Math too has a fun side

Growing up, most of us never saw mathematics as fun while in school. Most of us even dread the subject itself. We fear mathematics because we find it boring and not as fun as our favourite subjects. The universal truth to most of us is that the most exciting mathematics is not taught in school. School maths is not the most interesting part while studying. The real fun is elsewhere.

But the young and curious Ian Stewart wondered and explored the world of mathematics. Finding new and exciting discoveries which he filed in his cabinet. He collected the most enlightening, entertaining and vexing “curiosities” of mathematics over the years. And now his private collection is displayed in his famous cabinet. In this cabinet, a file of the most intricate and intriguing mathematical games, puzzles, stories and factoids intended for the adventurous mind. (goodreads.com, 2014)

And in his book, Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, he shows us the most exhilarating oddities from his legendary cabinet. And the content of the book ranges from the “hidden gems of logic, geometry, and probability – like how to extract a cherry from a cocktail glass, a pop-up dodecahedron, and the real reason why you can’t divide anything by zero.” Scattered among these are keys to Fermat’s last theorem, the Poincare conjecture, chaos theory, and the PNP problem – which might just help you win a million dollars if you are able to solve it. It also contains beguiling secrets about famous names and concepts like Pythagoras or prime numbers as well as anecdotes about great mathematicians that this world has. In here you will also find out why the M25is shorter counter clockwise than clockwise as well as the fractals and Penrose patterns. And the enigmas that his cabinet hold are clever, mind-expanding and delightfully fun. (goodreads.com, 2014)

The plot of the story starts as the 14 – year – old young and curious Ian Stewart ventured and explored the mathematical world and started writing and filing these learnings in his maths notebook. He collected every interesting and fun thing he could find about mathematics that wasn’t taught in school. Starting with one notebook, his learnings soon widened stretching his one notebook to become 6. And in this book, he spilled all these wonderful and exciting discoveries.

There is much more to mathematics than meets the eye. We often see mathematics in only one persona but it is much more than that. We only see a small detail of mathematics that is why we never appreciate it. We see it through the small opening we allowed. But it is much more than that. Mathematics is much more than that. If we open our eyes and our mind to see mathematics in a bigger picture we would be able to appreciate it much more than what we think of it now. It is just like a painting. If we see it as an individual thing, we may not see the beauty, rather we see it only as a mere painting -  a means of expression. But once we go to the museum, we see the beauty that paintings hold. We are amazed by how much beauty such painting can hold. We are amazed of their form, and how they can contain such beauty – to hold something beautiful such as an expression as well as the beauty of its form through the colors used. (goodreads.com, 2014)

As said earlier, we grew up, thinking that mathematics is boring. We even grew up hating the subject as part of the school curriculum starting pre-school up until secondary school. Again, we only saw mathematics in one persona. But mathematics holds so much exciting factor. It can be fun and interesting. You see, mathematics is bigger than just the subject we have studied in school. It can hold so much interest and fun to it. Yet we have never been able to see it and appreciate it because when we have felt how boring it was in school. We stopped exploring. We merely stopped there. We never explored for we were turned off with the face of mathematics that was boring to perceive for our eyes. But like What Stewart did, he explored the faces of mathematics that held so much interest. Just like carnivals, if we stopped going to other rides just because the house of horror scared us to death, we can never experience the fun in other rides. We may never experience the thrill in riding roller coasters or feel the fun of being like a child again once we ride the carousel. In mathematics, it is the same. If we stopped exploring because we were dismayed by how boring it seemed to us, how could we ever see, know and experience the fun side of mathematics.

We see mathematics in just one face. But there is much more than that. We never even knew that mathematics held so much fun side to it. We thought mathematics was just that, a mere boring subject we had to endure throughout our studying years. Yet we are proven wrong when we see through this book that there is much more to be explored. And who know what other faces of maths there is to be explored. Growing up, we see only one side of mathematics – one that is boring. Yet through this book, we are now seeing the possibilities of mathematics. That it can hold so much interest and fun only if we explored it.

Reference:
Professor Stewart’s Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities. (2014). In Goodreads. Retrieved March 18, 2014 from http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6061491-professor-stewart-s-cabinet-of-mathematical-curiosities