Friday, October 16, 2009

It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in soul.

numbers are so facinating. in a way, they are really a metaphor for humanity itself. we started with one two three and then we got zero and then the philosophy came in so we have things like negative square roots and integers and imaginary numbers and i and pi and calculus and statements like
there are three leaves on this tree. therefore, there are at least three objects in the universe.
when i was young, i said to my daddy
i hate math. its just a bunch of boring numbers that don't mean anything.
and he said
don't think of it that way, then. think of it as...think of it as the magic secrets that unlock the code of the universe.
or something like that. and the fact is, the basic stuff, which is pretty much everything you do in school up to seinor AP math, is boring. it is. at least to me, it is. but then, when you know that stuff, you get into the whole magic taoist school of mathematical thought and its amazing. i'm not old enough yet to be there, but i have glimpsed at it from afar and it looks wonderful.

1 comment:

Persephone said...

flower made a comment, but i had to delete it because it used my real name. she said:
yes, math hw IS fun isnt it ___? *wink*