Sage… Isn’t A Math Person

One English-lover's journey to liking math.. or at least getting good enough at it to get by. 📚☕️

[sageisntamathperson]

UPDATE

So.

Hi.

As all three people who follow me know (hi guys), I have begun a quest to start actually liking math. You guys came up with some awesome recommendations, some of which I have already checked out (A Mathematician's Lament review coming soon!), and I've decided that I will also use this blog to monologue about all of the crazy things Mathblr is helping me learn.

What will a complete novice such as I think of the tantalizing and mysterious science (?) of (gasp!) topology? Only time will tell!

(It's math about holes. I think? I don't know, folks. This is why I started to learn more about math in the first place.)

However, I'm afraid my original goal of getting into Calc 3 senior year is a no-go. Apparently, you have to take a whole year of Precalc as a prerequisite, which will fill up my junior year -- and I don't think they'll let me jump from Precalc to Calc 3. Not to mention that I discovered that Calc 3 is not, in fact, an AP class; so, as someone who's trying to get as many AP courses as I can and doesn't want to be an engineer, it's basically useless for me to take.

But! This does not mean I'm giving up on math. What I've learned so far is very interesting -- and math is still my only bad grade, so I definitely still need to improve. And not only am I keeping this blog going, I'm expanding it.

I'm the type of person who learns subjects by writing weird, opinionated stories about personifications of them. (Yes... I know.) So I've decided to use this blog to make myself write bizarre, wild things to study for Honors Chemistry and AP World History. You'll know I have a big test when you're slammed with a sarcastic-remark-filled yet educational sketch or short essay about one of the subjects. Sometimes it's the "Meet the Plastics" monologue, but with the Gunpowder Empires instead of Karen, Gretchen, and Regina. Sometimes it's a rant about how hydrogen is such a manic-pixie-dream-girl wannabe. (We get it, you're content with only two valence electrons! Why do you wanna be different so bad?)

I hope this helps not only me, but you guys too :) But you know what is NOT helpful? The fact that I'm doing this instead of math homework. I should probably close this tab now.

[sageisntamathperson]

Vector cross product

Good God ... hwat the Devil is this sorcery

I just got an 82 on my Algebra 2 matrices test and you expect me to Google this? 😭😭😭 Let me grieve bro

(Can someone please explain what this is or at least the class in which I will start to learn what this is)

[lizardvangogh]

saw a post saying something like if schools required the bible to be taught then it would back fire because lit class is about actually analyzing and breaking down the text and that would some how “prove” how wrong it is? as if there aren’t people who’s whole lives are dedicated to studying the bible and other literature written around it to show cultural context? the bible had never seemed so alive to me until i “broke it down” and saw the context within which it was written.

[sageisntamathperson]

Guys HOW do you keep yourself from making dumb mistakes in very long math problems 😭 I have ADD, and I keep forgetting a negative sign or something and getting problems it takes 15 minutes to do horribly wrong

[justactgaussian]

So I've seen the whole 'Math's Saddest Love Stories' (asymptotes that drift ever closer but never meet etc.), but I think we're missing the potential of Math's Funny Love Stories. The couple whose destiny is an infinite cycle of breaking up and getting back together again:

Oscillating rapidly in and out of each other's life for a while before drifting apart in opposite directions:

Drifting ever closer, until you finally meet and go fuck that:

One who drifts slowly closer to the other, until they acutally meet and decide to make a very sharp turn in the other direction:

Whatever hellscape of contrived coincidences these series of infinite near misses are:

[sageisntamathperson]

Then what on God’s green Earth is going on with THIS

?!??!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!

[sageisntamathperson]

Math people of Tumblr: what books should I read/YouTube should I watch to “get into” math beyond what they teach in school? I’m in Algebra 2/Precalc, if that helps :)

[sageisntamathperson]

(intro post) I am many things, but I am not a math person.

And when I say “many things,” I mean MANY things. Art. Creative writing. Journalism. Acting. Theology. Philosophy. Urban planning, Disabled self-advocacy. Environmentalism. You name it — if it’s humanities or a biology-adjacent science, I’ve got it.

But while an unimaginably nerdy fourth-grade me was founding a school newspaper or making an unprompted presentation about pharmacogenomics (yes, I was extremely a bit pretentious), there is one subject I have hated since I had the capacity to hate:

Math.

I qualified for Advanced Math testing every year of elementary school. EVERY YEAR! And did I ever get in?! NooOOOoOOO!

Every year, I was good enough to get tested but never enough to actually ace that test — and every year, I watched the smug little faces of my peers as they moved to another classroom to learn the arcane, esoteric, staggeringly difficult art of fourth/fifth grade math. For a little kid whose entire identity was built on being the “smartest kid in the class,” it was agony in its purest form.

This continued into middle school and is still a problem in high school today. I’m in honors math — but not the highest honors math. My math scores are always notably lower than my scores in, well… everything else. In fact, I’ve gotten two Bs in my entire life as of now (sophomore year), and they were both in — shocker — math. I’m in a math class with freshmen, and when I went to my school’s resource center to ask for help on matrices, I ended up getting tutored by someone my own age.

(Are these stupid problems? Of course! There are people dealing with math [and grades in general] who have it a lot harder than I do. Intellectually, I know that a B isn’t a bad grade, it’s okay to be in a class with people younger than you, and a lot of people have a tutor the same age as them. Don’t feel bad if any of that applies to you! I’m just a perfectionist who uses academic validation a source of self-worth, and for me, this is the equivalent of a rock that never seems to get out of my shoe.)

All this was tolerable, but when I found out that the highest math class in my high school — the one I would be on track for if I got into Advanced Math in elementary or middle school — had barely any girls in it, that was the last straw. I am not perpetuating the myth that girls are bad at math!

So I’ve decided that even though I’ve been told my entire life that “everyone has different talents” and I’m “just not a math person,” I will be working hard to skip the equivalent of a grade in math and get into AP Calc BC junior year. I will find out what it takes to be good at math (and why some of my friends like it so much).

(Plus, math is an extremely inconvenient subject to be mediocre in. Intellectually, I understand the appeal. It’s built into the fabric of the universe, for crying out loud!)

And thus, into the studying vortex I go.

For women in STEM everywhere!

For vindication for my elementary-school self!

And most of all, for my own fragile ego intellectual curiosity and an unquenchable thirst for learning!