@
JRVanguard I just saw the repartee between you and Angelfire21 back in January, and I, like you, have always loved to play with MATH. I guess that I am a little slow on the uptake.
I agree with her that understanding a love of MATH is simple. Some people love cosmography and cosmology, some love physics, some love politics, some love psychology, some love genetics, etc., and some love MATH!
Actually, all of these other disciplines depend on an understanding of - if not a love of - MATH. Really, almost all knowledge depends to a greater, or lesser, degree on MATH.
Long before there were calculators, I used to love to figure out the distance to the nearest star. Alpha Centauri, we were told then, was the closest star - before it was recognized to actually be 3 stars (A, B, and Proxima Centauri). I did it with paper and pencil, and made sure to use 365 1/4 days for a year to account for Leap Year - although even this is not exact since years divisible evenly by 400 are not Leap Years.
Around 4th grade, I discovered the Quadratic Equation, and delighted in deriving it from the basic equation, (I don’t know how to type exponents on a keypad, so I will simply spell it out): aX(squared) + bX + c = 0. I did that every couple years for a long time.
And, I love playing with pi. I wrote a comment on the “I Love Pi Day” group site explaining that the proper time - as well as date - to enjoy your pie is 59 minutes and 26 seconds after 3 PM on March 14.
I also suggested that the proper pie to enjoy might be a “Transparent Pie” - an actual Southern or Appalachian dessert - since it is a contrast with pi itself which is imponderable.
I also love the concept of “squaring the circle”. In one sense, it is easy; in another larger sense, it is impossible. It is similar to the question they ask students in school: If you stand some distance - say 10 feet from a wall - and move half the distance to the wall, then half of that distance, then half of that distance, ... , ad infinitum, when will you reach the wall?
My father had a masters in Metalurgical and Chemical Engineering, and taught some basis introductory classes. Early on in the class, he would pose this question to the students: If you are driving along a two mile course and want to average 60 miles per hour over the full course, if you drove 30 miles per hour for the first mile, how fast do you need to go for the second mile?
Let me know your answer. By the way, most of the students got the answer wrong because they went for the simple apparent answer. He just wanted to show them that life or science or math is not always as easy as it appears at first glance.
My dad taught me this problem when I was in 3rd or 4th grade.
Around the same time, he was trying to teach his oldest child (I was the second child) - my 6 year older sister - about imaginary and complex numbers. She just threw up her hands in despair and failed her MATH class. Seeing that I was engrossed, he taught me instead.
I started college in Electrical Engineering - with an obvious heavy concentration in MATH and science - but switched to secondary education my Junior year, and taught MATH and science at an American School in San Jose, Costa Rica, before returning to the States to attend law school.
Then, in a story much too long for this post, I became a mover/truck driver - an occupation at which I was employed for 40 years.
It was great hearing about your love of MATH.
By the way, since the original question of these posts was what hustorical figure would you like to have been in a previous life, I will give an answer suited to a love of MATH. I would love to have been Diophantus since his 3rd century book, “Arithmetica” gave name to an entire branch of MATH.
Quakertrucker
