Who cares about finding X anyway?
| April 29, 2012 | Posted by Rosie Watterson under satire |
I spend a lot of my time watching television programmes I frankly can’t stand. And it was during one of these masochistic sprees that I found myself watching a quasi-news programme on maths. As if this wasn’t bad enough, there was a 20 minute piece on the importance of algebra: a concept that is against everything I believe in.
I’ve always been under the impression that algebra was a mere instrument to keep me in full time education for five years longer than necessary. Even the mathematicians among you have to agree that teaching an arty-music-oriented-historian the importance of X was a waste of time; Mrs Best certainly didn’t slave over her degree to teach the likes of me. And I have to confess that I have never, and I mean never, used Y = MX + C. Ever. And that’s why I have always assumed that algebra was completely useless to everyone; it wasn’t an assumption I had thought through, just a flush of naivety. So watching this programme was a lot like the moment I found out that in France they eat snails: I had always assumed no one ate snails. Why would they? It would be horrible. How could algebra possibly be useful to anyone, ever?
Before I knew it, I was on the internet researching a programme I didn’t like on a subject I couldn’t stand. Typing “the importance of algebra” into Google, I had resigned the next hour of my life. There are, admittedly, some relatively convincing examples, such as estimating the food consumption when ordering for a party: OK, I can see myself doing that. But then there are some examples that, I can assure you, will never take place in my life: working out the distance of Mars from my exact location, for example.
I think my disdain for algebra stems from a combination of my inability and maths’ snobbery. When my maths-student friend utters phrases like “numbers are beautiful,” “the essence of mathematics is its freedom,” and, the phrase I detest above all else, “Maths is the language of the universe,” I struggle not to leap over the table and beat her to death with her oversized calculator. You don’t see any other subject flaunting its importance like that. History doesn’t say it is the basis of the universe because the future is merely history that is yet to happen. The language department doesn’t waltz over to the maths department and say: “Without language you would be unable to express your distaste for the number of significant figures.” That would never happen. They would be uninvited from the staff Christmas party.
As you may have noticed, I am now writing an article based on something I read about a programme that I watched that focused on a subject I hate. Because this state of affairs is difficult to manage, I’m going to quickly conclude and do something productive, like watch Family Guy.
Algebra is important for figuring out logical problems, but, in my personal experience the most important problems haven’t been logical ones. Poverty, for example: some people are rich, some people starve. The issue is not in need of logic – we all know the logic, yet there is still a problem. It needs something more abstract, more fluid, something based on the philosophy of something-or-other, not a quantity divided by a population.
We, as human beings, are not logical creatures. OK, strip us down to the atoms, the physicality, and we are. But surely what distinguishes us from animals, from everything else in our world, is our higher thought and, some may argue, soul. This is obviously not logical, and because of this I would argue that many of the most important problems involving humans cannot be solved by maths – or at least, not by maths alone. I’m not saying maths, and more specifically algebra, is useless; that would be ridiculous. I’m merely pointing out that it often is ineffective in our lives without other schools of thought, and yet it is put on a pedestal like no other subject. So next time you fancy uttering a “maths makes the world go round” type of statement, just remember: knowing the exact ratio of alcohol to blood in your system will not prevent your impending hangover. Not in the slightest.
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Very amusing article, although I’ve been solving algebraic equations for the last hour for an artificial intelligence program I’m writing, so I stand among those to whom it is part of my everyday life.
Although, looking at the grammar of my reply, it is also evident that in excess, algebra (especially that which pertains to robotic pathfinding) can cause one’s brain to melt.
Maths is the basis for many, if not most things in the world. You don’t need to understand it – indeed, very few people do – but don’t question its utmost importance to our world.
I wasn’t trying to question the importance of maths as such, but rather the belief that it is THE most important factor in the universe. A myth that I believe is made up by Mathematicians.
We wouldn’t know there was a universe without maths, you wouldn’t have most of your possessions without maths, and in fact, we’d mostly still be living like Neanderthals. It is pretty much the most important thing in the universe.
Do you happen to be doing a degree in maths? or the likes…?
