Mathematics and Me!

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

The very first line of my blog is copied, it's from Star Wars. I am a bad writer, you might claim! Well... you are right. Not my cup of tea. Speaking of which, lets talk about mathematics. You might be familiar with the phrase "math is applied everywhere" quotes. So I shall skip that part and tell you that mathematics is an art for humanities sake. It's a beautiful language with it's infinite wings spread across the immensities within us. A stick was all that was taken to measure the size of earth, well stick was the tool, but the idea came from a human (Eratosthenes). Archimedes laid the foundation for integral calculus, but it majestically stood on the convention of measuring the area. Pythagoras imported 'proofs' in mathematics, which was his greatest achievement. Proof, since then has been the backbone of any logical argument. Jim Carey's 'The Truman Show', a great execution of a much greater idea, 'I think therefore I am' by Rene Descartes. Fermat's drawing of tangents, which inspired Newton to invent differential calculus. Euler, who calculated without apparent effort, as men breathe, or as eagles sustain themselves in the wind'. Galois, who was killed by his stupidity and should be remembered for his genius. Ramanujan, who made the most out of his infinite friends, the numbers, was probably in my opinion was the proof of god!

You might be wondering why I started off with the star wars theme, because kids like Star wars. There is action, drama, heroes, sacrifice, a story. Guess what, so does mathematics and mathematicians are its heroes.

How interesting would it be if we learnt mathematics and it's topic from its birth, playing with numbers, trying to count something that belongs to a 'set', trying to 'measure' something, trying to 'generalize' an idea. Well that is what I aspire to be, a storyteller,(also a better writer!) through which I can make us understand what's important and what's not, why we do what we do, where we come from, what's our story in all this!

Thinking happens when we have time to struggle. But do kids have time for it and if they do, do they go through it the right way? So I want them to come out of their routine and experience “mathematics” with the stories of its origin, story of mathematicians, and story of numbers, to see mathematics is not a subject, but an elegant universal language and also an easy one, cause “it’s only logical”...