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Show Counts Time Spent on Study of "Math" Wasted I believe that an appalling amount of time is spent in childhood in learning things which don't matter, remembering things which will never be needed, nnd doing silly tricks which an intelligent man need never waste his time upon. Let us contemplate, for example, the absurdities nnd abominations of arithmetic. At a conservative estimate, esti-mate, I have myself wrestled with arithmetic and its related studies through ten years of my Irreplaceable Irreplace-able youth. I was, moreover, pretty good at It ; I could throw a mean logarithm and t chase a cotangent Into a corner and hang my hat on It. I have done all the geometry, plain and fancy, and dabbled delicately in calculus. I could once make an advanced algebraic alge-braic equation say "Uncle." I assure you that not a trace of it " is loft, and that furthermore I don't ' miss it. There must be a large blank area In my brain which was once full of arithmetic, but It isn't the least painful. Except for a reasonable reason-able facility with the multiplication table there isn't a particle of arithmetic arith-metic left in my system. I can make change, but so can a street car conductor. But I can't remember re-member more than five telephone numbers, and so long as they continue con-tinue to print telephone books I won't need to. Donald Rose in the Forum and Century. |