decoration aspect. Plus, I have a ton more room for apps.

On mine, it also has a permanent strip at the bottom where four of the most useful programs are that shows on all screens.

[an-kayoh.livejournal.com]

I still remember our class competition at the end of fifth grade when Andrea beat me to the answer by less than a second. And I remember when we hit tenth grade and I was in trig/pre-calc and she was in geometry.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I still remember our class competition at the end of fifth grade when Andrea beat me to the answer by less than a second.

It never really goes away, does it? *totally gets it*

God I hated geometry. It didn't help that I had to double it with trig/precal the same year either. *shudders*

[fyrdrakken]

Last night when I should have been putting the bunnies away and going to bed I spent way too much time fiddling with my phone, catching up on things and then rearranging a few of the screens. I like a smattering of icons around the edges so I can see as much of the wallpaper as possible, aside from a few very crowded screens. And I have the bar across the bottom with a few anchored symbols, but the tray-opening button is locked to one side (fair enough) and the phone button locked to the other corner (which annoys me since I don't use my Android as a phone enough to waste a home page icon on it, let alone anchoring it to everfy screen).

[askmehow.livejournal.com]

I keep trying to organize my iPhone screens into some semblance of order, only to go, "Ooooh, shiny!" and that's how Tetris ends up on the home screen instead of useful stuff like, you know, the transport app or music. *headdesk*

I'm so happy that you mentioned maths, because I've been getting back into basic school and year 1 uni-level maths for a while now, but the old-school way, with actual textbooks. Sometimes, though, it would be fun to just work through a couple while on the tube, you know? All of which is a long-winded way of saying, what maths apps apart from Math Pro would you recommend?

[naughtyoldlady.livejournal.com]

I SO get this. I remember being in the (small) Calculus class in my high school, and all of us taking a national math exam that was scored like the SAT, with small penalties for wrong answers. I was glum after the exam because many of my classmates had answered a lot more questions than I had.

I got the high score, and an award that I have to this day. GO ME. >:-)