Thursday 3 October 2013

It is just so MATHastic!

MATH: The subject that starts out with one, two, three, goes on to a,b,c and ends up in alpha, beta, gamma. (Don't Google it. This is my personal definition after studying mathematics for almost sixteen years now. )

You hate Math? I am not surprised. About seventy percent of my batch does. When asked why, there is not one person who is able to justify it with a valid reason besides that of having flunked too many times or having been chided all through their childhood for lacking "calculative skills".
I remember when I was in pre-school and was first introduced to numbers I had the wildest questions in my mind.
"Ma'am! Why is one written as 1?"
"Ma'am! Why does eight come after seven and not before?"
"Ma'am! When I turn ten hundred and forty-four years, how will I write it in this tiny box here?"
My teacher, vexed by my continuous questions, struggled hard to conceal her anger. She would glare at me and grind her teeth while I stood there, under the impression that one day she will answer all my questions. Well, she obviously din't. I still remember how she had walked up to me one day after class to strike a deal that if I stop asking her "weird" questions in class she would give me a bar of 'Dairy Milk' . My reply: "Ma'am what is weird?"
"YOU!"
Incidentally in my standard seven, I took up the same topic for a class project to find my answers to the first two questions (by then I quite clearly understood that I need not worry about the third one.) The concept is indeed very interesting and for anyone who wants to read up on it; here it goes: http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=49183.
There might be a better and more logical explanation to it but hey! I was in seventh grade and I was quite happy with the answer!
I love Math! (Please keep reading)
We all were told in school that a person cannot survive in this world without mathematical skills. I am not going to check the veracity of that statement because that is not why I love the subject. My quest of the so called "journey into mathematics" started when I decided to find out why others hate it. That is when I realised that MOST people who hate Math develop the aversion not because of the fear of exam or fear of the teacher in school (who for some reason is always found with a long-sized wooden ruler in the hand). The abhorrence for Math arises out of the fear of NUMBERS (and operations) to start with and on a higher scale, fear of embarrassment resulting out of simple miscalculations in public. For example; if a parent or a teacher asks a twelve year old to compute seven into six mentally and she answers it wrong, she will be scorned at for not having learnt her tables properly or being "poor" in Mathematics. And God forbid , if you are a Tambram like me, you are expected to be born with high calculative skills and will be disparaged and looked down upon as though the entire pride of your caste depends on "seven into six equals forty two".
When such importance is given to a subject and a higher (negative) importance when one gets it wrong, the majority of the population is bound to fear it.
One way to fight this fear will be to NOT make a big deal out of it. It is OKAY to goof up. All of us come out of the exam hall and say: "Darn! I made a silly mistake." It is important to know that making silly mistakes does not make YOU silly.
Getting back to the topic in hand, it is a common notion of many math lovers to say 'Math is Fun' but I say "Math is Funny!"
First we have Natural numbers. That's simple.
Then we have whole numbers. That's great! Zero is a very useful number.
Then we have integers. Negatives! Don't like them, but okay.
Then we have Rational numbers. Wait! Were't we just done ?
Then we have Irrational numbers. Irr what?
Then we have Real numbers ! OKAY! Got it !
Then we have Complex numbers! Thank you for the apt nomenclature.

The FUNNIEST of them all is when we are introduced to "Abstract Algebra" or "Boolean Algebra" in higher Mathematics. The question in my paper: Prove that 0.a=0.... How? No. My question, WHY?
Then we were introduced to Graph theory where we were asked to calculate how many chipmunks will a mommy chipmunk give birth to (with given, non-mathematical, conditions)? I was wondering for the first few hours whether I was sitting in the wrong classroom .
Currently we are diving into the world of ANALYSIS! It is rightly said that once you go deeper into a subject you will find that there is no connection between what you started with and what you are presently doing. I READ MATH. The only place where numbers appear is in the serial number column.
So here we are. After mastering all the necessary skills required for all of the above and acing the papers , I sit for an interview and this is what they ask me: "What is zero point zero one raised to the power of two hundred?" For the first time in my life my marks looked quite redundant and I did not know whether to laugh or cry. Sitting in that board room all I could think of  is all those friends of mine, back in school and college who loathed the subject and cribbed about it every single time. I walked back home more amused than usual and looked it up. Even Google took a few milliseconds more than it usually does (Well, I may add!).
So in sum, we have lovers of Mathematics on the right hand side (RHS) and haters of Mathematics on the left hand side (LHS). No matter which side you belong to there will be a time in your life when you feel like you know nothing and run hunting for your calculator when asked to compute basic arithmetic operations. So why fret? Why give it the status of "the most terrifying subject" when all you are , or rather both sides of the table are expected to do by the end of the day is tap on the calculator. We can say, in this case;
 LHS=RHS.
Hence Proved.


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