Does someone have to be good at math to be logical?

Dunning Kruger effect

The fact that you know that you don’t know makes you ahead of most people.

You need to be good at logic to be good at math. Math is easier when you scale back to when you veered off, and continue. Math builds upon itself, just scroll back to earlier classes to the point that you lost track; even if it means going back years even if you passed a higher level.

For me I fell behind in grade 9 trig, even though I passed grade 12 math with a 50% average.

I just need to buy a grade 9 math textbook and do the homework assignments.

I’m not an expert, but I would say no. Some people have dyscalculia and still are logical people.

I agree with the jelly above that it takes logic to be able to do math, but I don’t think it takes math to be able to be logical.

Not necessarily, no. Logic helps with math, but math isn’t needed for logic… though there are also people who struggle with both.

Not really – But you have to be logical to be good at math.

No. Basic good reasoning, what I call three dimensional thinking, is good enough, logically.

No, math is just one type of reasoning. My brother is a successful lawyer and presumably makes much use of logic. He spoke to me recently about an article he read about the Monty Hall problem. I just couldn’t convince him as to why having two options does not mean they are equally likely.

I’m in agreement with @Zaku Logic helps with math, but not vice versa.

No, they don’t.

If you can answer the following math-free question, you can think logically:

If all Vietnamese people are humans, does it follow that all humans are Vietnamese?

@Brian1946 if I hadn’t found Fluther I would have said so ~

Formal logic, the subset of mathematics, can give one the tools to be more “logical”. This doesn’t mean that mathematicians are necessarily logical or rational.

You can learn to think well, make logical inferences, construct and analyse arguments, etc without any mathematics.

Most people are pretty bad at logical thinking, and there’s no correlation between logical thinking and “intelligence” as measured by IQ tests, which is how you get educated professional lawyers baffled by the Monty Hall problem.

@LostInParadise @Kropotkin I know about the Monty Hall problem. And while I can see the logic behind it, it still doesn’t make much sense to me. Maybe I’m also an example to your point :)

@Kropotkin I know you say that there is no correlation between logical thinking and math skills, but if math requires logic to learn, why aren’t mathematicians guaranteed to be logical?

I’m a bit confused here. Can you explain?

@Mimishu1995 “I know you say that there is no correlation between logical thinking and math skills”

I did not.

“but if math requires logic to learn, why aren’t mathematicians guaranteed to be logical?”

I don’t know what sort of ‘logic’ mathematics students learn before they actually go on to do logic and set theory, which show up in years 3 and 4 on Oxford University’s mathematics course—at which point they’re already advanced students.

You also learn ‘logic’ in computer science and philosophy, and probably a few other disciplines. Probably a lot sooner in the course too, but maybe to not the same complexity.

I found this interesting study: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0236153 and was amused to find that only 37% of academic mathematicians correctly solved the Four Card Problem, and only one of the “logical thinking” tasks was solved with a 100% success rate. There’s your lack of guarantee to be logical confirmed.

Not at all. Logic is actually a whole different area that is used in a lot of math and computer programming, but your math skills themselves don’t necessarily have to be that great as long as you can understand general concepts. In fact, if you’re good at logic, it might even help you with math. I think now that’s why a lot of higher classes don’t care if you use a calculator, as long as you’re doing the processes correctly. Because at that point, it’s not if you can do basic math accurately, it’s whether you understand the principles they’re trying to teach. But if you do struggle with math, you want to be very careful what area you pursue. For instance, logic is very handy in computer programming, but you still need to understand basic math concepts to be able to use them in your programming.