My absolute most dreaded moment of fourth grade was when the teacher would walk over to the record player, put the needle on, and scratchy noise first – a monotone voice would calmly begin: “Five times eight. Nine times three. Seven times four.” I would frantically try to write the answers on my paper, but would often fall behind, leaving me to put answers to number nine in the number eleven spot. Even those numbers were wrong.
In high school, I ended up in honors Algebra because I went to a small school where if you were in honors in one subject you did all honors. Sister Jean (this was a Catholic school) would shake her head at me but took pity and tutored me at lunch. Still, I hated Algebra and would say I don’t care what X is. Why should I care? X became my enemy. I would read books instead.
But then I found geometry. It was beautiful, with triangles and circles and squares, and incredibly useful, a way to figure out how the world works. It shocked me that maybe I’d not appreciated math, and given up on it, thinking I was just not a math person. Okay, I’ll admit I often feel like I’m “not a math person” still, when I’m doing taxes or even arranging interviews across several time zones.
But that sense that maybe I was missing something was confirmed by reading the books of Jordan Ellenberg. I love his conversation with Anne that we re-air this week, in which they talk about the joy of shapes, and how geometry is related to – well, almost everything – from politics, to music to pandemics. As you listen, maybe you’ll gain a new sense of how geometry relates to your life, and maybe that math is, possibly, wonderful.
–Shannon