THE ESSENCE OF MATH
The essence of mathematics is ultimate truth. It is a universal language. Or maybe a tool. No, it stretches your mind, makes you think, keeps you asking questions. I remember, it’s a web. But webs are confusing and I thought it was supposed to be ultimate truth! Clearly, math is many different things depending on who you ask. So what are we to do with these multiple perspectives? Is there a right one? A wrong one? Or perhaps they are each valid and shed some light on the complexities of mathematics. Realizing, then, that the essence of math is so complicated and understood so differently by so many people, that highlights the difficulty in teaching mathematics. If math is understood differently by each person, then maybe it should be taught differently for each person. What an undertaking! In elementary school, I was taught at home and learned math very independently. My mom wasn’t that great at math, so she more or less gave me the book and said “learn it!” And I flourished! By the time I hit high school, I really loved math. My high school math teachers took a very traditional approach and held very structured classrooms. Again, I did well and continued to enjoy math. Here, at the University of Illinois, Calculus is taught in many different ways to facilitate the variety of ways the understanding of math is acquired. For example, there’s the traditional large lecture with small discussion groups. But there are also Mathematica sections and small group sections like Merit Workshop. Hopefully these different approaches are successful in reaching the different types of math students at the university. I think that by studying these different understandings
of math, we will be able to develop new and better ways to communicate the truths, webs and language that is math in the classroom.