Fact check: Is Mamdani introducing Arabic numerals to New York schools?
Another post from betting market company Polymarket read: "BREAKING: Zohran Mamdani to require all New York elementary school students to learn Arabic numerals." The post has almost 14 million views.
https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-mamdani-arabic-numerals-new-york-schools-11079540Open linkView original on lemmy.ml803
Comments181
Lmao, I love this kind of stuff. It makes dumb people so angry
I love that too, but I feel like we have to make them smart and not angry :(
You can't fix stupid
But you can teach the ignorant.
Only if they’re willing to learn. 😢
We are fucked, aren't we 🤔
Willing and able, which isn't the case for any of those people.
Literally what schools are for (in this context where you are using stupid as a synonym for uneducated)
Fuck man! It's called school!
That mindset is just so disappointing... I mean, why would you even say that? It's like a statement that immediately backfires, because it makes it sound like you're the one not thinking!
You cannot teach a pig to sing. Well, you can teach, but don't expect it to work...
Angering dumb people makes them vote. And they vote real dumb
They were angry before this and they'll have been angry if this was never mentioned.
For those willing to learn, there's an opportunity for a teachable moment
And it makes dumb people so visible.
I just checked with my local school, and they're not just making them learn these arabic numbers, they're forcing them to learn AL GEBRA!!! Sounds like foreign nonsense to me, so I'm starting a petition to have the head fired, and possibly flogged.
You should check with your local schools too. Keep this policically correct woke DEI rubbish away from our kids!
In universities for computer science they must learn the teachings of the muslim https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Khwarizmi, that's disgusting.
Don't forget about the dangers of al cohol and candy!
Just like caravans, you remember how those where a thing in American politics once? What ever happened to them?
Al gul
Al Goarr
I knew the etymology was Arabic, but I was just curious to look up the etymology. Al jabr is (the Latinized version of) the original.
i heard he'll teach kids the "latin" alphabet instead of Amerian one😡
I dont understand this. When I was in Palestine, they definitely used different numerals.
Like, I guess they invented base 10? Or math? But the characters they use for numbers are absolutely different
Basically, what we call "Arabic Numerals", including the number 0, have their origin in India. Europe got them from Arabic scholars, and therefore called them "Arabic".
The main factor is the decimal system of writing and having the concept of a zero in contrast to the odd, additive and subtractive writing of the Roman numerals, which didn't even know a 0, and made multiplication a pain and division nearly impossible.
What glyph is actually used for a one, be it a 1 or a ١, is absolutely secondary.
I want to correct something. They knew what nothing meant. They just didn't conceptualize the absence of things as a number. And honestly, it's a bit weird, but it is useful. You can't have 0 apples, but the concept is useful for math.
I have 0 apples right now, and most of the time!
Arguably, sure. The way they'd understand it is you don't have apples though, not that you have zero. With our understanding, it makes some sense, but I'd say even today that's odd to say. It isn't wrong, but it is strange to say you posses everything in the universe (and anything else too), just in quantities of zero. It makes more sense to say you don't possess them.
It definitely makes sense in the same way that the famous experiment on abstract thought makes sense. Iirc, The experimenter a hundred years ago or more asked various people in different parts of Germany questions like, if a bird flies 20 miles an hour, about how long would it take to fly from Berlin to Frankfurt, and most people just couldn't entertain the question and would say that makes no sense a bird would never fly between those places.
It's only with our education system today that more people could entertain the question, how long a bird would take to fly from Frankfurt to Berlin, even if no real bird would ever do it, or not bat an eye at possessing everything in the universe in quantities of zero.
Of course they knew what nothing meant. They even had a word for it: nullum. Sounds familiar, somehow. But the key is to apply this to math, and having an actual symbol for it.
I think your confusion is the other side of what the article was discussing.
The problem is, there have been a lot of number systems in the past. The one we currently use is based on the Arabic system. In common usage you would simply call them numbers. But in a technical sense, to distinguish from other numbering systems past and present, they're also called Arabic Numerals because that's their origin.
Clearly this ignores the fact Arabic is still around and using real Arabic numbers and that is both confusing and maybe problematic. But I think the technical reason it sticks around is to acknowledge their source and have a more specific term when there is a need
While the origin of Arabic numerals is actually Indian.
