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Things Every Mathematician is Tired of Hearing
After the thousandth time…
“I was never good at math.”
Nobody was ever good at math. In fact, I’m still not good at math. That’s the thing with mathematics. You’re never short of feeling dumb. It takes months to understand a simple concept sometimes. Once you get it, you feel dumb for not getting it earlier. If you weren’t getting it in the beginning, you still feel dumb.
You never win.
“I was always good at math.”
Still wrong. Most people falsely believe that mathematics is a series of number crunching or variable discoveries. This is true in grade school, but it ends anywhere you choose to begin seriously climbing the mathematical hierarchy.
It’s not a search of ‘x’ or a balancing of numbers or an act of memorization. You were maybe faster than other kids at doing mental computation, but, other than that, you weren’t really doing much mathematics.
“Yeah, when do you ever use math in your real life? Like, Algebra or Trigonometry, is that even useful anywhere, haha?”
In fact, mathematics is the most direct model we have to reality. Without it, there is no basis on which to build roads, or homes, or automobiles, or bring you electricity, or create medicines, or literally…
