Op-Ed: We learn to love math when we realize it's not meant to be useful

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Op-Ed: We learn to love math when we realize it's not meant to be useful (via latimesopinion)

, many lasting far into adulthood. As a mathematician, I constantly sense shame when people discover my profession. Pleasant introductions are followed by confession: “Forgive me, father, for I did not understand algebra.”

Do we listen to Coltrane because jazz is useful? Or immerse ourselves in a Rothko painting because of its practicality? The joy of food comes not from amino acids and proteins, but its look and smell and taste. Humans relish the practical, but we also know that there is much more to life.

Regrettably, the mathematical journey is imagined as a formidable mountain: The wide base is arithmetic, the skills of adding and multiplying, accessible to everyone. Climbing higher brings us to algebra, geometry, trigonometry and eventually calculus and beyond. We believe that new math ideas have been all but exhausted, with a few remaining challenges tucked away in the highest peak.

 

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opinion “Can every even number be written as a sum of two prime numbers?” No. The number 2 is prime and even so it cannot be written by the sum of 2 prime numbers. 1 not prime. You use algebra offen. D=R*T.

opinion Arithmetic is useful. Mathematics, more broadly, is useless to 99% of people. The time that schools spend pushing algebra and trigonometry would be better spent improving skills that will genuinely be valuable every day of students' lives: like their language skills.

opinion Not meant to be useful ...

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