Arabic Numerals is ambiguous. We don't use eastern Arabic numerals in our schools.
Looking at Wikipedia, we're talking about western Arabic numerals in Europe/USA (TIL). Did you use one of the versions listed here as Eastern arabic numerals? Briefly reading the history, eastern is more common across modern Arabic regions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals
Ok, well, this article is trying to call people dumb for not understanding a concept that is incredibly confusing to everyone
The "everyone" in your sentence does not really fit. A "me" would be more on point.
They're not calling people dumb for not knowing, they're calling them dumb for not investigating. If you hear a wild claim, you should investigate. This shouldn't still work because most of us here know it's been a running joke for at least 20 years in the US with continuous anti-Muslim and anti-middle-easter/Arabic sentiment and bills post 9/11.
It shouldn't be incredibly confusing, either. It's fine to not automatically know that Amerocan/English refers to "western Arabic numerals" as simply "Arabic numerals" in shorthand. I didn't. That's why I briefly researched it when you said you had a different set of numerals in a region. Since I don't know exactly what to look for to validate my own searches, I genuinely asked you if what you learned matched what was in the Wikipedia page. I have no direct experience.
People use shorthand all the time. It makes things confusing. I didn't know a "convection oven" was actually a "forced convection oven" until this year. In my head, it wasn't something I ever questioned because all my ovens have had the primary heater at the bottom, meaning convection would carry hot air upwards. Turns out, FCOs have a fan at the top to force better circulation. Surprise, this revolution of air fryers? They're just countertop [forced] convection ovens. Similarly, I have a gripe with people customizing cars with "coilovers". The majority of cars already have coil[spring]-over-[shock]s, but what they mean is "adjustable coilovers". It's a carryover from when cars did NOT have the various coilover designs as standard. Shocks outside coil springs, leaf springs, torsion springs, etc.
Is it? I think your confusion may come from living or studying abroad, which is understandable. But only the ignorant ones who passed school while asleep on this side of the world would be confused. Everyone is told that these are Arabic numerals as opposed to Roman numerals very early on.
Name does not check out.
If you look at the Hindu-Arabic numerals first used in Europe in the middle ages, they looked very much like modern numerals used in Arabic. This is the modern set:
١٢٣٤٥٦٧٨٩٠
Some of those will look more familiar if you rotate them 90 degrees CCW.
If they force Arabic numerals and the Latin alphabet on our children, I’m leaving!
In Germany, we have a right-wing party en par with the US Republicans: The AfD. Just as Nazi, just as nuts.
Some time ago, someone riled them up with the "Did you know they teach Arabic numerals in school now?", and quite a few of them blew a lid...
Well, the dihydrogen monoxide that is in your Zuchini is literally an industrial solvent!
Have you seen what dihydrogen monoxide does to pure, strong iron?!? It corrodes iron unbelievably fast! And people just.....consume it in most of their "healthy" foods!
Wake up, sheeple! Stop drinking dihydrogen monoxide!
/s - this message brought to you by Brawndo, the thirst mutilatorFWIW this is by far less dangerous and aggressive than oxygen, which caused the first global mass extinction when it started to amass in earth's atmosphere (and plays a major role in the corrosion of iron you mentioned).
And yet people tell you to breathe in and out...
Oxygen? Oh, you mean rocket fuel?
Dihydrogen Monoxide FAQ
And stop plants from drinking it too!
Brawndo's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes.
My son just told me there is a complete wiki about DHMO. Something I'll investigate later...
zuchini is green squash now
You know what's funny, the dihydrogen-monoxide bit works in part because when you tell someone "ha ha, you're anti water" they should get embarrassed. Like, it's impossible for them to continue arguing, you know?
But if anyone is going to take hidden-agenda numerals at face value and still insist that we use a new, much stupider number system to get away from centuries of Arabic influence, it would definitely be nazis, lol.
Hear me out, maybe base 10 isn't the best counting system. Base 6 or 12 could be pretty nice. Not worth Nazis being in charge, but could be a nice change of pace.
I like base 8 or 16, anything that's a power of 2
As a funny math boy, believe me, I know. :p
Next he'll be forcing us all to drink dihydrogen monoxide, a chemical that's known to be fatal to humans under certain conditions!
They literally use that shit to power steam engines! Now imagine what it does to your insides. Nasty, nasty stuff.
