OK, I’m very sure that each one of us has cursed Mathematics at least once in our whole life. And I’m very sure you asked yourself (and others, too!) the same question we’re going to tackle today: “Why do we need to study mathematics if we’re not going to use it in real life?!”, swear words omitted for safety reasons. Haha.

So, yeah. That’s what we’re going to talk about; it’s all about mathematics, folks.

Anyway, let me first clarify that I’m talking about Advanced Mathematics in my discussion today. Whether you like it or not, we do need mathematics in our life, like addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and a little bit of algebra and geometry. However, this is not the case. The real question is, ‘Why study trigonometry, calculus, epsilons, deltas, theorems, conjunctures and hellabajuvas even though we’re not going to be scientists and mathematicians?!”

Don’t feel alone, many others sympathize with you. So in order to put this case to rest, let us do a little research, shall we?

According to Jcs of Yahoo! Answers, “…we need Mathematics as much as need Music, Poetry, Philosophy, Great Literature and Theatre. It is a noble part of our heritage, …it is one of the not-so-many things that our species could be proud of.”

Galileo even once said that until we could read and write well the mathematical language, we could never ever understand universe physically. The universe, he said, is written in circles, triangles, and other geometrical figures.

Mathematics also train our minds. No one could argue that Math is a challenge, and we all know that to overcome a challenge, we need to use our minds. Without you knowing it, every time you solve a mathematical question you didn’t encounter before, your mind begins to exercise.

Without a doubt, you might be asking now that you are already posed by many challenges, from History Class, Psychology Class, Theology Class and other classes. However, nothing is more complicated than Mathematics, that uses not only the power of letters but also of numbers.

As Henri Poincaré put it, mathematicians do not study math because it is useful, but because he delights on it, and he is delighted because it is beautiful.

Ah, the concept of beauty. If you happen to see Mona Lisa on Louvre, I am almost certain that you would exclaim that the painting is beautiful. Ah, but if you know that certain painting follows a certain law known as the Divine Proportion, you would feel amazed, and not only your view of da Vinci’s work would intensify, your view on life would be much critical.

Also, Doctor Ken of the Math Forum also states that you need mathematics in everyday life. Doc Ken puts it this way, “…let’s say you’re looking for the biggest TV that will fit on your TV table, which is 15 inches wide. But TV screens aren’t measured by how wide they are, they’re measured by the diagonal distance across the screen. Ding! Pythagorean theorem!”.

My roommate’s answer to the said question is more down-to-earth than the others. Take, for example, that you have children in the future (you already might have one or two today). If one of them suddenly asks you to help him/her in his math assignment, you could do it because you already took the course years ago. Apart from that, my roommate says with a smile on his face, you could (1) save your child from humiliation, (2) save yourself from humiliation, (3) grow some kind of a child-parent relationship, (4) deliver your child from cheating so he/she could finish the homework. Ah. What a fine example that was.

Anyway, I hope you have fun in our discussion today, and that’s another question crossed off the Satisfaction List.

References:

“Ask Dr. Math: Why Study Math?“, 16 Jan 2008.

“Do we need Mathematics?“, 16 Jan 2008.

“Why study calculus? A brief history of math“, 16 Jan 2008.

“Why study mathematics?“, 16 Jan 2008.

“Why do we need Advanced Mathematics?“, 16 Jan 2008.

“Mona Lisa Golden Ratio” Image, 16 Jan 2008.

“Advanced Mathematics” Image, 16 Jan 2008.