...the other night while I was cooking dinner and listening to Radiolab.
(Radiolab is this amazing public radio show which makes science funny and compelling and entertaining. If you haven't ever listened to it, check it out online or download the podcasts. Anyway...)
This show was about numbers and math and counting. I was kind of excited, because I always had to work harder than my peers in math classes to "get" more complex mathematical concepts. It doesn't come naturally to me. I tried desperately to follow along with the teacher as he or she was explaining something on the chalkboard, but their voice would morph into that
Charlie Brown teacher voice, my pupils would turn into little question marks, and I'd finally give up and write novellas starring me opposite
Han Solo or
Frank Hardy in the margins of my notebook. Later that night, I'd try to learn the concepts by getting the answer in the back of the book and reverse engineering it to try and figure it out. It was exhausting and unsatisfying to someone who likes to master things.
In this episode, they interview
Stanislas Dehaene who talks about his experiments with infants and the possibility that we are all born with an innate number sense. But we aren't born knowing how to count or do math. No. But! We might be born knowing how to count logarithmically or perceive in ratios. In fact, when they did studies with indigenous tribes who did not have a linear "number language", those peoples still perceive counting that way. I'm doing a terrible job of explaining this, so just listen
to the segment and prepare to be amazed and entertained. Especially if you are a parent of a young child.
Being able to count logarithmically implies (to me) relationships between numbers, ways of visualizing what is being counted without a need for a specific math language. I understood geometry because, hey, SHAPES. I could SEE the relationship between math and shapes and space and objects in geometry. Algebra, trigonometry, and calculus had me tearing my hair out in despair because I couldn't understand the "why" or "what is this related to" or "where are the shapes???".
In math, if you don't master one level, any subsequent levels will be lost to you. It isn't enough to just get by for the test in Algebra I. You must certainly understand Algebra I if Algebra II is to be learned properly and so on. However, I am terrible at understanding something if I can't see the end that is being worked towards from the start.
(This is what my nightmares look like. Just so you know.)
I haven't thought this all the way through yet, but I'm sure that I struggle with math the way that I do learning any foreign language. I cannot learn math OR languages by rote or lecture. But total immersion works. Visual learning, practical applications...all good. Easier for languages. But how to immerse myself in algebra or trigonometry daily? Much more challenging, but doable perhaps?
Yes, I passed my courses long ago. But I really want to LIKE math before I leave this earth.
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