What I dont understand is, why are the stick figures smoking?

This I almost never find a use for the quadratic formula

>blaming that on the students and not the teachers
I was taught the Quadratic Formula.

When you get to big boy math you'll realize memorization of formulas is retarded and you should understand where the formula came from instead.

Also going the route of completing the square by diving b by 2 then adding the square of that number to the equation (and adding the negative of that number) is not even hard compared to memorizing some unintuitive formula

That's the problem with math in America, people are taught formulas instead of processes

t. American who read the math textbooks which went over the processes

>That's the problem with math in America, people are taught formulas instead of processes

We had to complete the square with general coefficients before we ever applied the quadratic formula to any problem.

t. American who had a good math teacher

>people are taught formulas instead of processes

More like

>That's the problem with mat in America, people are taught processes(arithmetic) instead of abstraction

applying abstract concepts is still a couple levels harder than processes, and processes are MUCH better than memorization

a mix of abstract and applied is best

Not only did I learn the formula, I learned to sing it to the tune of "pop goes the weasel" for memorization purposes.

And I still sing that shit whenever I use it.

>problem with math in America
>only in America

I prefer the method of setting ax^2 +bx + d = (x+e)^2 + f, setting (x+e)^2 = -f and solving for e and f using the first equality. I find it to be much more elegant than doing the completing the square bullshit, where you know the answer so you add and subtract and square shit to make it become that answer.