math and climbing

[ursula]

In November, my article on math anxiety and climbing came out in the magazine Math Horizons. It's about how I used what I know about teaching math to talk myself into climbing a wall. My first climbing partner, Megan, was on the magazine cover:

http://www.maa.org/mathhorizons/nov11.jpg

I've posted a proof of the article on my professional website:

http://people.uwec.edu/whitchua/notes/mathandgymclass-mathhorizons.pdf

Comments

[surexit]

That was a lovely article! (Linked by rydra_wong.) It, uh, actually made me wish I could give maths another go. :D (Also climbing, but the maths thing was more surprising.)

[ursula]

This makes me happy! Thank you.

[surexit]

Maybe someday! I suffered from being very, very good at all academic endeavours except for maths, at which I was only (only for fuck's sake, my perceptions were so out of whack) at a high B or low A level. So I perceived myself as awful at it, and it all went bad from there.

Reading your article made me think about how harshly I was judging myself at maths. And how I've written off this whole discipline - it's one of the few things that when people say that's what they study, I normally don't ask for more details. So, yeah, awesome, thank you.

[ursula]

Hmm. I was lucky in that my academic subjects were a little bit more evenly matched-- I still had to work harder in math classes, but since I was bored to tears in a lot of my grade school courses, I saw this as a bonus.

I wonder if you would actually like some of the crazy philosophical math-major math more than the high school topics? Things about logic and infinity and extra dimensions and the axiom of choice?

[surexit]

Yes, I think so, but first I would have to wrap my brain around the idea that there is more to maths than the obvious 2+2. I DON'T GET IT. HOW CAN THERE BE ENOUGH NUMBERS IN THE WORLD TO DO A THREE-YEAR DEGREE ON THEM?

Basically I find maths v v hard to conceptualise. But next time I talk to a mathy friend, I'm going to ask them about maths. Yay!

[ursula]

I DON'T KNOW, ASK A STATISTICIAN. (I <3 geometry.)

Yay!

[aquaeri]

I am rather a fan of maths, so I'll shut up and go away if it's not helpful, but maths isn't really about numbers, maths is about patterns, and numbers are a type of pattern, and if you get that, you're in :-).

(2+2 is the pattern where two apples and two more apples is "the same" as two cars and two more cars.)

[surexit]

Yeah, that's the thing, I get that sort of, but not intuitively, you know? Like (2+2 is the pattern where two apples and two more apples is "the same" as two cars and two more cars.) sort of confuses me but I half get it and the bit I get of it sort of blows my mind because it's so mundane but so different from how I think of numbers.

BASICALLY, I am missing the maths part of my brain.