And I’ve heard that Neanderthals bit from a linguist before….
We’d still be living like Neanderthals if it weren’t for a lot of things. It’s an unfair assumption to say that maths is at the peak of all of these and is in fact the most important. Maths is definitely important and aids a lot of things in day to day life, but so do a lot of other things, right?
I have to agree with Rosie here, and though that might be biased coming from an arts student, I really don’t think that siding with one subject as the metaphorical ruler of all helps the argument. Everything relates to everything else, and assuming that one thing is the most important, I think, ruins that balance. Call me flowery and crazy, but as the only art and design student in a family of scientists, that’s how I see the world.
-AJ
Well put
The debate here seems mostly to be about the importance of mathematics relative to other subjects – but can anyone actually give me an example of a subject that has had equal or greater significance? After all, mathematics has always helped drive the sciences, without which civilisation could not have advanced very far…
Cave paintings are pretty, but it was the rudimentary chemistry and physics with the discovery of fire that pushed our species forwards, not art.
Well doesn’t art drive communication? I’m not suggesting for a second that one subject is more important than another. Basic human impulses are driven on images, not equations. A combination of things “pushed our species forwards” not just maths, not just art.
Different things push different parts of civilisation forwards at different times. Like I said earlier, it’s not fair to assume one subject holds more significance than any other.
-AJ
“And I have to confess that I have never, and I mean never, used Y = MX + C. Ever.”
Never bought 3lbs of apples at 45p/lb or 30 litres of unleaded at 128.9p/l?
Never measured a room and calculated the amount of paint or wallpaper you needed?
Or any of a million other examples from everyday life?
And apart from the importance of maths for artists in many ways in terms of quantities of materials and how they interact (well maybe apart from that mirror exhibit in the Tate Modern), you can’t get too deeply into music without knowing something about numbers either.
And finally, while it is true, knowing your blood alcohol level won’t prevent the hangover, it might stop you getting a fine and having to work out exactly when you can drive again!
Either Y=MX+C is only applicable to line graphs, which i never use. Or it’s something I do automatically without thinking about, (like 3lbs of apples at 45p/lb)but then why did I spend a good year learning the eqation….if I do it anyway…
Did you really spend a year learning that equation?
If Major Whatsisname had concentrated a bit more in a maths class he might have legally won a million by knowing what a googol was. And I always have a good chuckle when people on other quiz programmes miss out on thousands because they can’t do a simple bit of arithmetic.
You just never know when it might pay to know these things.
Well I’d say one good example of another subject that is as important as maths is language. If language hadn’t developed in humans then no one would be doing maths as there would not be a language to teach it with – it would still exist but we wouldn’t know much about it as we wouldn’t be able to relay the information we discovered to anyone else – it would die with the person. We would still be as ignorant about the world as ever without language as no one would be able to communicate to others what they had learned, which is one of the ways we develop as a society. As a linguist this is the example that jumps out, I’m not saying that language is the best thing ever, but you can argue this, as I’m sure you can with many other subjects, including maths, science, history etc.
I love History but I think their argument is certainly one of the weakest. But that’s ok, because I was really trying to draw attention to the fact that no one seems to question the all-important, all-powerful status that maths seems to hold.
“we wouldn’t be able to relay the information we discovered to anyone else” – this is fundamentally untrue. The great thing about mathematics is that it is itself a universal language. I can go up to someone from Armenia and discuss calculus all day long, despite not knowing either dialect of Armenian, precisely because we don’t need ‘human’ languages to write down the mathematical expressions used.
I’ll give you that teaching a new concept might be tricky – but it wouldn’t be impossible. You would just have to do everything as a series of proofs.
Yes, but you already have the ability to communicate because we have already developed language. Without language maths would exist but humans would not be aware of it because we wouldn’t have invented a standardised system to talk about it with. If you went up to a gorilla and asked it what 1 + 1 was, it wouldn’t be able to answer because the symbols we have ascribed to the concepts of maths are the same as the symbols we ascribe to objects in the form of words. So in that case we do need language.
that had all the phrases I hate the most….
