And lo, how my thoughts go round and round upon the subject.
It must come as no surprise whatsoever that I am among the multitudinous math-phobes peopling (pimpling?) the world of the creative soul. Why do you think we really all took those arty, wondrous, supposedly “Easy-A” classes, eh? Escape Route, we thought, freedom from the horrors that lie between the covers of every arithmetic text known to humankind. Only to find out we’d been hoodwinked and were expected to know how to disassemble and reassemble an ellipsoidal reflector in under ten minutes and with fewer than two “nonessential” parts left over after completion (what is this word “two”?), or whether one could type 200 words of dazzling script per minute while trying not to be hopelessly hypnotized by Mr. Young’s* blindingly mustard-colored toupee. I was able to accomplish the former task, by the way, but the latter, not quite so fully. However, I only lost consciousness for a split second and did not actually fall off of my chair.
*Name has been changed to protect someone vain’s glabrous secret.
In fact, by taking uni-approved ‘alternative’ courses (“I’ll take the class behind Door Number, uhhh, B, Dave!”) I managed to go all the way from 9th grade algebra, passed mainly by babysitting for the teacher’s kids on the weekends, to grad school without having taken a single other mathematics class. Then I got stuck: first those lousy entrance exams, which are now a blissful blank in my memory bank, followed by Graduate Statistics for Pedagogy, or whatever they called it. Hell, I tells ya! The only thing that saved me was that my older sister had survived the same course with the same prof a year earlier and coached me every cotton picking minute of the way through it. While I wept copious and bitter tears. I squeeeeeeeaked by with the B grade needed to pass the course and ran screaming all the way to graduation. Which commencement ceremony I skipped to go to Mt. Rainier with friends from Australia, because once you’ve paraded down the catwalk in those hot mortarboard and gown get-ups, never mind adding a hotter yet academic hood, on a sweltering summer day, in an auditorium full of people you don’t care to know, to grip that rolled-up piece of parchment that says “Redeem for Actual Diploma at Registrar‘s Office on Tuesday after 4 pm or for a Free Pizza at Gianni’s on Main after 5 pm”–well, once you’ve gone that route there’s really no need for a repeat, is there.
Although come to think of it, skipping The Forced March may mean that I didn’t in fact officially graduate and so taught college for two decades under false pretenses, and what’s not to like about that! In any event, I did finally, truly knock down that last class on the looming list, if without particular distinction or panache.
Math, though, remained a bane. It was hideously disappointing to realize that a grasp of basic functional math was the only thing that stood between me and, say, a growling, slavering pack of credit card representatives or perhaps the growling stomach of starvation after having demolished the pantry stores by reversing the quantities of salt and sugar in yet another foolproof recipe. On the other hand, it was something of a relief when I finally realized that I was worrying needlessly about something I could never, ever fix. Between my dyslexia (or more accurately in this instance, dysnumerica) and my utter disinterest in getting better at math for the sheer unfathomable pleasure of it, I could see that this was something I should learn to put aside and compartmentalize safely to keep it away from unnecessarily pestering me in my everyday Happy Place.
Not to say that I didn’t have to find some truly inventive ways to do a (cough!) number of things. Balance my bank accounts. Figure out the current time/date in another time zone. Calculate the distance and ETA to work locations. Without GPS and Google Maps, because I do predate plenty of Modern Miracles by a significant margin. Teach drawing students how to draw in two-point perspective. Memorize ridiculous chains of randomly generated numbers to have even the remote hope of regaining access to umpteen kinds of personal accounts, not least of all ones containing personal information or money.
That is where you find me today, where numbers serve only the most rudimentary decorative purposes in my quotidian existence, for the most part (some of them being visually pleasing as abstract shapes, at least), but still occasionally rising up to help me remember my home telephone number so that I can call my more numerically astute husband to solve all of my more knotty mathematical problems. Because no matter how crummy my skills and how limited my knowledge when it comes to things numerical, I have what is for me a far more useful piece of wisdom, which is: one should always have great resource persons to call upon when one lacks the required smarts, information and/or tool handling artistry to accomplish the task of the moment. Stand ready, y’all.
