The Four Lettered Word of Math

January 25, 2005

AbacusThere’s a sta­tis­tic float­ing around out there in the sphere of exis­tence that says that for every one bad teacher it takes 3 years to recover.

Ask any­one that knows me and they’ll tell you that I’m not as knowl­edgable in the intri­c­as­ies of math­e­mat­ics. On the con­trary, I’m on the oppo­site side of the spec­trum, more right-brained and imag­i­na­tive then left-brained and orga­nized. My wife some­times can’t under­stand why I can’t think log­i­cally like she can and I have to remind her that we all have our quirks, tal­ents and stigmas.

My own per­sonal inflic­tion of dis­dain and embarass­ment is the four-letter word known as Math. For as long as I can remem­ber I’ve had issues with sequences of logic and I believe it all stems from the slew of hor­rific teach­ers I had in my grade school years. It seems that between 5th and 7th grade I lost any sort of inter­est in Math pre­tend­ing that it wasn’t a cru­cial part of my life, not real­iz­ing of course at the time that it would have an impor­tant effect on my adulthood.

For the past few years I’ve got­ten by with­out hav­ing to resort to using Math­e­mat­ics in my daily life. I’ve worked retail posi­tions where cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion is the dri­ving force for sales but in this day and age most cash reg­is­ters have been replaced with com­put­ers that resem­ble cash reg­is­ters. Most of the time it’s just a mat­ter of remem­ber­ing a spe­cific pat­tern or uti­liz­ing a bit of com­mon sense to avoid using Math but in cer­tain instances it’s a great asset. Which is why I’ve embarked on a quest to re-learn some­thing I had detested for half of my entire life and for this rea­son I’ve come to real­ize that things that dis­cour­age us will always be over­come at some point in our life­times. The sim­ple route is to exit stage left and focus rather on what we know and what we’re com­fort­able with.

Had I known this 10 years ago I think I’d be in a dif­fer­ent point in my life right now. In fact I might have even decided to become a Math teacher to teach kids who strug­gle with addi­tion, sub­trac­tion and mul­ti­pli­ca­tion. My own per­sonal bat­tle with Math isn’t over, no, it’s just begun but at least I took the first step towards real­iz­ing I had an issue and over­com­ing it, one baby step at a time. 

26 comments

Funny you men­tion this — Mom once had a job as a super­mar­ket cashier, decades ago. Back then (late 60s) you really had to mem­o­rize a lot of prod­uct codes and have a fast hand and mind to oper­ate a cash reg­is­ter. Last I checked, those who do that job today just pass stuff through a scan­ner that goes *beep*…*beep*…*beep*… no need to mem­o­rize anything.

Yet they still com­plain… :P

As far as math goes, after nearly a decade of doing web work for a liv­ing I can say that, if some­thing like Flash existed by the time I was stug­gling with alge­bra in HS, I would have been much more inter­ested in the sub­ject. Pro­gram­ming lan­guages like Javascript and Action­script are, at its core, applied alge­bra. When you have the grasp of this knowl­edge, the sky’s the limit. They should show kids stuff like this — we’d prob­a­bly have less school dropouts. If only good com­put­ers were cheaper…

by beto on January 25, 2005 at 1:35 pm. Reply #

I think you got your brain halves mixed up: the left half does sequence thin­gies (like lan­guage, for exam­ple), the right half does the logic stuff (so math too, probably).

by Manuzhai on January 25, 2005 at 2:14 pm. Reply #

Manuzhai: I pulled my infor­ma­tion from this resource which states that the left brain is respon­si­ble for log­i­cal think­ing and the right for intu­itive, holis­tic thinking.

What part of your brain do think is most dominant?

by kartooner on January 25, 2005 at 3:21 pm. Reply #

My first expe­ri­ence in math was my father get­ting mad at me and break­ing a Darth Vader pen­cil I had received for Christ­mas because I wasn’t cor­rectly per­form­ing some ele­men­tary form of arith­metic. It’s hard to give a crap about any­thing when mis­un­der­stand­ing (or dis­abil­ity) is met with such daunt­ing oppo­si­tion, espe­cially math. I haven’t given a crap since then.

by Charlie on January 25, 2005 at 3:38 pm. Reply #

Char­lie: Of all things, a Darth Vader pen­cil?? I think there is some law against such a thing, break­ing a pen­cil with Darth Vader on it or in the shape of the Jedi mas­ter. Ludi­crous if you ask me.

Char­lie, what’s 15−(8×7)^2 / 26?

Answer: Who cares?!

by kartooner on January 25, 2005 at 4:27 pm. Reply #

Beto: Good point. I sup­pose if I were more knowl­edgable of Flash and Action­script specif­i­cally I’d under­stand Math­e­mat­ics more, but con­sid­er­ing I’m still out in blue yon­der when it comes to either of those, well, it’s still a con­fus­ing sub­ject to me.

