Since very old times, people complain about the need of learning math. There is no use for it in reality. Or, I want to be a writer, a rock-star, and I’m completely sure I won’t need it. Technological progress makes it even harder. The varied arrays of electronic devices that are available for the public make the idea of playing around with mathematical calculations even less enticing. Does it make any sense the effort involved in memorization of formulas and procedures when the only thing you need to do is to punch in a symbol to receive the answer immediately to what you asked?



There are some responses to the question and all of them require some maturity to understand. It is clear that no one likes to memorize just for the sake of it; nevertheless, the basics is what is usually better learned at first. It is a possibility that presenting math in a different way, though, could radically improve the understanding of why we study math.

Among the reasons why the study of math is necessary is that it creates the need for students to read and comprehend, which also forces them to learn how to organize their cognitive processes and to see depth in more challenging problems. The best knowledge of formulas will not tell you how to apply it. For that, it is necessary to be able to put your thinking in action to recognize the important elements of a situation and also to understand how to apply known facts or procedures with the objective of find the answer to the question. This new found understanding, obtained from the practice in figuring out the parameters in a math problem also contributes in other fields of study.

In addition to the need to organize your thinking due to math, you will also be forced to come to understand the meaning of the formulas, in terms of knowing how to apply them. In other words, unless you understand something about the mechanisms of math, you won't have any idea how to enter numbers into a computer. While the actual calculation performed by a calculator does greatly simplify even routine problem solving, to raise three generations of students with no understanding of how to use a calculator to determine which of two items in different sized containers costs more is a travesty of the concept of mathematics education. Many adults do not understand the concept of reconciling a bank statement, or calculating true cost of an adjustable rate mortgage.

This state of affairs in American education is troublesome at best. Standardized tests show a dramatic fall in the math understanding of our students and the tendency doesn’t seem to be in the way of getting reverted in the short-run. Teachers are criticized for not trying to go a little bit further, and maybe this criticism is a little bit unfair, because this decline is part of a deeper tendency.