#about math

[third-degree-math]

The T R U T H

[texasstoast]

There are two wolves inside me: one wants to write and the other knows I have to do my math homework

[thedivinemissema]

I am doing functions in my math class and I honestly have no idea what I’m doing.

A little elaboration: I took pre-calc in high school but I obviously didn’t learn what I needed to know, because I’ve never ever done any of this. So here I am trying to relearn everything with the WORST textbook ever (it’s all online and there are no real video lectures, just explanations on how to do a problem that’s always simpler in the example than it is on the homework) and no clue where to start on some of these problems.

[blackcvrds]

nyall.. bleas

[winkingrain]

Power of Two

When I was little, I had a chalkboard sticker in my room.  It was shaped like a house.  For a long while after I got it on my birthday, all I did was stare at it.  It wasn’t a good color for for random creativity.

I sat there for a little longer, before picking up my piece of chalk and standing up.  I felt determined.  I was also six.  Nothing really amazing was going to come of it.  After a second of consideration, I wrote ‘1+1′ at the very top corner of the house.  Pleased, I ran downstairs to get my aunt, who was back from Japan to celebrate with us.  I brought her back upstairs to show her my incredibly mundane revelation, and was very disappointed when she said “Cool! You’ve written ‘Hi’.”

No, I hadn’t.  I was doing math.

Now, please keep in mind that I was just starting kindergarten at this point.  I hadn’t had a whole lot of mathematical education, so I thought I was doing something pretty cool.

So instead of telling her this, I looked frustrated and nodded.  As soon as she left, I wrote ‘=2+2=4+4=8+8=16′ and smiled, satisfied.  No one would think I had written ‘hi’ now.

And thus began a sort of obsession with the power of two.  Every night before I went to sleep, I doubled the last number I had written down.  I was very proud of my ability to calculate this in my head, because I got to the low millions without a calculator.  Granted, I was in the middle of first grade by then and arithmetic was not such a foreign concept by then.  

Eventually, the ‘house of math’ was taken off my wall.  But the power of two stuck with me.  It appeared on most of my math assignments, and sometimes on my arm.

And in a few years, when I got a white board hung up in my room, I started it all over again and decided I would get just as far or farther than I had at first.

[nerd-fighter-squad]

When you start having honest to God nightmares and serious anxiety any time you think about AP Calculus, there is a serious problem

[jasonqrace]

Teacher: You’re clearly not trying hard enough. I know you can do better.

Me: