Math is probably the most hated subject in the world. It’s tedious, it sometimes doesn’t make sense and teachers make you practice way too much of it. There was once a time in my elementary school days where math meant numbers like 1 and 2, and I was perfectly content with that definition…until 5th grade. In 5th grade, 2 turned into 2x and questions like “What is 2+3?” turned into “2x+4=10, Find x.” Now I know that this seems simple to most of you, but 5th grade me was appalled to see that letters began to invade math. But even then I got used to the “new math” that we were being taught, a math where letters were quite common. But the math I am learning in 10th grade has pushed it too far. The questions have evolved into saying “log47+log6^log12+3x, Evaluate for x” and I find myself growing even more bored. But have you ever asked yourself what math really is? What is the point of numbers, graphs, exponentials, and functions? What is math? And perhaps more importantly, why is math?
To put it simply, math is the study of quantity, space, relations, number, trends and so much more. It is the understanding of our world. It is the “language of the universe.” Humans tend to try and make sense of everything we know, it is for this reason that Newton wasn’t satisfied with just knowing that apples fall from trees, he had to go ahead and discover gravity. This rationalization is the driving force of math and the reason why we discovered math in the first place. But all the numbers and letters you know are not actually “math” but just a human representation through the things we call numbers and letters. True math is something that constantly exists in our universe, it is seeing that 2 rocks on the ground and 3 rocks on the table make 5 rocks, but our representation is 2+3=5. True math is everywhere in the world and not just on a whiteboard or paper, it is what works behind the scenes to make our entire universe.
Our reality is constructed on foundational rules that allow it to exist. It is governed by forces like gravity and electromagnetism which literally tie it together. Math is the way these forces communicate their effect on the universe, it is what lets us understand even the most basic interactions. Throwing a ball through the air? That’s math. A flower bud opening its petals? That’s math. Water swirling down a drain? That’s math too. All the variables, exponential functions, logarithmic functions, inverses and everything else are the ways we perceive our universe. They may seem useless or infinitely boring but they explain how the world works. One great example is the Fibonacci sequence, it is not some scary concept they use in calculus but a set of infinite numbers that when graphed create the “golden spiral.” And the interesting thing is that this spiral can be found everywhere like in the blooming of flowers and the whirlpool of the drain.
The only answer I can provide as to why math exists is this: it exists for the same reason as everything else does, for if it didn’t exist, nothing would matter at all. In the end, all I really wanted to say is don’t get angry the next time you find yourself in a classroom with the math teacher rambling on about whatever math topic you are learning, for they are teaching the greatest language arts class to exist.
Sources:
Images courtesy of USNews.com and Florida State University
Comments