Dont forget it is a key component in both hydrochloric acid and making nuclear power plants operate.
And its much more dangerous to try to breathe than carbon monoxide.
Water? Don't touch the stuff.. fish fuck in it
I'm sorry but as a technicality none of the power used in a steam engine is derived from the dihydrogen monoxide. The chemical compound is used as a medium to turn thermal energy into kinetic energy. The thermal energy, likewise, is usually obtained from another source such as chemical, nuclear, or photovoltaic.
Good luck running your steam engine without it!
Also:
Pretty sure there aren't moon-powered trains, bro, but nice try.
Its actually pretty common practice when restoring a steam engine to run it on compressed air to test it's a ability to hold the amount of pressure it needs to. Much less of a catastrophic failure if compressed air leaks out without warning than 400° steam
A steam engine can also be used to generate power, or to operate mechanical indistrial equipment like rock crushers or pumps, as a stationary device, but in hindsight the tidal power probably never gets that hot. The engine for moving trains could also be powered by electricity from wind or tidal, though I don't think there are any practical examples.
A friend of mine ingested a ton of it and died. They found him at the bottom of a lake
Thry say even small amounts are fatal in certain circumstances.
Water? like from the toilet?!
Yuck! It has no electrolytes!
It’s what we and plants crave!
Sources claim an up to 100% mortality rate!
Every single person in my family tree, born prior to 1920, have two things in common... They are ALL dead and they ALL drank dihydrogen monoxide regularly!
This has got to stop!
You think that's bad, here's something to consider... The vast majority of them died within 24 hours of ingesting dihydrogen monoxide!
In 1862 dihydrogen monoxide leaked into a well, and every single person who consumed it has perished!!! 100% fatality rate in just this incident!!!!
Every single person who has ever ingested it has died or will die
So, there WAS an onion (or similar) article stating exactly this like the day after he won. So it looks like some of these idiots just ate the onion
I don't have to remember.
I live in a little dot of slight majority Democrats in one of the, if not the, most conservative state(s) in the country. The litter box bullshit gets brought up almost every single time I have a conversation with someone about trans issues. I generally don't bring it up, they do. They are obsessed with it. And it doesn't just happen here, I travel all over the US for work and hear it most places.
I hear the litter box "point" brought up I'd guess at least once a month. I don't talk to that many strangers either.
I know several ignorant relatives who would seethe with rage seeing that headline...
An easy way to sort out the idiots who probably did not learn Arabic numerals in school, and therefor are so useless they can only be employd as MAGA heads...
Naw, my 6th grade was on the ground floor and so is my house. I read at the same level.
Touché
Highly educated USian here.
I would cry tears of joy if I woke up and found that President Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho was having his inauguration parade exactly as shown in the image.
To make it interesting, ignore the figurehead and any global elite child sex slave trafficking ring they may or may not have been a part of. Consider the background characters instead.
In this image you have Luke Wilson playing a character who is known to be the smartest person on the planet, and who saves lives with their knowledge by teaching the people how to do things like water their crops, AND who got dragged into the position rather than being a cutthroat ambitious asdhole.
In a similar image of the real world you might have somebody like Stephen fucking Miller.
That wasn't a study AFAIK it was the official report from the U.S. Department Of Education. -The department run by the spouse of a professional wrestling magnate.
So, what were you reading in the sixth grade? My memory isn't that good, but I think I was past reading Captain underpants, maybe I was up to reading Percy Jackson (sorry got a bad case of CRS). I definitely gave Harry Potter a pass through, didn't like the main character.
Anyway, I feel like in 6th grade I was good at reading the text of a book, but not much beyond that. Symbols, themes, subtext — those are hard for a 6th grader.
6th grade is reading for plot. It's able to read the story and understand that the hobbits brought the ring to Mordor, and Aragorn fought in Gondor.
Anything about symbols, themed, subtext, unreliable narrators all comes later.
You hit the nail on the head. Literacy is about more than just sounding out words - understanding the intended message is equally important.
I wish I could be surprised, but I’ve been on internet forums long enough that it’s undeniable. It’s like understanding subtext (and even overt context) is a lost art. Making a short post and expecting readers to correctly “connect the dots” practically invites commenters to misinterpret things. So the choice is either “over-explain and risk making a super long post,” or “come back again and again when someone inevitably argues something you didn’t intend.” It’s so frustrating.
