As the title says, this post will attempt to answer the question “why learn math?” I explained this as a lecture on the first day of every semester to most of my classes. As I have to explain this to pretty much every non-math person I meet, I figure it would be easier to write a blog about it.
Why learn math? If you are a math teacher, you’ve heard this a billion times. I’ll never use math in my career. Why should I bother learning it? Why do THEY make me learn it? If you’re a student, you’ve probably asked this a few times in your life. Well, it’s time you find out the secret. The truth is, no one really cares if you leave the class knowing how to draw a pretty parabola or how to factor a cubic expression. Here’s the real reason you learn math.
Imagine you’re driving on a highway on a hot Texas afternoon and your tire blows out. What should you do? Well, it all depends, right? If you’re skilled with your hands, changing a tire may be a no-brainer. If you have AAA membership, maybe you could put it to good use and get your car towed to the nearest auto shop. Maybe you could call a friend or family member to come rescue you. Maybe you’re skilled with your hands, but it’s too hot outside, or that particular highway is too busy and dangerous. What you’re really doing here is analyzing every possible solution to come up with an optimal one to solve your problem. This is the real life skill that everyone needs to have. Problems like this arise all the time, and as intelligent beings we are required to be able to come up with a good solution. But how do we learn this skill?
While I am all for throwing a bunch of college kids onto an uninhabited island and letting them experience problem solving first hand, in this day and age this might lead to some lawsuits. Therefore, we are forced to learn this “problem solving” skill in the realm of mathematics. Mathematics has its own laws, like the distributive law. It has its own rules, like DO NOT DIVIDE BY ZERO. The universe of math comes with its own regulations and natural occurrences, which enables us to use the knowledge of all these rules to practice problem solving. Just like you have to figure out what to do about your tire given a certain set of conditions – weather, AAA membership, etc – you have to figure out how to solve that quadratic equation. If it’s not too complicated and the coefficient of x is even, you could try completing by square. If it looks like something you’ve had experience factoring, you could try – you guessed it – factoring. Or you could just use the quadratic equation, assuming you have it memorized (yet another condition you need to take into account!)
Mathematics enables us to practice problem solving and logical thinking in the relative safety of our own pen and paper (try to avoid paper cuts though). It gets our gears moving without the risk of heatstroke while changing a tire on a dangerous highway. This is why we learn mathematics.
Vazgen Zakaryan
Vazgen's Blog 