I have never been at risk of becoming a mathematician. Not even a little bit. It is true that I am comfortable with adding and subtracting numbers. Multiplying numbers - known as multiplication - and its sister malady, division, was a bit more grueling for me. Digesting awkward realities like fractions, with their numerators and …
I have never been at risk of becoming a mathematician. Not even a little bit. It is true that I am comfortable with adding and subtracting numbers.
Multiplying numbers – known as multiplication – and its sister malady, division, was a bit more grueling for me. Digesting awkward realities like fractions, with their numerators and denominators, numbers with decimal points, was a head-spinning experience.
However, I hung in there to the best of my ability. When I reached ninth grade, two things I’d suspected all along were true. Why ninth grade, you might ask? Algebra. When I met algebra, I knew I’d been had. On the blackboard I saw, A + B = C. Not a single number in the lot.
I’d thought math was about numbers and now they were telling me it’s about letters too!
I’ve been in this world more than 70 years and I can’t think of a single time when algebra has helped me manage my life, or my budget.