Language I’ll concede, although I’ll point out it is slightly different as it is entirely created by humans for the purposes of conversing and transmitting information, whereas maths, despite being converted into understandable terms by us e.g. the denary system, exists independently of us, and thus we as a race study it in a way that we can’t study language (because there is nothing in language that we collectively do not know, except perhaps the history of it, but then that borders on irrelevant). I’ll also add that language would not be nearly as widespread without maths – for instance, the ability to spread the printed form to much greater extents due to the printing press, and the technology required for Cyril to move in to Eastern Europe and Arabia to create and spread Cyrillic.
Good point, but I’ll just clarify I was talking about spoken language here, which all humans are designed to be able to do. Therefore, whilst it is good at spreading literacy and the printed word, it doesn’t figure in spoken language.
Also, we definitely don’t know everything about languages. Which is why, just as we have mathematicians and physicists working on new theories about how maths and physics works, we have linguists trying to establish how language works. We know how sounds are produced and more basic stuff like that but not the intricacies of which parts of the brain conrol language, exactly how humans evolved to get it etc.
So yes it is different in some degrees, but it is still relevant to study and is definitely relevant to our everyday lives in a way that, you could argue, maths is not.
I’m not going to join in the argument on which subject is most important, I don’t think it’s particularly important. But your dislike at the phrases your maths-student friends use is… unjustified. They are only expressing their own opinion, you wouldn’t be angry if someone looked out at a stunning view and expressed their appreciation for it. Some people like modern art, others music and some people like maths. The examples you gave for maths did not show pretension like the examples you gave for other subjects.
PS: Maths and algebra are used a lot in medicine, for instance to work out the dosage of a certain drug to give or in lung function tests. These uses are key, that save lives on a daily basis.
“I wasn’t trying to question the importance of maths as such, but rather the belief that it is THE most important factor in the universe. A myth that I believe is made up by Mathematicians.”
Importance of anything is relative to your understanding of the matter.
“Either Y=MX+C is only applicable to line graphs, which i never use. Or it’s something I do automatically without thinking about, (like 3lbs of apples at 45p/lb)but then why did I spend a good year learning the eqation….if I do it anyway…”
Y=MX+C is applicable to any two things that have a linear relationship. Isn’t it a bit arrogant to say that it’s something you could automatically do without thinking about, because the mere fact that you’re doing it shows that you’re using maths. There are things in mathematics which some people will never use in their lives, but that doesn’t mean to say that they are not important.
“I love History but I think their argument is certainly one of the weakest. But that’s ok, because I was really trying to draw attention to the fact that no one seems to question the all-important, all-powerful status that maths seems to hold.”
Maths holds this all powerful status because once people start realising that the mere fact that anything around them is happening is based upon some form of mathematical knowledge (whether known or unknown), they realise the importance it holds for mathematicians and non-mathematicians alike. Again, it’s fair to say that you certainly don’t understand everything that is driven by maths, yet you can use it without ever needing to know how or why maths drives it.
“Well doesn’t art drive communication? I’m not suggesting for a second that one subject is more important than another. Basic human impulses are driven on images, not equations. A combination of things “pushed our species forwards” not just maths, not just art.
Different things push different parts of civilisation forwards at different times. Like I said earlier, it’s not fair to assume one subject holds more significance than any other.”
Communication is driven by language (I really doubt you’ll disagree with that), and looking at it that way, it makes ‘art’ just another language. Don’t restrict your view of ‘language’ to merely reading (making sense of a bunch of random shapes put together), writing (creating random shapes for others to make sense of), speaking (putting sounds to those random shapes, so that people don’t have to use just their eyes to be able to communicate). Maths is also a language, it is a language that us humans created to define the thing around us. And to a great extent it is the most objective and universal language. 1 + 1 = 2. Once I define the shape ’1′ to be equal to one and the shape ’2′ to be equal to two of ’1′ everything falls into place like a jigsaw. I could very well have defined ‘x’ to be equal to ’1′ and y to be two of ‘x’, it means the exactly the same thing.
