Oh, snap! Beautiful

 

Regarding your signature: "corpes"?

 

I remember back in calculus where my teacher proved that formula for fun. It took almost 2 days (I think this was the one) and it wasn't something we even needed to know.

 

I only hate math because (like many things we hate) I don't understand it.


It doesn't appeal to my creative side. Its like, okay here's a problem and get THE answer...

 

I barely squeaked through my third semester calculus so I guess I'm just barely human.

I guess it depends on your work but the number of times I need anything more complicated than first semester calculus (in mfg/process engineering for electronics and material development) is awfully rare. Heck, even my statistics/DOE analysis is automated (two thumbs up for Statgraphics!).

 

I disagree. Basic math is very rote but higher math can be quite creative.

 

huh??

 

Well I should have rephrased.

I'm really interested in some things about math, and those ARE the higher equations that deal mostly with theory and delve into other areas like physics. With those even though I don't understand the math part fully, I still think what they are talking about is interesting. And I can contribute to the discussion. These problems open the discussion up and it's not quite a closed circuit by mearly focusing on the math.

Math never clicked with me, well it did, but I could never explain it. I would get the answer but not explain how I got it. It just seemed like "common sense" for the more basic math. Once I was penalized for doing something different (albeit wrong) I said "screw this" and found some thing that was immediately creative: english, music, art.

It was not until college where I started to think math was really fun. I had liberal arts math that dealt with cool patterns and theories like the pigeonhole theory and the golden ratio. Unfortunately the teacher was completely inept and the students, freshmen at the time had to teach themselves, and as a result I didn't learn too much and left, once again, another sour taste of math in my mouth.


Math as a whole is extremely creative and it is always growing, but I'll never get to that point. Plus the ultimate aim of math isn't something I'm interested in. But I'm a bit of an oddball when it comes to critcizing math.

And when I think of higher level math, I think of the movie Pi. It doesn't look fun, no matter how creative.

 

Many years ago I taught a liberal arts math course. This was at a time when I was given carte blanche on the subjects I covered: as long as it was mathematics, it was fine.

We started using the textbook and covered standard stuff like balancing one's chequebook. Boring!

I switched gears. We covered some abstract algebra: group theory, illustrated by rearranging living room furniture. Then I taught them how to prove Brouwer's Fixed Point Theorem. We finished with the Traveling Salesman Problem and the Highway Inspector (or Chinese Postman) Problem. Anything but boring!

 

Which part didn't you understand?