Understanding Mathematics

If I had a time machine, I would go back and ask the ancient mathematicians “What is it all for?”

   I have always had difficulty with mathematics, formulas in particular. I pondered my weakness for a long time, and then one day in my high school algebra class it dawned on me. In a particularly frustrating lesson in which our teacher was explaining how to solve a certain formula, he asked if we had any questions. For ages, I had struggled silently to wrap my head around the use of these seemingly nonsensical collections of symbols and letters, and that day, I‘d had enough of it. Completely out of character for me, I raised my hand.

“What is it used for?”
“What?”
“The formula.”
“It can be used to solve many problems. You might need it one day in a job, too.”
“I don’t understand. What makes it work? Why is it solved that way?”

   This, I admit, received an incredulous stare, and rightfully so. Anyone would assume at this point that I was trying to be a typical hair-brained teenager, taunting my teacher for mere sport. However, that was not at all the case. I discovered then that the way I learned things is not by learning what something does, but instead why it does what it does. The lesson learned? One should never ask “why” in a math class. The response I got was quite simply “It just is.”

   Some formulas make sense to me once I think them over, such as Einstein’s famous formula of relativity. It has a practical use, and it is truly beneficial to our knowledge of the universe. Moreover, I understand why it works. Pythagoras however, has been done no justice in my life, the poor fellow. I cannot imagine what he was getting at, what his formula was designed for; and perhaps I never will. I assume, or at least I hope, it isn't merely a factor of him drawing a triangle and saying “let’s see what I can do with this thing.”

In case you’re wondering, I never thought he was a bad teacher. He tried to help me understand the only way he knew how, and I respect him for that. And he's right; math is basically part of the foundation laws of nature and therefore is concrete. As he said then, "it just is."