My father who was an Engineer by profession is very good in his mathematics. I doubt there was anyone to match him in the family, except maybe his father. There's a small chance I am being biased, but there was never a mathematics problem he couldn't solve for me. Whenever I hit a brick wall in my school mathematics, my father was the last resort I turned to. Yes, the last.
That's because in asking him how to arrive at a simple answer like for my secondary school homework, I almost always ended up getting a 1-2 hour long lecture on how to derive the formula for the area of a circle or how to calculate large sums in my head without writing it down (calculators back then were a big No). With my very short attention span, it didn't take long before I lost interest and fidgeted in my seat. I sometimes thought of clever ways to expedite the lecture like cheating at mental math calculations by counting with my fingers under the table. I'm sure he saw right through me, but he never gave up and had the patience of a saint to repeat things. I didn't fully appreciate it much back then, but the mental training helped me greatly to cope and have a sustained interest in the subject till I passed high school. After that, I didn't have to use mathematics that much. And then came mobile phones with calculators. And Microsoft Excel with formulas to think for you.
For him, it was always about understanding the logic behind a calculation and breaking it down to the basics before attempting to solve it. Any seemingly ugly and complicated problem becomes clearer and simpler when you break it down to its roots. That logic even applies to life in general! And if any teacher succeeds in making students see mathematics in this light, it probably won't be the enemy it is today and more students might enjoy the challenge of finding solutions to mathematics problems.
Every subject has its own merits and demerits. For me, mathematics in school used to be a refreshing change to all the abstract, illogical, grey and subjective answers that other subjects accepted. No matter how you arrived at an answer, you either got the right answer or you didn't. Anyone made to understand the logic behind arriving at the answer, should theoretically arrive at the same solution. So it's no surprise that literature, poetry and art weren't my best friends in school and I struggled a lot with interpreting the true meanings and intentions behind certain words, phrases and actions. I still struggle with those sometimes.
A lot of people complain about what a waste of time primary and secondary schooling was and how we aren't using most of what we learnt, or remember anything for that matter. Some say that if we spent more time doing something related to a profession as early as possible, they would be a lot more successful in life. Well, probably. But how can anyone know what it is that we were going to end up doing? How can we know what our strengths and interests are without being put through different tests?
Besides being a convenient way to keep energetic children confined in one place for several hours, school is a place that gives exposure to various subjects and opens minds. It's not all a fun experience and every time I see small weary kids being dropped off school buses lugging heavy bags, I think to myself "Oh thank goodness I'm not in their shoes!". Even subject matter learnt in university for thousands of dollars becomes forgettable and redundant after a few years.
My take is that under pressure and repetitive actions, places like these are where our neurons become programmed to think in certain patterns and our brain makes complex connections which we don't always understand in full. And these complex associations come to our aid later as we make sense of the world around us and act out. School also helps to develop discipline, build character and social skills as we are forced to interact with other humans. So really, the subject knowledge that one graduates with is as temporary as the paper that one's degree conferment is printed on. The only way to retain some of that knowledge or any skill for that matter is by putting it to practical use. In the end, we are only as good as what we practice the most.
I'm not sure how much of all that made sense because a short while ago at the doctor's, I was told my immune system is compromised with a flu bug and that I'm infectious.
I've been tasked with the burden of keeping house-related accounts. And to finally arrive at the point of this blog, last week a nearly 30-year old me, messaged my father to ask how to calculate a simple secondary school mathematics problem. I asked Ryuu first, but although the answer was correct, I received a suspicious "$12 isn't much. Just pay it yourself and ask them to buy you dinner later" answer, after which I had concerns about Ryuu's current mathematical abilities.
The moment I sent that message, I got a call from my father right away. Really, it didn't warrant a call? Turns out my mother intercepted the message, read the first line and jumped into the speedy conclusion that I was having a mental breakdown and pushed my father to call me. I kid not. After misunderstandings were cleared by both parties, we had a good laugh.
My logic was flawed. The simple answer was 9x + 30x = 52
It was a little embarrassing, but family tends to forgive.
In other developments, captive rhinos are a lot gentler than I assumed. Two massive rhinos ran us to get a token feed of bananas (and stayed behind a big log) last weekend. They had huge slobbering lips. Giraffes are a lot faster than I imagined. One moment I had a carrot stick in my hand and in a split second, a long prehensile tongue appeared and the carrot stick vanished.
Our competitors from training last week extended a friendly gesture by inviting the losing team (that's us) to join them in sharing the prize of feeding these giant herbivores
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