On the other hand sometimes I get people telling me to re read their arguments because I don't understand them. Like maybe they just suck at presenting their argument? Maybe they could re-state it so it was easier to understand? Maybe I do get it and their argument sucks? No clearly what they wrote is gold and you would understand if your reading comprehension was better.
What do you mean
Next they are going to find out they are learning other Arabic topics like al-Gebra.
Or about Mr. Al Kwarizmi (Algorithm).
How about Brahmagupta's quadratic equation
tbf, they should teach about him. one of the most influential mathematicians in history and most people have never heard if him.
Wait til they learn about al-cohol. They even sneak it into ‘Murican beers now!
She must be an ICE supervisor by now
Isn't that Linda McMahon, the head of the Department of Education?
Oh…I didn’t know that’s the point we were at in all this…
It's worse than that. We've passed that point already.
and blow Bubbas?
Every sixty seconds in Communist New York, a minute passes.
Fun fact, what we call Arabic numerals are not the numerals used in Arabic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Arabic_numerals
Nice, didn't know this! According to the article "The numeral system originates from an ancient Indian numeral system," so i guess confusing names are a feauture of numerical symbols, and not a bug.
The ones we use are the Western Arabic numerals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Arabic_numerals
No, ain't no way, how can this be NOT the onion ?! Come on ! 😂
Newsweek
The Onion really is competing with reality to come up with good headlines.
Arabic Numerals have taken over the world! When will this madness stop? /s
Especially that diabolic number "zero". It is a pure Arab invention. The Romans did fine without it. Then the Arabs introduced zero and we know what happened with the Roman Empire. Now, zeros can be found everywhere - they can even hide in computers. America should really exzerminate these zeros befote it is too late!!
OMG! They divided!
https://www.mathnasium.com/math-centers/pointloma/news/who-invented-zero-journey-back-time-pl
People making jokes about dihydrogen monoxide, and imma be honest, I feel like it should have been the gold standard internet stupidity filter that disqualifies your credentials in any form of discussion because of the insane amount of people that fell for it back when the internet was still new.
If you couldn't handle H2O, you can't be trusted to use the internet seriously lol.
I had a high school teacher my freshman year play the "dihydrogen monoxide" joke on our class. this was before i had any chemistry knowledge so i sadly fell for it. -It was still funny.
Jesus Christ, people are fucking stupid.
Again? They do this whenever a nonwhite person is voted into office.
And Al-Gebra too! The horror!
Be ready for a post-victory avalanche of hit pieces against Zohran, with the usual right-wing tactic of absurd disinformation. It doesn't need to be anywhere close to the truth, it just needs to be good at rage baiting low information/gullible people.
If you want to really scare JD Vance, the more proper term is probably Hindu-Arabic numerals.
Conservatives are fools lol
This is an insult to fools
The monster! My kids will learn Roman numerals and Greek math that stops at 10000! Like nature intended!
Next thing you know, they'll be teaching our kids algebra and algorithms.
Al-Gebra
And Al-Khawarizmi.
Yeah but at least it won't affect my Al-cohol
“Zero”? The fuck kind of sorcery is this? If a number can’t be counted, it has no place in my concept of math!
- Ancient Romans
OK kids, pop quiz, grab your chisels and work out the square root of XXV!
V
You get IX/X, I took a mark off because you didn't show your work.
LOL... as opposed to using Roman numerals? WTAF. I can't even comprehend the stupid.
How about good old American numerals, like the good Lord intended?
You mean the good old freedom numerals?
They only call them that in the Gulf of America
You know:
No zero in roman numerals. All the computers would break.
Computers use binary, not roman numbers 🤓
No arabic #s no 0, no 0 no binary.
You could use "left" and "right"
This is like saying he’s going to give our kids
hydrogen dioxidedihydrogen monoxide to drink during sports and people flipping out about it.Dihydrogen Oxide
Monoxide
We did it, team!
And then in astronomy, students are being forced to learn the Arabic names of stars (like Sirius, Deneb and Betelgeuse).
Ragebaiting at its finest 🤌
Get me the fuck off this planet.
Newsweek is seriously trying to take a dry and completely humorless approach on this "story"
:-\
is it same lie was made on Kamala Harris during the 2024 election? now on Zohran Mamdani?
