this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2023
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Probably not. In calculus class, our teacher showed us a video showing a dog finding the quickest path to catch a ball using the trajectory of the ball to predict where the ball would land and its own knowledge of its swimming versus running speeds to predict the best place at which to enter the water the ball would land in. The human had thrown the projectile into a river, and the dog started running as soon as the human released the ball. The video was taken from above, and it had been edited to show the audience the calculus required to find the optimal path. The dog followed this path exactly.
But dogs aren't good at math. I don't know how you would get a dog to attempt an algebra problem, but they probably couldn't do it. The calculation required to throw a ball accurately or decide when to cross into the river is probably more instinctual.
You're begging the question -- dogs are good at math! Even if they can't read or write differential equations, they're solving the problem posed to them!
Good problem-solvers, but not good at math bc they can't show their work or write a proof or explain how they got to the result beyond "I don't know, it just feels right".
Isn't math defined as the logical steps to get from axioms to theorems, followed by the application of theorems to specific problems? Dogs don't do that, they just guess (and often guess correctly).
I dont think math has a specific definition like that, but I will say other animals can't do what dogs do. Also, we often do think of math as written symbols, but that's our human/academic perspective. Math is far more fundamental than that. All we're doing is modeling the math inherent to the universe.
You make a good point. Thanks for the perspective.