The only sort of geometry at which I am expert, apparently, is circular thinking. But look where it’s gotten me thus far!
Art-Colored Glasses 
Your circular thinking has served you quite well, Kathryn 🙂
It’s made me the well-rounded woman I am today! 😉
Love those circle images Kathryn. I did not do well in HS algebra but loved geometry. Funny thing happened when I decided to go to college on the GI bill. I attended back to back summer sessions (5 week semesters) where I lived and breathed college algebra and then the real calculus (taught by a retired Admiral). I actually aced both courses and the dean admitted me for the fall semester. I had to prove myself because I think I had the lowest scores in SAT history.
John
Well done, John! My sister had her light-bulb moment after that infamous course too, but here I am a quarter century later, the same old dimbulb as always. Ah, well. At least it gave me something to write about today. 😉
you know i think america is the only country that teaches algebra, by force.. what is that all about anyway! and now married to a phycisist – cannot even spell it) he looks at me askance! what do you mean you did not do algebra! c
Think of it this way, m’dear: You can Do algebra or Algebra can Do You. I’m done! 🙂
Oh math, how I have never understood thee.
And even without a developed insight in math, you’ve taken yourself so far. It’s inspiring to see what art you’ll post up next. Interesting and thought-provoking your posts are.
I just hope I haven’t frightened any fellow math-phobes into relapse! 🙂
To answer your admission about not knowing math, I’ll borrow a Tom Hanks line from “You’ve Got Mail” – “I, on the other hand, am an expert in arithmetic.” Well, not really, but it was one of my minors in college and I taught math in high school and 8th grade for years. On a slightly different but related note – I was once in a huge room of about 200 educators for a workshop. We all took a little test to find out how left-brained or right-brained we were and then lined up in the room from the most right-brained to the most left-brained and I was second or third from the end on the logical, left-brained side. I don’t know how that relates to liking and writing poetry, but I’m satisfied with the way I am. 🙂
Well, my dear, I’m quite happy with the way you turned out too! 🙂 I think of myself as a slightly tipsy character walking the tightrope between those two lobes o’grey matter, sometimes leaning this way and sometimes starting to stagger a little toward the other. Maybe you know the secret that will open that mysterious vault of mathematical wonder to my Left-ness when it’s in a receptive mood. 🙂
“Arithmetic, Thou art No Friend of Mine”: them’s fightin’ words, girl!
I was at a get-together recently and the topic of arithmetic (and more generally mathematics) came up. Someone made a comment about checkbooks or taxes or something like that, and my response was: “That’s not math, that’s accounting.” If only you’d had someone like me as your math teacher I think you’d have a very different take on it.
Nature knows arithmetic: even the numbers of spirals of seeds in the head of a sunflower belong to a magical sequence that I think you’d find enchanting if someone explained it to you.
I am already fascinated and moved by the beauty of fractals and Fibonacci sequences and all of that sort of natural artistry–I just don’t get how all of the gorgeous patterns in math *work*, and when anyone uses numbers to try to explain any of the wonders of math, that pipsqueak-leprechaun of my dyslexic mind sends incorrect synapse firing orders, misplaced numerals, and inversions and other irritants to block my way to clarity. So far, anyway! I’ve never ruled out getting the hang of math, just haven’t found my Eureka ready for service quite yet!
I have to say I’m with Steve on this one, I think Math could have been a lovely subject… not to say I didn’t have the occasional somewhat stellar math teacher, but to inspire passion in one’s students may mean that the teachers themselves should be passionate on the subject? And I think this was sorely lacking in my early years of Math study.
I have a wonderful Music Theory teacher who loves Math.. and he laughs and rolls his eyes as he tries to probe and bend my brain to get it to think more like his… it’s great fun, he’s extremely patient and I think I’m just now (after almost a year) beginning to see the beauty and patterns… but in a musical sort of math.. (insert sigh here) I feel for you, Kathryn, I have a dread for the rest of Math as well…
I really like your pictures, Kathryn
Thank you kindly! I appreciate your stopping by here!
