07-08-2012, 05:38 AM
Unit conversion's been really easy for me for a long time. I got into roleplaying games in middle school, and I ended up writing a lot of Champions characters without the aid of a calculator. At some point I started doing arithmetic mentally, which included unit conversions.
I remember in 7th grade, during a science class, the teacher said that 212 F and 100 C were the same, as was 32 F and 0 C, and during that explanation I wrote out (F-32) * 5/9 = C and (C * 9/5) +32 = F before she was finished talking. I also learned to do metric conversions from non-metric distance and mass measurements fairly quickly. The idea of unit conversions seems intuitive and simple to me, but I've been confronted with a lot of people who find them anything but, so I learned to not project assumptions about what people should be able to do based on what I can do (and vice versa, as I'm terrible at some things most people are supposed to be good at).
This has also been a problem for me as the way I do a lot of math is sort of intuitive, and I skim a lot of explicit steps to produce an accurate answer. When I had to tutor my niece in arithmetic I had to relearn how to do long division, multiplication, etc. just so I could explain it to her. On the other hand, being able to calculate tips in a few seconds impresses some people well beyond my expectations.
Also, aside from geometry, I really suck at anything more advanced.
I remember in 7th grade, during a science class, the teacher said that 212 F and 100 C were the same, as was 32 F and 0 C, and during that explanation I wrote out (F-32) * 5/9 = C and (C * 9/5) +32 = F before she was finished talking. I also learned to do metric conversions from non-metric distance and mass measurements fairly quickly. The idea of unit conversions seems intuitive and simple to me, but I've been confronted with a lot of people who find them anything but, so I learned to not project assumptions about what people should be able to do based on what I can do (and vice versa, as I'm terrible at some things most people are supposed to be good at).
This has also been a problem for me as the way I do a lot of math is sort of intuitive, and I skim a lot of explicit steps to produce an accurate answer. When I had to tutor my niece in arithmetic I had to relearn how to do long division, multiplication, etc. just so I could explain it to her. On the other hand, being able to calculate tips in a few seconds impresses some people well beyond my expectations.
Also, aside from geometry, I really suck at anything more advanced.