Today I’d like to talk about everyone’s favorite, least-favorite subject in school: Math
Math can seem very scary and complicated. And this feeling is very valid to have – math does get more complicated the more you learn. When faced with a problem like:
one can really long for the days of “If Sally has 5 apples and gives away 3 how many apples remain?”.
But the beautiful thing about it, is that all math can be simplified. It builds up into complicated equations and problems, but it can always be broken back down to simple things!
For example, if you know that sin(π/2) = 1, and how integrals work, you can solve this problem pretty easily – BUT therein lies the rub. Math is all just building blocks, but the key is knowing and sometimes memorizing what blocks to use (which is never fun). Just like it’s hard to understand 5 – 3 if you’re not familiar with counting, it’s almost impossible to answer that question if you’ve never been taught an integral or what sine is.
People place so much fear, stigma, and weight on doing math that it becomes so intimidating. So when faced with something strange and hard seeming, they panic and assume “I can never understand this”. BUT THEY CAN!
We often don’t think about it, but back in elementary when everything about numbers and addition was new, it seemed so confusing then too.
When I was in high school, I once tutored a fifth grader who needed help with long division, and I found myself having to relearn some key concepts that I’d forgotten and hadn’t thought about in years! I noticed the student was adding the large numbers incorrectly as they worked, so I said, “Oh you have to carry the one here.” To which they responded: “Why?”
And I had to pause, and then think about because, why DO we do that? I knew it was something to do with numbers no longer being the same category but how did I explain that to someone unfamiliar? Which led me down a bit of a rabbit hole of looking up elementary school textbooks and lesson plans. Because without understanding something like “place values” (ones, tens, hundreds) it’s really hard to understand why you need to “carry a one” in long multiplication and division!
Even something as retroactively simple as division was once completely baffling – but once you learn it, it becomes instinct. The same can be said for the most complex of mathematics: once you understand its rules, nothing can stop you!
If you can remember the rules of a triangle, you can remember sine. If you can understand a grid, you can build up to calculus and beyond.
Now the hard part is learning all of this for the first time – especially when many people have been burnt out from math, or set at a disadvantage in the past by bad explanations and inattentive teachers who never helped them understand. That is the true tragedy of math, and admittedly makes the subject a lot harder for most.
But I’m here to say, never doubt yourself! Even old dogs can learn new tricks, and you can always learn the blocks and break it down when facing “complex” math!
Think like a gamer: there are challenges, but with enough effort, grinding, and practice you can overcome it (and there’s nothing wrong with coming back later)!
Math is all just building blocks at the end of the day: simple individual concepts on their own, but you can assemble them into complex structures – amazing but confusing, equations that can describe the way our world and universe work – that can be very intimidating. However, I think it’s very comforting to remember from time to time that even the most intricate towers are still made of individual bricks; and with enough time and effort, you CAN break it back down!