The lan­guage of Math is inter­est­ing but unfor­giv­able when it comes to test time.

by kartooner on January 25, 2005 at 4:31 pm. Reply #

Hm, yeah, that sounds about right as well. I just thought that since lan­guage was in the left side, logic would be in the other side (since women are gen­er­ally acknowl­edged to be less good at visuo-spatial tasks — which I was incor­rectly mix­ing up with logic in gen­eral, I guess).

by Manuzhai on January 25, 2005 at 6:05 pm. Reply #

Even though I’m not all that great in math, my brain is split evenly down the mid­dle, or that was what one of those apti­tude tests told me at least.

I did rock in my sci­ence and pro­gram­ming classes though, so maybe it was just an inter­est thing.

by max on January 25, 2005 at 6:28 pm. Reply #

Kar­tooner,

The answer to your prob­lem is:

–105.6153846153846153846153846153

Remem­ber to use PEMDAS

Paren­the­sis -> Expo­nents -> Mul­ti­pli­ca­tion -> Divi­sion -> Addi­tion -> Subtraction.

Hope this helps!

by Mrs. Goodrich on January 25, 2005 at 6:44 pm. Reply #

If only good com­put­ers were cheaper…

I beg your par­don. Recently, I have got­ten myself a Pen­tium 1, 233 MHz, with whop­ping 32 megs of RAM, a 14 inch mon­i­tor and no mouse. I can assure you it did not cost a lot of money. Yes­ter­day, I spent the evening pro­gram­ming in Del­phi 6 and not only it was fun, I never had my CPU maxed out and the com­puter wasn’t run­ning sig­nif­i­cantly slower than my main Duron 750 MHz / 256 MB RAM.

It’s not all about the speed.

On topic of the orig­i­nal post, I can live with­out math, but I’ll do it with plea­sure and excel­lent results if required. OTOH, I hate stuff like Eng­lish… I couldn’t care less what the themes are in whichever book I’m read­ing. I’m just inter­ested in the plot, in what hap­pens, in what, ulti­mately, makes the book worth reading.

And PEMDAS? In school they taught me BEDMAS, and I dare­say it sounds way better.

by Jarek Piórkowski on January 25, 2005 at 8:04 pm. Reply #

Manuzhai : At this point I’m not sure what either of them do and to pre­vent any more con­fu­sion I’ll just turn off my mind, give it rest and power up again.

Max:

I did rock in my sci­ence and pro­gram­ming classes though, so maybe it was just an inter­est thing.

I think you’re right, Max. I believe that I’m more inter­ested in these sub­jects the older I get and partly because I feel I can apply them to every­day life and in the long run bet­ter myself and my skills. Sci­ence used to scare the liv­ing day­lights out of me because I wasn’t pre­pared for the onslaught of infor­ma­tion and nei­ther did I feel it had any weight or sig­nif­i­cance in my life.

Mrs. Goodrich: Thank you. If I had spent the time try­ing to fig­ure it out I might have come to that answer but presently I need a refresher course on neg­a­tive integers.

P.E.M.D.A.S. to me is “Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally”, or it’s the way I was taught to remem­ber way back when in the hay­day of my childhood.

Jarek: Okay, Jarek, you need to explain how to use BEDMAS.

by kartooner on January 25, 2005 at 9:31 pm. Reply #

I always despised math in high school. That was until I took physics and pro­gram­ming. I now real­ize how for­tu­nate I was to have pro­gram­ming (Pas­cal, C++, VB, if your curi­ous) in school, and with an awe­some instruc­tor nonetheless.

Both classes helped tremen­dously in the appli­ca­tion of math to real world prob­lems, even though I am in the cre­ative field dom­i­nated by the right side o’ the brain. I think there needs to be a change in the way math is taught, show­ing how it is applicable.

It might be help­ful to take a physics or pro­gram­ming class, kar­tooner. It is great that you have the drive to pol­ish your skills.

by Mike on January 25, 2005 at 9:53 pm. Reply #

Hey Erik, Long time, no talk. I hope all is well. Your web­site is amaz­ing, Zoe is gor­geous! I am so proud of you and Chessie. As far as the math goes, math is actu­ally pretty amaz­ing. Math is every­where, in every­thing. Con­sid­er­ing you are an artist and a com­puter whiz, you know a lot more about math than you give your­self credit for. I hope the fam­ily is well, say hello to every­one. Love, cousin Shelly

by Michelle on January 25, 2005 at 10:48 pm. Reply #

Well, good luck to you! Math wouldn’t stop scream­ing “that’s my purse” and kick­ing me in the balls, so I gave up.

I might start teach­ing a class on how to avoid doing math, while doing math.

by Greg on January 26, 2005 at 2:53 am. Reply #

Aaaah, Shelly! I lost your cell in the great mal­func­tion of 05. If you still have mine, call it.. :-D Back on topic, Math does amaz­ingly suck, and I think you real­ize it around 7th grade. I can’t really say I use a lot of it other then pro­gram­ming. It seems like nowa­days com­put­ers do most the math, and pencil/paper is but a dis­tant second.

I hated Math in high school, but I loved Eng­lish due to its cre­ative make stuff up aspect. With math, you can’t make any­thing up.. 1+1 is always going to be 2, but there can be mul­ti­ple sides to a story.

