The Key to Obliterate the Math Abomination

Recently, upon fulfilling my daughter's desire to look at a childhood pic of mine, I happened to see a family picture taken when I was about 6 years old. Suddenly, I felt a gush of memories flooding in my mind giving that nostalgic feel about my childhood. I am sure, most parents experience this nostalgia during Various phases as their child grows. Somewhere out of the blue, from the huge ocean of memories, popped out this word- "MATH" that put me in deep contemplation. I must say, if at all I was ever in love with something then, it was definitely this subject - Math! Unfortunately, it remains to be one Subiect, despised by most children till date!

As a child, I had always wondered as to what's behind this "Math Abomination"! But, I gradually realised that it's only with people who look at it as just numbers, losing focus on visualising the bigger picture behind the numbers. These magical numbers forming an inherent part of our everyday lives all the more involuntarily makes it even more astounding. Apparently, while at school / college, I could hardly fathom the depth of applied mathematics as much as I did with respect to Science.

The "Algebraic phobia" amongst school children and the "calculus phobia" amongst the teens deserve a special mention here. I feel lucky to have loved them both in spite of not knowing the extent to which these concepts were exploited in real life. But when I look back now, I could hardly think of a day that did not involve the concepts of Math we learnt all along. There has seldom been a Sector of work that doesn't involve Math. Science and Math go hand in hand indeed!

(Image courtesy: XKCD)

1. Let's consider your daily life. It is time (simple numbers from 0-24), the so called precious, that marks the dawn of your new day. Your growth in life is determined by how effectively you manage it. Your sleep cycle follows the time involuntarily. This fundamental concept of Math when linked with various other attributes of Science like gravity/ speed/ distance, forms the basis to advanced concepts like Time travel. It is mind-boggling to note that our scientists are working towards developing time machines to enable travel to the future. The base to this was laid by Einstein's General/Special relativity theory back in the 20th century. This wouldn't have been possible had Einstein not visualized the link between the measures of different physical quantities.


2. If we look at the health and fitness of an individual, it involves simple cooking and exercise. But trust me, it is not as easy as it sounds particularly to the ones with Math phobia. Basically, Cooking involves, mixing of ingredients and heating them if necessary. Aren't these tightly coupled with the concepts of ‘proportion’ and ‘temperature’?!
   
   Here goes my personal experience on this. In the beginning, when I first learnt cooking, the recipes that I used were for hardly 4 people. But thanks to my understanding of ratio and proportions! Given a situation, I can very well cook for 400 people now. If one could get hold of these concepts and put them to right use with financial concepts, he/she transpires to be a restaurateur!


3. Something similar explains Math and fitness as well. People adhere to exercise to reduce weight/burn calories. By extending their knowledge on how Math is incorporated in all areas of exercise like BMI [Body Mass Index), BMR [Basal Metabolic Rate), Body fat calculations and Heart rate, a fitness trainer or a Dietician is born.



(Image courtesy: Dilbert)


4. As we move on to finance, an adequate understanding of Algebra would make a world of difference to a normal person managing it. While the concept of Simple/compound interest comes in handy for loan/investments, accounting helps to track expenses. Here's where the statistics, graphs and curves come in to play. It is interesting to note that Math serves as a backbone to the blog chain algorithms in the world of crypto-Currencies.


5. Few years back, while I served as a software engineer, many a times I've felt this question scrape through my mind - "Are all those higher Math concepts learnt as Engineering Mathematics only for the purpose of exams?!" The answer to this came to me years later. Recently, I happened to do a course on Machine learning, which is all about predictions based on patterns found in the statistical analysis of Big data. I was amazed at how the concepts of Differential/Integral calculus and probability modelling were incorporated into various algorithms for automated data analysis.

Apparently, in the eyes of a child, finance happens to be nothing more than arithmetic. Ultimately, the magic behind the numbers remain hidden until they grow up and unfold the mystery themselves. It then dawns on them that, what was abhorred all along deserved to be adored after all!

Math plays all the more crucial role in the field of medicine/pharmaceuticals as well. Could you even imagine what would happen if a wrong dosage of medicine is prescribed or consumed by mistake?! Math in music - counting, rhythm, frequency/pitch, intervals, etc. is simply splendid in the field of art. Our farmers get to play with rows and columns while planting in their agricultural land, exploiting the concepts of Matrix. If not for the Trignometry and Differential geometry behind architecture, the great wonders of the world would be non-existent. Had our astronomers not perceived the Math behind Space science, a space shuttle’s rendezvous with its space station would have remained an impossible event.

The practical applications of math to everyday life is truly endless. The whole point of this article is to elucidate that Math is something beyond just numbers and formulae. After all, in our times, we never used Math as a language during our Math sessions. It was more of numbers and formulae that we saw on board. Most importantly, we never raised the question of 'why?" while we were taught a formula. Our childhood does seem to have a seasoning of Science experiments but not many of us experimented Math while we learnt it.

So, the next time if at all you hear your child say "Oh no! Why am I learning all these?!" during a Math Session:

1. Please do cite a few of the above examples.


2. Make Sure to involve your child in all possible activities at home right from cooking to financial planning that would best illustrate the magic of math.


3. Let's give them some thoughts to ponder while they look at shapes/curvatures of toys/buildings around them, deal with quantities at the Super Market and lot more of what their curious minds could comprehend.


4. Let them question math the way they do science and find out for themselves the way Math and science are intertwined.


5. Let's create opportunities for them to err using Math in real life. These errors will feed their curiosity, making them more inquisitive while developing their self-inclination to perceive the real picture behind the simple numbers.

You'd soon realise the abomination transforming into passion!