| Topic: |
Sociology > Education |
| User: |
"Dom" |
| Date: |
24 Jun 2007 09:08:22 PM |
| Object: |
A mathphobe in recovery writes about this joyful subject |
All I can say is: It is unfortunate that Denise Noe did not have the
same type of teachers that I had.
By the way, I was completely clueless about girls having "math
anxiety" until 1977, when the Hartford Courant published a long
article on Sheila Tobias' book. At the time, Tobias was a top
administrator at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.
===============
http://mensnewsdaily.com/2007/06/24/a-mathphobe-in-recovery-writes-about-this-joyful-subject/
Denise Noe
A mathphobe in recovery writes about this joyful subject
June 24, 2007
Math. Throughout my childhood, adolescence, and most of my adult life,
the very thought of the subject struck genuine fear in me. I thought
about fractions and decimals or even addition or subtraction and would
actually feel pinpricks of sweat break out on the back of my neck and
the palms of my hands.
I also thought math was the most boring subject in the world. People
would say math is fun and I scoffed at them. Fun? Math? All those
endless, dull little numbers and squiggly signs? John Allen Paulos
could have been thinking specifically of me when he wrote in his slim,
fascinating book Innumeracy about people for whom number emotionally
translates numb-er.
All through school, math was my nemesis. In the fifth grade, we were
often assigned to add up long columns of four-digit numbers. I
inevitably made flub after flub in carrying. Since I did well in most
other subject, the fifth grade teacher said, I'm always disappointed
in your results.
When I first took algebra, I struggled mightily with it. In my junior
high school algebra class, we put together notebooks filled with our
homework. I put drawings in my algebra notebook of girls with tears
streaming from their eyes to represent my feelings about the subject.
The teacher, then elderly and partially disabled by arthritis, had
once talked about how much fun algebra had been when she first
encountered it as a young girl. "It was just like working on a
puzzle," she recalled.
A few years ago I started reading a few popular books dealing with
math avoidance, including Paulos' book, and with easier ways to
perform simple arithmetic operations, as well as to do math tricks.
Besides Paulos' book, I read Overcoming Math Anxiety by Sheila Tobias,
Math Magic by Scott Flansburg, Mathemagics by Arthur Benjamin and
Michael Brant Shermer, Where Do I Put the Decimal Point? by Elisabeth
Ruedy,Sue Nirenberg, Figuring by Shakuntala Devi, Beyond Numeracy as
well as Mathematics and Humor also by Paulos, and Archimedes' Revenge
by Paul Hoffman.
Now I consider myself a mathphobe in recovery. I can still struggle
with even simple math problems. Math can still scare me. However, I
understand it much better than I once did. I've learned how to add
from left to right instead of right to left with its endless mind-
numbing carrying. I know that a number that is divisible by three has
digits that, when added together, sum to a multiple of three. Thus, I
see addresses and other numbers and automatically add their digits to
find out if they are divisible by three. I also know that if they're
divisible by three and the number as a whole is even, it is divisible
by six. I know that to multiply by five, it's easiest to first
multiply by 10 - just tack on a 0 - and then divide in half.
I sometimes do math just for fun. I enjoy what is called letter
arithmetic in which a solved division problem is shown with letters
substituted for numbers. I worked through Bob Miller's Algebra for the
Clueless and Mildred and Tim Johnson's How To Solve Word Problems in
Algebra and, to my delighted surprise, found myself ENJOYING tackling
math!
Cute stories connected to math are especially likely to stick in my
still humanities-oriented mind. A favorite is the one about the time
British mathematician G.H. Hardy went to visit Indian mathematician
Ramanujan when the latter was sick. Hardy commented that the number on
the taxi that brought him over was 1,729. "That sounds like a dull
number to me," Hardy continued. "I hope it's not a bad omen."
Ramanujan immediately perked up. "No, Hardy, no!" he exclaimed. "1,729
isn't a dull number at all! It's a very interesting number. It's the
smallest number that is the sum of two cubes in two different ways. 1
cubed plus 12 cubed equals 1,729 and 9 cubed plus 10 cubed equals
1,729."
Another story that I love is about mathematician Karl Frederich Gauss
when he was a little boy. There are a few versions of the story but
the math is the same in all of them.
In my favorite version, a teacher wanted to keep a class of third-
graders busy so the instructor assigned the kids the seemingly time-
consuming problem of adding up all the numbers from 1 to 100. After a
few minutes, like Karl Frederich Gauss raised up his arm and raised
his hand. "It's 5,050," the eager child told the teacher and the
class.
It was indeed the correct sum. How did the little boy figure it out so
quickly?
What is 1 + 100? 101. What is 2 + 99? 101. What is 3 + 98? 101. There
are 50 pairs of 101. 50 X 100 = 5000. 50 X 1 = 50 and together they
add up to 5,050.
While his classmates were laboriously adding 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 . . . young
Gauss saw the pattern in the numbers. Much of mathematics - and much
of what makes mathematics so interesting and enjoyable - is the
understanding of the patterns in numbers and the relationships between
numbers.
I recently acquired a DVD by Arthur Benjamin. It is called The Joy of
Mathematics and consists of lectures on subjects like counting,
primes, algebra, geometry, and pi. I've only started to watch the
series. I know that it will be difficult for me to understand much of
it and I expect to watch the lectures multiple times before I grasp
the concepts. However, I'm not forcing myself to watch them. I'm
watching them because I want to learn more about math.
It is a joyful subject.
.
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