::shrug::

by Matt (Brother) on January 26, 2005 at 11:41 am. Reply #

Jarek:

I beg your par­don. Recently, I have got­ten myself a Pen­tium 1, 233 MHz, with whop­ping 32 megs of RAM, a 14 inch mon­i­tor and no mouse. I can assure you it did not cost a lot of money.

I know, but I didn’t put that remark in that sense. I was think­ing more about pub­lic schools being able to afford them or, even bet­ter, give every stu­dent a lap­top as Apple did in Maine some time ago.

That would be bliss.

by beto on January 26, 2005 at 5:16 pm. Reply #

Beto:

I was think­ing more about pub­lic schools being able to afford them or, even bet­ter, give every stu­dent a lap­top as Apple did in Maine some time ago.

That would make sense con­sid­er­ing white boxes (or clones) are so cheap to come by these days. Most schools, I would think, could even strike up deals with com­puter man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors like Ingram Micro, Dell or HP and start putting com­put­ers in more class­rooms to aide in instruction.

by kartooner on January 26, 2005 at 6:23 pm. Reply #

Greg — I avoided math by drop­ping out of college.

by Charlie on January 27, 2005 at 1:46 pm. Reply #

Matt, I will call you soon. I fig­ured you were avoid­ing me.
Has any­one heard of the Fib­inocci sequence or mar­veled at the world around them? Every­thing is math, num­bers, cal­cu­la­tions, geom­e­try… I am going into teach­ing and took a class on how to make math more inter­est­ing for stu­dents last semes­ter. Every­one in my class expressed the same con­cerns as you all are. It is very true that math seems scary and we have had bad teach­ers, espe­cially girls. Because we all know boys are bet­ter at math. But math really does not have to be bor­ing and monot­o­nous. It can become real and applic­a­ble. Any­ways, I com­pletely agree that every stu­dent should have their own com­puter. Even if it is not the great­est, some­thing that is more prac­ti­cal for the times we live in rather than paper and gel pens.

by Michelle on January 27, 2005 at 7:24 pm. Reply #

Im not avoid­ing you reject.. Just been extremely busy with work and per­sonal stuff. Gez­zus, get over your­self, you think for your selfer… Hah.. jk.. :-D Ya call me..:0D

by Matt (brother) on January 28, 2005 at 6:15 pm. Reply #

Fine then, whatever…I am sure that you are very busy. How are things going? How is work? Yes, very per­sonal stuff, I heard, I am happy for you. All grown up, all of us, still shocks me. What the heck is a “selfer”?
Love ya!
P.S. I know I am some­what tech­no­log­i­cally chal­lenged, but how do you get that lit­tle happy face icon to show up like that?

by Michelle on January 29, 2005 at 2:37 am. Reply #

‘scuse me for answer­ing late, exams and other niceties to deal with.

kar­tooner: BEDMAS is sim­ply brack­ets expo­nents divi­sion mul­ti­pli­ca­tion addi­tion sub­trac­tion. IMHO BEDMAS sounds bet­ter than PEMDAS… :) not too men­tion paren­the­sises are in Eng­lish, math­e­mat­ics calls it brack­ets IIANM.

beto: get­ting a free lap­top sounds like an inter­est­ing deal indeed. Too bad my school can’t even afford a decent snow shovel (or so they make it seem).

by Jarek Piórkowski on January 30, 2005 at 3:09 pm. Reply #

I feel you here brother. I hate math. Thus far, my 3 years of col­lege have been rel­a­tively math-free. Thank God for that (Bach­e­lor in Arts is a beau­ti­ful thing in the state of Ore­gon). I recently picked up a job at a cof­fee stand, only to find that the job is rid­dled with math. Crap. OK OK, so it’s no more than sim­ple addi­tion, but I didn’t sign up for this! 2.75 + 3.50 + 1.35, all while a cus­tomer is wait­ing and another one is at the sec­ond win­dow?!?! Yeah, math is no fun… even if it is just addition.

by Donnie Jeter on January 31, 2005 at 4:48 am. Reply #

Thanks for call­ing tonight.……NOW GET WELL…YOU SOUNDED SO SICK…cough, cough.

by Dad on February 1, 2005 at 2:17 am. Reply #

2+2= smart son.…Erik you’re doing some great things with your life…keep up the won­der­ful efforts

Love,
Dad

by Dad on February 6, 2005 at 12:23 am. Reply #

I was doing my thesis/ pay­roll sys­tem pro­gram one time in school and instead of cod­ing scripts and for­mu­las that makes the whole thing work, i found myself tweak­ing the col­ors and effects on my graphic user inter­face for 4 hours straight. i got my com­puter sci­ence degree after that, but i knew i was no com­puter sci­en­tist. at that point, i knew pro­gram­ming wasn’t my forte and i would rather look at some cool com­puter ani­ma­tions than lines of code. i found that, when­ever there is inter­est, there is pro­gres­sion. i’m sure as hell i have no inter­est in pro­gram­ming, but i’m very keen in learn­ing mul­ti­me­dia. my inter­est is def­i­nitely there and i know i’ll excel in that.

by Keith on June 21, 2006 at 6:58 am. Reply #

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