The Foundation

In anything you do there are core principles that make up the foundation of what you are doing. With athletics it is usually the stance or basic position. I am a wrestler. In wrestling it does not matter how many tricks you know, if you cannot do the basics, then you will never be great. This is true in math. No matter how many shortcuts or tricks you know for multiplying, dividing, or taking derivatives, if you cannot do addition you cannot do math.

When it comes down to the basics, which is where we are going to start, adding one is the foundation of all math. If we continually add one, then we start doing a function with the numbers called counting. Could you imagine a world without counting. However we cannot count if the numbers do not have names. Could you imagine telling a person you wanted five apples without telling them numbers. All you could say is, "more," or, "less," and it would be a huge guessing game until they get it right. Lets take a look at Larry the Caveman-Cyclops and see how he handles a world where there are no numbers.

Wow hopefully Larry will learn to count so he can impress Vironica. It would have made Larry's life much easier if he simply could have just said, "I want five apples."

The challenge for this lesson is to go the whole day and not use numbers to convey messages. I know a few of you will think about it and less may even try it, but just think about it. If you do not know the numbers then you challenge is to learn them. Maybe try learning them in another language. 

Good luck.

An Intro to That Thing You Hate: MATH

From my experience, math is one of the least liked skills taught in education. Given this, why is math the most used skill in our every day life, aside from communication? If you don't believe me try and go a whole day without using the most basic skills of math, adding one a.k.a. counting. I bet you will have as much of a chance of that as not talking that day.

Doing math has become part of our nature. We do simple comparison of numbers every day. At work you are waiting for the clock to turn to that magical time when you get to leave. You look at the time and calculate that you have 30 minutes until you get off of work. A little bit later you check again and and now you have 24 minutes. After this realization you exclaim in agony, "It has only been 6 minutes!? It has felt much longer, at least 15 or even 10 minutes." Without realizing it you just did subtraction.

So this is just an intro to the skill that will greatly bless your life, which you might hate, called math. I hope to show you ways to make math fun and help you move beyond having to do it, to enjoying to do it.