So maths isn’t really just about numbers, it’s about everything, because everything has a definition; arguing that maths is yet another, more logical, very objective and thus a universal language.
The question of ‘basic human impulses are driven on images’, I bet there exists a mathematical formula, some logic, as to what exact chemical changes happen in your brain to drive those emotional responses. Again maths is just about definition, about defining things.
And to be really honest with you, the mere fact that you could have a rant about maths online was because some mathematician decided to make use of 1+1=2 and create things like Google, WordPress (this website’s platform), the Internet (again just a connection between two locations, passing a bunch of 0s and 1s), etc., just shows that you are careless enough to take things for granted without really understanding how they work. The people who choose to understand how and why things work are called mathematicians (as far as i can think, i doubt there are any areas of life where maths isn’t used).
Happy ranting,
MansimranSingh.com
With all due respect, I didn’t say that art isn’t a language; I firmly believe it is, and secondly, I’ll stress for the third time what I’ve said twice before: I do not think that maths is any more or less important than *any* other subject.
And yes, the brain works on chemical impulses, but they are driven by the images that are registered in the brain. I don’t think that arts are given enough credit. I love maths, it was my favourite subject when I studied it, and yet I’ve applied to do a Product Design major, with minors in language. I’m not arguing that maths has no importance – quite the opposite. I think it bears massive importance on day-to-day life, but I also believe that images, arts, designs, even colours do. “Basic human impulses are driven on images” isn’t a question; it’s a fact.
Maths is important, arts are important, sciences are important. That’s my view, that’s how I see the world.
-AJ
Great stuff, Rosie! You have the endearing/aggravating ability to ruffle some feathers… Intelligent discourse should always challenge the recipient to react. And the crowd has certainly reacted! I enjoyed reading all the feedback, too. And some of the eloquent proponents of maths as the ultimate discipline, the ars artium, only succeed to prove what you have said all along: The world’s most pressing problems are not logical ones. I work with the frailty of human relationships, on a daily basis. And the most important tools to keep relationships working, are definitely NOT logical: How can love be logical? How can tolerance and patience be logical? How can compassion and kindness be logical? Some times they don’t make sense! And yet we need them to keep relationships afloat. And this doesn’t just apply to individual relationships; it affects the relationships between governments, religions and cultures. We can develop nuclear weapons, but the conscience needed to handle all this power won’t be found in any mathematical equation. The bottom line: y= mx + c hasn’t stopped any war, yet…
Did you ever see the film WarGames? It could be argued that the mathematics of game theory were what led to a Cold War instead of a ‘hot’ one.
“How can love be logical? How can tolerance and patience be logical? How can compassion and kindness be logical? Some times they don’t make sense! And yet we need them to keep relationships afloat.”
Well I think you just answered your own questions there:
‘If I’m not compassionate, kind, tolerant and patient my relationships will sink(!) and I will be miserable and lonely.’
Therefore – being those things is beneficial to my well being and happiness by bouying up my relationships.
Perfectly logical. Logic is also a branch of mathematics, therefore maths wins again!
“maths wins again!”
Just want to point out, it is a satirical article.
Although I see this is already a very long and protracted thread,it is important to point out that whatever maths exactly is(and even mathematicians have not exactly agreed on this),it is probably the fundamental force in the universe,or at least our perception of it.Of course what we call the denary system would exist without humans,but it would not be the denary system,simply because we create the conventions of Maths(and any other subject)in our heads.
Although it is tempting from a humanities background(I am no maths student) to superficially dismiss maths and algebra as a “waste of time” for everyday life,the shortcuts and advantages that it gives us in evolution made the human race possible.Even holding one thought in the mind at once is an example of maths,as the concept of “1″ is a number.
Thats not to say maths as a subject is any more worthy then any other subject(and it definitely isn’t,the “Maths is superior to everything else” argument is just annoying),but without a doubt every single advance in human society,be it technological,scientific or humanitarian is intertwined with maths,and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
People use maths such as logic or arithmetic everyday,they just don’t usually classify it as maths.
http://www.xkcd.com/1050/