April is usually celebrated each year as Mathematics Education (or Awareness) Month. I’m guessing you may have missed that? Indeed, you may even question the use of ‘celebrate’ in that sentence.
But let’s go ahead and celebrate a little late anyway. And let’s try a unique approach that may be more palatable. Let’s look at reasons not to hate math! There are several good reasons, but for today, we’ll have to settle for three.
Reason 1: Math is NOT Arithmetic (only). This could come as welcome relief to those of us who spent much of 4th grade learning to divide a 3-digit number by a 2-digit one (with paper and pencil). Arithmetic is one tool of a mathematician, but it is not what continues to attract him/her to the subject – see #2. A sculptor needs a chisel, but the chisel is not what makes the artist.
Reason 2: Math is one of those rare commodities which is both highly useful and incredibly beautiful. On the one extreme, we have a powerful tool which allows us to put a man on the moon, design computers, and power our instant-information society. On the other, we have a subject whose beauty is often overlooked.
What could be more elegant, say, than being able to prove that the collection of prime numbers goes on forever?! Or that the decimal expansion of the square root of 2 never (ever) ends or repeats. Both of these proofs have been around since before the birth of Christ, yet are within the understanding of high school seniors. Such elegant, powerful simplicity!
Reason 3: Math really can help develop curiosity, critical thinking, and problem solving skills. Give a child a calculator and let him/her enter any 6-digit number. Then ask how many times it takes to hit the square root key (√) to get a 1 before the decimal point. (Try it yourself!) Then give a high school math student the same exercise and ask why it always takes 5 key-punches, no matter the size of the original number. (The grade schooler will likely ask why, too, but, with enough time and no pressure, the high schooler may figure it out – and probably understand square root better, in the process.)
Or, suppose you are told (correctly) that if a couple plans to have a 4-child family, their ‘odds’ of getting two boys and two girls are not ’50-50’ – they’re less. Or, that in a room with more than 25 people, the chance that at least two people have the same birthday is better than 50-50! (A great ‘bar bet’, by the way!)
Aren’t you tempted to want to know why? Or even to say ‘prove it!’? This is where math works its magic – not as something to be memorized, but as a tool to solve problems and prove results.
There’s a real irony in all the above. The funny/sad thing is that there is one group you really don’t have to sell math to: kids! Usually, they enjoy numbers, they love to ask questions, and in general are very creative in tackling problems. Somehow, someway, much of this curiosity, creativity, and enjoyment tend to vanish by about 4th grade. Why is that? Is there any chance the ‘system’ teaches it all out of them?
If any of this strikes your fancy, feel free to follow up by e-mail – or contact your local math teacher. It’s even OK to come by cover of night. We’re used to it.
