Improving at Mathematics for Everyday Finance

[SymphonicDan]

[Edit: The video course is now finished and available on Udemy - use this link for the discounted price ]

 

I've realized recently that one of the biggest barriers that prevents adults from making good financial decisions is a lack of confidence in certain Mathematics.

 

Furthermore, I was in Budapest recently and saw how the ATMs take advantage of this by offering bad rates in a complicated way.

 

So in an effort to help fix this (my Mathematics is very good) I'm collecting more information on a 3-minute survey.

 

As the NF community is interested in personal development in general, I'm looking forward to seeing your responses  [Feel free to forward to your own friends too if you think it's valuable]

[Jean]

Done. Politics is another field where complicated voting systems take advantage of people not understanding them completely, if you ever want to expand your offer. ;-)

 

Anyway, looking forward to see how far this initiative will go. Have fun on the way. :-)

 

[Mad Hatter]

Hey Dan, good to see you!   I think this could be a cool initiative, but for me (and I suspect a lot of nerds) the maths itself is trivial, but the laws and lingo are tricky. Like for dealing with taxes or investments.

[SymphonicDan]

On 12/16/2018 at 7:12 PM, Jean said:

Done. Politics is another field where complicated voting systems take advantage of people not understanding them completely, if you ever want to expand your offer. ;-)

 

Anyway, looking forward to see how far this initiative will go. Have fun on the way. :-)

 

Thanks for your response there Jean! I'll be sure to update here when I have any update

 

Nice point, although I think I'll keep my focus more on the Mathematics / Finance and less on anything Politics-related.

 

 

On 12/17/2018 at 11:11 AM, Mad Hatter said:

Hey Dan, good to see you!   I think this could be a cool initiative, but for me (and I suspect a lot of nerds) the maths itself is trivial, but the laws and lingo are tricky. Like for dealing with taxes or investments.

 

Hat Madness! Yep, I'm still around! Although been away from the challenges since the Summer  It's nice when I come back here and see everything ticking along as normal haha.

 

It's true - one skill is being able to handle the Mathematics, and another skill to understand what numbers to use in some complicated financial product. I sometimes wonder whether they over-complicate some of these things deliberately to give financial advisors a job

[Jean]

5 hours ago, SymphonicDan said:

I sometimes wonder whether they over-complicate some of these things deliberately to give financial advisors a job

 

It's natural human behavior, we like it when it looks all arcane and esoteric. I'm always amazed by the rules covering a field as simple as accounting could be.

 

Getting things back to simple levels makes life sooooo much easier (and takes sooooo much effort and time too...).

 

Have fun in your endeavours.

[WhiteGhost]

Hi Dan, nice to see you around  

 

7 hours ago, SymphonicDan said:

I sometimes wonder whether they over-complicate some of these things deliberately to give financial advisors a job

In my experience, the complexity is primarily driven by poorly written or poorly thought through legislation that is then put to the lawyers to make sure the financial institutions stay within the law and then to the financial advisors to figure out a way to maximize returns within the guidelines set by the lawyers.    

[Mad Hatter]

10 hours ago, SymphonicDan said:

I sometimes wonder whether they over-complicate some of these things deliberately to give financial advisors a job

I'm not into conspiracy theories but sometimes it does make you feel like there's a war between an army of bureaucrats vs an army of accountants where the fallout is that the ignorant plebs lose.  

 

4 hours ago, Jean said:

It's natural human behavior, we like it when it looks all arcane and esoteric.

Not engineers!  

 

2 hours ago, WhiteGhost said:

In my experience, the complexity is primarily driven by poorly written or poorly thought through legislation that is then put to the lawyers to make sure the financial institutions stay within the law and then to the financial advisors to figure out a way to maximize returns within the guidelines set by the lawyers.    

Or how about we simplify the system. Ahh a nerd can dream...

I like my boss's idea: put the same flat tax on everything. No exceptions, no loopholes.  

