Is Math Useless?
Photo Credit: tkamenick
“When am I ever going to have to use this in the real world?” If, as a teacher, you’ve never heard some combination of these words, you really need to intensify the difficulty of your content. Students find no easy task in understanding why math is a staple in school curricula around the world. Specifically, why they had been “forced” to study numbers before they could write letters. Before I start, I want to make it clear that I am indeed a supporter of a math-centered classroom, so the arguments that follow reinforce this tenet.
Math is the Language of the Universe
There exist two schools of math philosophy: those who believe mathematics is a pure human invention and those who assert humans only discovered an inherent property of the universe. I subscribe to the latter school, though I will admit my brain starts to ache if I ponder the topic too deeply.
When I discuss the matter with students, my thought process goes as follows: if there is a rock resting on the ground and you put another rock next to it, there are now absolutely, unequivocally two rocks on the ground. This is true on earth, on mars, or on an asteroid flying between solar systems. You can say “two” in English, “dva” in Russian, or draw it symbolically, but you are still communicating an objective fact of life—there is a unique object and another unique object in the same location. That’s it. Existential and multiverse arguments aside, it’s difficult to argue how effective math is in simply describing the mysteries of the universe.
Halley’s Comet
The fear of the comet captured on a 1066 Bayeux tapestry. Photo Credit: Wikipedia
Edmond Halley illustrated the effective use of mathematics in translating nature by predicting the reappearance of his self-named cometevery 76 years. Before Halley, comets were devilish omens feared by Christians all across Europe. He decrypted the code of the cosmos by calculating the gravitational attractions of Jupiter and Saturn on the comet and thus exemplified the explanatory power of math. Though Halley never lived to see the reappearance of his comet, he pinpointed the exact year it was to swing around and illuminate the night sky once again.
Math in All Industries
Whether you’re a web developer figuring out an optimal page width or a chef measuring a cup of flour, math is sure to put you ahead in your craft. You add an indispensable tool into your repertoire that could allow you to perform tasks better and faster than your colleagues. Imagine this situation: one and a quarter cups of sugar make your cookies too sweet, but one cup of sugar leaves them bland. It would be a sad day in the kitchen if you couldn’t finagle your way out of this pickle. The solution you ask? Well it’s a perfectly sweet balance of 1.125 cups of course—not too sweet, not too bland, and you end up looking like a master pâtissier.
So internalize the essential math techniques and take control of your field, whatever it may be.
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