Muhaimin, Week 12 - By Math Alone
The annotations we did in class were on a really personal topic, the article with its express title “Not by Math A
one” hit a bit too close to home. I will always be a stem student for all of my life, the boons of mathematics will be ingrained inherently throughout my core, but I’ve also come to understand that STEM is not the only way to success. The article is clearly a well thought out and effectively persuasive argument for the salutary effects of the arts. Yet, I felt attacked personally while reading the article. This is because I never thought that I would never be on the side against mathematics in any issue. Therefore to play the devil's argument, I will express my belief that mathematical knowledge is hated by wider society because it is misrepresented society.
Mathematics is treated as a subject of express rigidity and inherent limits of prognosis, yet if you were to ask a mathematician I believe that they would answer that Mathematics is a tool for creativity. Mathematics is the pen to change the world and the magnifying glass to observe it. The problem is that most people in the United States don’t get to understand the true beauty of mathematics and they never get to experience the best part of my life. The problem is there because most people never get to interact with any actual math. To explain this, I’ll use English. Imagine a child asking why they have to learn words they will never use, it's the same thing with mathematics. To be honest, Mathematics doesn’t really get interesting until the 2nd year of college, it's because until then you are just learning the language and not anything else.
Furthermore, the way math is taught in school is very oblique, in my opinion, the school system fails to provide internal motivation to study the subject. For example, A couple months ago, I came across an interesting problem which could be surprisingly solved using linear algebra. This gave me the motivation to pick up the subject and as time went I understood more, and eventually I could solve the question on my own again. These backburner questions are really important and so many other techniques bring life into the subject. On a closing note, It is really important to understand math and it can help solve most problems. Do you think art would still be art if life was taken out of it?
Hi Abdul, I want to say I agree with you in terms of liking stem more than humanities. However, ever since last year when I took Chemistry, I realized I am not a big fan of stem. I think meth is only hated by wider society because of how objective it is. The objectivity of math makes it the only way to get good at the subject to be tedious practice. If we take English for an example, it is a subjective course so there are multiple ways to get good at it, or even maybe some people are naturally just good at English and do not need practice. Also, could you elaborate on what you mean by “if life was taken out” of art? Do you mean the creative and liberal aspect of art, or something else?
ReplyDeleteHi Abdul!
ReplyDeleteYour blog was really interesting to read. I enjoyed how you stood up for math as being more than just cold calculations and formulas. The language learning analogy stuck out to me, so many people dismiss math before they even get to the stage where learning it becomes interesting. I also think that the way it;s taught at school takes away some of the discovery and creativity that make it worthwhile. Your comment about motivation also stood out, I agree that sometimes you have to actually observe math being applied in not-so-obvious ways in order to really love it. Great blog!
Hi Abdul! You’re completely correct about math being so much more than what it is perceived as; if understood with proper care and fascination, math can even be a form of art. However, I do want to point out that the article we read in class, “Not By Math Alone” by Sandra Day O’Connor and Roy Romer, was not intended at all as an attack on math or STEM.
ReplyDeleteThis title puts an emphasis on the word “alone” rather than “not” because this article is intended to show the value of civics as an equal to subjects such as math and science. In fact, O’Connor and Romer defend and acknowledge math’s importance in the education system, and call for more American students to become engineers and mathmaticians—O’Connor and Romer portray math and civics as of equal importance.. This article is by no means against mathematics, and even the reference of mathematics is included as a qualification for their argument to make this argument stronger in its specificity.
Education—no matter the subject—is of high importance.