I view mathematics and those that “love” it as I do cigars and their aficionados. They “enjoy” math just as much as those who swear they “love” their cigars, which is to say, not at all. Both groups of enthusiasts have spent a great deal of time and money in pursuit of both and to state that either is any less than fantastic would be to admit defeat. Both, I believe, are massive frauds developed by Euclid on the one hand, and Sir Walter Raleigh, on the other. And I’ve come to this conclusion despite having been a cigarette smoker for decades and having been told, repeatedly throughout my academic career, that I have an “aptitude” for math. I stand with you, Kathryn. As Peter Townsend wrote, “We won’t get fooled again!”
Now, if I could roll up all of the math tests I ever endured and smoke them to smithereens, *that* might be a cigar I would smoke–just the once–with great relish (or with ketchup, if the mood strikes me). 🙂
I’d rather say to someone, “I’m not very good at advanced math” than be deficient elsewhere…
My mother once taught 3rd grade alongside a sweet young New Teacher, who believed that the sun revolved around the earth…Really? Four years in college (As this was in the days before you had to have a Doctorate to teach kindergaten. You’re lucky to get a babysitting gig with a bachelor’s now…)and this tidbit escaped you?
That said, I *do* have the ability to do math; what I don’t have is the interest. I managed to fail ‘Math, Models and Computers’ in college, a class designed for music and theater majors…
Go, me! 😀
Go, us! 😀
It’s kind of mind-blowing to me what *is* and *isn’t* required in our education system, both for students and for those studying in order to *teach* those students.
I, of course, believe that the sun, moon, stars and planets all revolve around me, but that’s just obvious, isn’t it. 😉
I have always and will always be a math phobe! Did Algebra and Geometry in HS and College Algebra (oh the suffering; the wailing and gnashing of teeth!) in college. Rest of requirements I fulfilled by science classes which I loved. Alas, for the graduate degree I had to take statistics but by that time I was engaged to DH who can do math in his sleep with one hand tied behind his back (but it does make for uncomfy sleeping LOL). I still avoid doing anything numerical above balancing budgets and what the final price is for something on sale.
It has occurred to me in the midst of all this conversation about math that I don’t even remember what Algebra *is*. I presume it’s supposed to DO something particular, but I was so crummy at it even as a ninth grader (admittedly, a whole lotta years ago) that I never even learned what the hell it *was*. How pitiful is that! 🙂
about math, i have nothing to say, but i love what your eye sees Katherine and i’m so glad your eyes do see it.
I too have nothing to say about math, and yet I took a whole post to say so! 😉
I also love the ways your eye see and share observation!
Have you noticed how my pupils spiral around like cartoon eyes when I’m thinking hard?? 😉
In school, I avoided any and all english and art classes except those that were required for graduation (with the exception of music). Math was a language I understood. Then I went and married a writer! 🙂
Ah, penance!! Well, the music connection makes perfect sense: most of the creative people I know who ‘get’ math are musicians. There’s clearly some relationship between those cognitive functions. And don’t get me wrong: I LOVE that there are people who *do* know how to use math, or where would *I* be????! 😀
Well I was good at maths but I still prefer poetry where I never have to count to more than about 15 syllables.
And since you do that so well, why introduce further complications! 🙂
Thank you for sharing this. You are probably already aware, but fear of math is one of the best kept secrets of many. I do not pretend to understand all of its secrets, but I did have fun opening the doors to the rudimentary aspects for my little students. It is this beginning experience that sets the stage for how we will, or will not love math. I suspect your discomfort with the subject began early on…? Mine did. ~ Lynda
Oh, absolutely–I was a child prodigy at not being a prodigy when it came to math! 😉
I was the stupid girl who took a class called Math for Fun. How in the world could math ever be classified as FUN? It was pure torture for me and with a lot of help from my father and my very patient teacher, I squeaked by with a C- in that class and felt as though I had aced it! I will not tell you about the one year that I got an A and how I managed to accomplish that feat – I fear it was far too underhanded for one of my sterling caliber! But I will tell you that given the choice between math and human sexuality at the college I attended, I learned a lot about sex….
And lemme tell *you*, there cannot be many places on earth where math-y knowledge would be more welcome than knowledgeable sex. I understand that math has its uses, but, well, just sayin’!
😉