As a kid in the Sixties and early Seventies I was master of many things: my Major Matt Mason toys, my Action Man stuff, my Project SWORD fleet, how to fix a bike puncture and how to wear platform shoes. I could do all these things and like Mattel's Man in Space I was in my element doing them.
But when I was at "Skool" I always struggled greatly with Maths. I was OK but I only just scraped through my final exam when I was 16.
Unlike English I just didn't feel confident thinking mathematically. For some people its just like another language, which they learn really easily. For me Maths often felt counter-intuitive.
The most counter-intuitive and abstract of all the ideas in my Secondary School Maths was that a double minus makes a positive.
How can this be?
How can 7- - 7 = +14?
It really doesn't make any sense. Its like saying that two wrongs make a right or that two fails make a pass! See, I'm resorting to English to explain it to myself again because I understand words; I can grapple with them and make them work. I even understand tricky double negatives in long sentences. But numbers! Yikes! and, even worse, negative numbers! God help us!
When I do try to equate the above sum with everyday experience it just makes it worse and even less graspable. For instance, if I said I had seven pounds and I wanted give away minus seven pounds, whereupon I would magically end up with plus fourteen pounds and bid for something on Ebay I would say its madness! How on earth could I have minus seven pounds? Perhaps its a debt that I owe a mate for an 8 inch Meat Feast Pizza or something? Alas, using the idea of debt just makes it even foggier.
Maths doesn't translate into normal language. Its somehow other-worldy, intangible, unimaginable and yes, maybe even scary in a runic sort of way. Symbols beyond speech, glyphs without words, ciphers to an unseen dimension where double negatives really do make pluses.
I am, however, in awe of Mathematicians and their uncanny ability to calibrate the world in numbers. That theorems such as Fermat's Last could take hundreds of years to solve is to me a form of arcane mystery and the fact that some bright spark can do it is positively Lovecraftian.
No, I shall stick to words - where I feel warm, safe and cozy - but, on the off chance you can explain how a double negative makes a plus in words of a single syllable that I used all week then please do get in touch!
What was your bete-noir at "Skool" readers?
What was your bete-noir at "Skool" readers?
I was (and still am) hopeless at foreign languages at school. As for negative numbers, they make more sense when they have a meaning like +7cm means 7cm to the right and -7cm means 7cm to the left.
ReplyDeleteOh no, not directions as well Kev! Jeepers! How much math can happen at once! I have just tried diving minus 1 by zero and cannot believe the online answer! minus infinity! Now what is that monster!
Deletediving? I meant dividing!
DeleteJust to make life more complicated, the square root of minus 1 is an imaginary number! They are used for example in a.c. electrical calculations.
DeleteAren't all numbers imaginary Kev? How can one particular one be?
DeleteThink of real numbers as being on a line going off in both directions. Imaginary numbers are in the spaces off that line!
DeleteHi Woodsy, I relate to what you say. At school I developed a distinct psychological fear generated by the white noise of maths lessons. I lived with the agonizing dread of being 'chosen' to speak up and provide a clueless answer to a question I couldn't grasp. I think in the end the maths teacher simply gave up and allowed me to doodle quietly in my jotter. But that was back then... these days I can thankfully count on a mathematically astute wife to guide me through the puzzling equations of life. All the best, Tony K
ReplyDeleteHa ha, Mrs. K sounds like Missus Moonbase, a level-head in the swirling storms of modern times! I too was a Maths duffer, forced to sit at the front of the class along with other herberts, so the teacher could give us extra help! I managed to tread water during Algebra but Calculus and Euclidian maths pushed my head right under the desk! Oddly enough, I know more Maths now than I ever did at School.
DeleteYour last comment applies to me too, Woodsy. Having had to help the boys with Maths suddenly made me understand things that completely eluded me when in school myself. Though understanding this time around was still up to a certain level, after which the wallet needed to come out to have some bright youngster take over the explaining...
ReplyDeleteThing that bugged me most was having to resort to telling the boys "you need to try and 'see' it" which drove me up the walls when a maths teacher told me that in school.
Best -- Paul
Seeing maths is like trying to taste language! You either can or you can't I think Paul. Presumably Mathematicians can. And as for those Scientific Calculators! What a nightmare! Give me a dictionary any day! ha ha
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