Fortunately, Donald Jesus (republican vesion) Trump will sign executive order banning Arabic numerals nation wide. Thanks to a political contribution from Disney, we will all be forced to use the Predator number system to help movie tickets for Badlands. All computer systems will have 1 month to update.
I sure fucking hope so. They're way more common than the Roman ones.
And have you ever tried multiplication and division with Roman numerals? We tried it in math once. There is actually an algorithm for multiplication, but it is a pain in the ass. And division? You've got to subtract and count...
The ancient Egyptians converted to binary (well, decomposed the number to a sum of powers of 2, which is more or less the same thing) and did multiplication and division on the pieces, then stuck it all back together again.
And if you want read madness, check out how the ancient Greeks almost did calculus.
The numbers are still the same, just how they are written is different... 🤨
Yes, but working with digits instead of sums make math way easier. Try a simple multiplication with Roman numerals without converting them into into decimals first. What would XIII times XVII be?
CCXXI.
And how did you get this result? The Romans (and Europeans before the Arabic numerals) used a kind of digit replacement system with a bunch of additions. We did this in math, and compared to the 10x10+3x10+7x10+3x7=221 it was rather complicated.
I just multiplied 13 and 17... 🤦♂️
IDK how that shit is taught now, but I just add 13 together 17 times.
The left posts the meme to point out that there are people ignorant enough to believe that nonsense. I did it yesterday. The right posts the meme because they are ignorant enough to believe it or are rage baiting people who are ignorant enough to believe it. We are not the same.
Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Where do they think numbers in English came from
They don't they're programmed by the idiots churning out the zero-IQ content they love
My god, the red conservatives and the blue conservatives are so incredibly hysterical.
You voted for this! reeeEEEEEEE
Jesus Christ, people are fucking idiots.
One of my favourite episodes of Veep had this very thing
No more math!
That season just encapsulates all this shit doesn’t it
I knew this was going to happen as soon as i saw the meme.
What until they hear about his birth certificate.
It's a joke, right?
RIGHT?
O my God!
Not aribic!!!!
And the Latin alphabet (plus a couple letters) too. Damn furriners. Bring back the Futhark!
I was always taught that these were called "Hindu-Arabic numerals"
I dont understand this. When I was in Palestine, they definitely used different numerals.
Like, I guess they invented base 10? Or math? But the characters they use for numbers are absolutely different
so the numerals we used actually originate from India, first they got adopted by Arabic mathematicians who then brought them to Europe where people started mistakenly calling them "Arabic numerals"
Ok, well, this article is trying to call people dumb for not understanding a concept that is incredibly confusing to everyone
Its not confusing for anyone with more than 1 brain cell
They use Eastern Arabic numerals, while most of the world uses Western Arabic numerals.
Ok, well, this article is trying to call people dumb for not understanding a concept that is incredibly confusing to everyone
Eh, you don't need to know the entire history and reasoning behind numbers, just that the numbers we use are called Arabic numerals, which most people don't. The history is confusing, the fact that they are called Arabic numerals is not. It's just what they are.
Most people know they are called arabic numerals. Most americans might not though
There's two types. And we don't use the type in our schools that Arabic people use in their schools
It's not that confusing for anybody that paid the least bit of attention in school. I didn't know all the nuances of it, but I was well aware that English (as well as most other Western languages) uses the Latin alphabet and Arabic numerals since like 8th grade.
Seriously, the whole bit is just showing how ignorant these people are and how easy it is to frighten them. Like the "ban dihydrogen monoxide" petitions, but for racist chucklefucks.
But you dont use the same numerals that Arabic people use
I honestly have no idea what numerals Arabic people use. But as I said, I've known that the numerals we use are called Arabic numerals since at least 8th grade.
Lies your teacher told you, for the purposes of oversimplification
Not a lie. An oversimplification, perhaps, but that is entirely besides the point.
We forked in the 13th century.
I don't think the article is calling people dumb. It only states objective facts, and I think it was pretty good at NOT suggesting people are dumb. Ignorant perhaps, but it does stick to the facts (and some fluff to pad the page.)
What they invented was positional numbers, like one digit for hundreds, one for tens, one for units. Of course you need a notation for zero for this to work, so it's not as obvious as it seems (see roman numbers for another well known system).