Math     Ugh!

I know what you are thinking.

Math?!? ugh!!

In the last year, I have started to change my opinions regarding the value of studying topics like mathematics. I think Simon Singh's books and documentaries and the publicity given to John Nash are the causes of my change of heart. Who can say?

You have to understand, I was raise in a household where we built radios and TVs for 'fun.' My father had a degree in Physics and always took the time to explain the nature of things to me. I grew up surrounded by science. Of course my parents hoped that I would go into a hard science like engineering, chemistry or physics.

But what can you tell a burnout, jaded kid living in the 'burbs?

I took chem. It was fairly easy.

I took physics. It was interesting but overall fairly boring.

I took math and I hated it. I never was interested in doing my work just 'because it was assigned.'

In short, I was a slacker!

And no amount of input from my parents and/or teachers could change my attitude toward my own education.

I drifted from school to school, state to state, city to city. Working only when I had too. Seeking nothing in particular. I got tattooed... I rode motorcycles... I street raced, before it was called street racing... I played my drums... I raised hell with my friends... Stayed up all night reading Anne Rice and the Tao of Pooh. All the time, I never invested any time of effort into anything beyond the present. What came, just came. Whether it was rolling my car or wandering the streets of Deep Eleam well after the bars closed or meeting, walking barefoot in the snow in South Dakota while wearing only my lace-up leathers and a torn t-shirt or listening to the surf as a winter storm pounded the Galviston Island beaches, things just happened as they happened.

So what is my point?

I'm not sure anymore.

Descartes said, 'I think, therefore I am.' But did you know the Cartesian coordinate system takes its name from the same person.? This existence is limited. We live never to know 'everything.' Only learning what our culture and technology provides for us. I think, I can only begin to understand the complexities of the universe, by understanding myself. Now, I am into my 30s and I no longer ask 'why.' I ask 'why not.'

Mathematics is the first hard science.

Logic is the foundation of all of the sciences, but mathematics is the pure application of logical reason.

In school we are taught a list of formulas by rote. Our teachers rarely tell us the history of the topic. Who discovered 'π' and why? What about 'e'? How did counting systems develop? When was the zero invented in our culture? Was it used by other before Europeans? If so, who and when?

Mathematical instruction is passed to us like is the word of god. NO! Mathematics is a creative process, dynamic and ever changing. Math starts with very basic ideas, and we build upon those ideas, twisting and turning known ideas into new ideas. Those new ideas are proven through the use of rigorious proofs to be correct in all cases for time eternal. Mathematics is the only field where truth is absolute. Any 'law' can and has been proven, time and time again. There is no variation. Just try that idea of rigidity in the biological sciences!

Do you what to learn more about math? Learn about the people who got us this far in our understanding of the world around us. Learn about the mathematicians who came before us and helped to define where are technology is at the present...