Recently the Washington Post published an article that carried interesting mathematical news.
I know, you didn’t think there could BE such a thing, so boring is mathematics.
But there’s news, all right: Many states are now requiring high-school students, no matter how mystifying they find numbers and formulas, to take not only basic math but also an advanced course, Algebra II.
The Post article began by stating the crux of the matter as seen by mathematical dodos like me:
With its intricate mysteries of quadratics, logarithms and imaginary numbers, Algebra II often provokes a lament from high-schoolers.
“What exactly does this have to do with real life?”
Precisely.
From the moment I walked out of my final exam in Algebra ONE in high school, I can’t remember using a mathematical formula. Not to shop. Not to cross a busy street. Not to write. Not to get out of a jam. Not for anything that I can think of.
Now, as a reasonably organized Virgo, I appreciate math’s emphasis on logic and accuracy. But does anyone need an ADVANCED course to drum this into his head?
In college, I had a fraternity brother, a pre-engineering student, who carried his slide rule just for decoration. He could do equations in his head. I thought he was the second coming of Pythagoras. Not that I remember a lot about Pythagoras, other than he had some famous theorem related to triangles.
He — my friend, not Pythagoras — in turn, thought I was Ernest Hemingway, just because I could align verbs with nouns in a string of words.
My buddy had shot way past Algebra II into “trig” and beyond – and I shiver to think what THOSE courses must have been like.
Good for him. By now, I’m sure, he’s building better mousetraps or computers or mountainside viaducts, or developing the gear that sends our astronauts into space.
I, on the other hand, write a humble blog and other essays about America. No doubt he’d say my job is harder.
Which brings me back to the question. If I’ve done OK for half a century without Algebra II, why should mathematically clueless high-school students be REQUIRED to take it?
So I asked my editor, Rob “Archimedes” Sivak, who supervises VOA’s science, health, and agriculture reporters — and me. He snorted at the very idea that one would dismiss the value of taking advanced math:
“As hard and vexing and confounding as math often is (to those of us with the basic brain wiring kit), it is beautiful, fundamental, profound,” he wrote me.
“Beautiful”! “Profound”! Mathematics?? Bear with him:
And while we can’t all visualize the space-time continuum of general relativity in our HEADS the way Einstein is said to have done, we can certainly prod ourselves to keep at the hard work of trigonometry and geometry and calculus, because it’s a noble venture to try to understand the way the world is structured. Besides, the effort also exercises the brain and, like the crossword-puzzle-a-day prescription as a bulwark against Alzheimer’s disease, solving even simple math problems keeps those neurons firing!
I suspect that Alzheimer’s Disease reference was a shot aimed directly at me. Now, where was I? Read the rest of this entry »