Math can be complex, analytical, tricky, interesting, and
more! Put together, all of these can also make
math fun! Math wouldn’t have been half as fun as it is if it was easy and a
cakewalk. Math requires strong analytical skills and a deep understanding of different
concepts to be fun to anybody. Let’s find out why math is fun!
Math and related careers
- Most top paying professions require advanced skills in math – doctors, engineers, architects, bankers, analysts, developers, researchers, and more. If the great ancient Indian scientist Aryabhatta hadn’t conceptualized ‘zero’, the status of our mathematical achievements would have been rather different from what they are today, and we wouldn’t have had computers, internet, and mobiles to lead us forward in our professional and personal space.
- Since math is just not about numbers but also about patterns and critical thinking, fashion and interior designers too are required to be well-adept in math.
- We use math in our daily lives too – shopping, cooking, designing the garden, planning the budget, organizing family trips, working on computers, solving puzzles, and the list goes on.
How to make math fun –
‘Reading’ math is very different from reading a language. A
100-word long paragraph in English can be summarized in a 10 digit math problem
to make the entire story simpler! For example, when I asked my roommate last
night how much the groceries cost, she promptly replied she has forgotten the
individual prices and all she can remember is that a dozen eggs, 2 loaves of
bread, and a pack of milk cost her $10. Her statement can be both expressed and
solved simultaneously in very simple mathematical terms – 12E+2B+1M=$10!
The key to understanding math lies in getting the
information and using it wisely. Your affinity for math will depend on how you
use the mathematical information that you have at hand – it’s as simple as breaking
down the information into smaller parts and making sketches to understand and
then solve the problem! Re-read, go back and forth, and play with ideas to make math fun!
Take your time to make math look nice –
- Neat math work helps you think logically and your brain to comprehend information meticulously.
- Math is all about building on concepts and lots of practice. Learn one math idea at a time and practice enough so that you master the idea well, before proceeding to the next idea.
Avoid
skipping a certain section of a math concept because the fun of math lies in understanding it in its entirety. If you’re
stuck at a math problem, go back to where it last made sense, and read and
re-read to understand.
Improvise with math –
After you’ve mastered a math idea, spend some more time on it
and try to come up with your own variations of acronyms and formulae to make
math interesting. Math is fun
because it’s more about knowing the ideas than remembering the formulae, unlike
other subjects.
‘Math is fun’ facts –
- Do you know ‘Mathematics’ is an anagram of ‘me asthmatic’?
- Do you know what comes after a million, billion and trillion? – a quadrillion, quintillion, sextillion, septillion, octillion, nonillion, decillion and undecillion.
- Multiply any number with nine and then sum all individual digits of the product to make it a single digit, and the sum of all these individual digits would always be nine.
- Abacus is considered the origin of the calculator.
- 2 and 5 are the only prime numbers that end with a 2 or a 5.
- 12 + 3 - 4 + 5 + 67 + 8 + 9 = 100
- In 1995 in Taipei, citizens were allowed to remove ‘4’ from street numbers because it sounded like ‘death’ in Chinese. Many Chinese hospitals do not have a 4th floor.
- Remember the value of Pi (3.1415926) with this simple trick – count the number of letters in each word in the following sentence, 'May I have a large container of coffee?' and you have 3.1415926!