 

[Jean]

8 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

I like my boss's idea: put the same flat tax on everything. No exceptions, no loopholes.   

 

 

The exceptions and loopholes would come out of the "what do you pay with that tax" part of the equation. Engineers exist for a reason and that is because their work is never done.*

 

*Or, as a Giant puts it: "if the world was fair, we wouldn't need paladins."

[SymphonicDan]

On 12/21/2018 at 6:28 AM, WhiteGhost said:

Hi Dan, nice to see you around  

 

In my experience, the complexity is primarily driven by poorly written or poorly thought through legislation that is then put to the lawyers to make sure the financial institutions stay within the law and then to the financial advisors to figure out a way to maximize returns within the guidelines set by the lawyers.    

 

Good to see you here WhiteGhost  Looks like you've finally joined the muscle-up club, congrats!

 

Yeah, that makes sense... lots of (hopefully) smart people with strong incentives to outmaneuver each other...

[WhiteGhost]

On 12/21/2018 at 8:17 PM, Mad Hatter said:

I like my boss's idea: put the same flat tax on everything. No exceptions, no loopholes.  

 

I would go for a system like that

 

58 minutes ago, SymphonicDan said:

Looks like you've finally joined the muscle-up club, congrats!

Thanks!  

[SymphonicDan]

So one reason I've been quiet on the forums for the last 6 weeks is because I've been working really a lot on getting this online course finished, but today I can finally announce that it is indeed ready for you to learn from  And now I can relax a little from the content and start helping my students instead.

 

It turns out that making online courses is a lot of work - from getting the recording set-up right, to producing the PowerPoint presentations that make up the majority of the course.

 

After the feedback I got, I decided to focus on the following techniques for being most important and useful:

• converting between currencies
• fast accurate approximation techniques for e.g. $284.97 x 36 months
• spaced repetition for learning my list of specific shortcuts (and also vocabulary)
• converting between metric and imperial units, such as between Fahrenheit and Celsius, and between pounds and kilograms when the gym is using whatever you think is the "wrong" units for the weights
• evaluating deals by scaling between daily / weekly / monthly / yearly rates, for example
• calculating percentages from test scores

Obviously this is a premium product - the first one I've made since Steve Kamb (the owner of NF) (and others) inspired me to try out the long-term travelling lifestyle about 6 years ago! But for anyone reading this on NF, you're into personal development etc. and generally positive people, so if you head to Udemy with the following link you can use the NERD_FITNESS discount coupon to get the whole package for under £10 or the equivalent in your currency (and it obviously helps me a lot as I launch the course). You can also preview 5 of the introductory videos for free anyway.

 

Mental Math Secrets for Real-World Number Mastery (Udemy with 75% discount)

 

P.S. NF probably has a no-promotion policy, but after 5 years, 2500 posts, 24 completed challenges that in various ways built up to this, and 2 months working on this, I'm going to take the liberty to forget that just for one post  

[Mad Hatter]

Congrats dude!

[Mike Wazowski]

Congrats man! I was wondering what you'd been up to, and had no idea that NF was part of the inspiration for you to start traveling full-time.

[Amazon Ninja]

On 12/16/2018 at 4:51 PM, SymphonicDan said:

[Edit: The video course is now finished and available on Udemy - use this link for the discounted price ]

 

I've realized recently that one of the biggest barriers that prevents adults from making good financial decisions is a lack of confidence in certain Mathematics.

 

Furthermore, I was in Budapest recently and saw how the ATMs take advantage of this by offering bad rates in a complicated way.

 

So in an effort to help fix this (my Mathematics is very good) I'm collecting more information on a 3-minute survey.

 

As the NF community is interested in personal development in general, I'm looking forward to seeing your responses  [Feel free to forward to your own friends too if you think it's valuable]

Wow! Great thread! I definitely agree with the assessment that most adults lack the confidence with math. I'm certainly one in that particular department! I personally take free online math courses. It's slow but it's coming!