How Did You Discover That You Liked Math?

2min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

i know from reading your book that at certain points you were actually kind of actively discouraged from pursuing by teachers who were, i'll say, ungenerously, not good teachers. How did you first discover that you liked math? I come back to an experience had when one of my parents friends came over and asked me to add the numbers from one to a hundred,. And i'm like, no, you know, of course I can't figure that out on the spot as he little kid. "Because of a pattern, this thing that seemed very hard suddenly opens up and becomes something very easy, simple," she says.

Every day, we humans do math. Whether we are obsessed with a logic puzzle on our smartphones or even just calculating a morning alarm that gives you 8 more minutes in bed, our daily lives are full of numbers, quantities, shapes and patterns. And for Francis Su—a writer and Professor of Mathematics and the Former President of the Mathematical Association of America—math is actually one of the things that makes us human. In today’s episode he talks about how mathematics can serve as a tool for social justice, how math can enhance our sense of aesthetics and beauty, why math is one of the last refuges of truth in a time where misinformation is rampant, and how we can all learn to cultivate, and even come to love, the little daily mathematics of our lives.