For the majority of my life, I have stood by the very strong statement of "I Hate Math". Young people are exposed to math in a very dry manner, often resulting in negative opinions that last their entire lives. Sometime last year it became apparent that I was no longer going to be able to avoid taking a math class, and on top of that, I needed to start at the very bottom. I enrolled in Math 20, Basic Math. I slowly started to re-learn long division, fractions, and many other basics that I had never paid much attention to when I was first required to learn them in elementary and middle school. As the year progressed, and I continued into Beginning and College Algebra, I started to realize that not only is math interesting, it can be fun as well.It has a start and a finish, and almost always has an answer. This strongly appeals to my constant desire to be organized. I now Like Math. I feel almost silly saying it, and have tried to convince friends that they too can like math, but have been consistently scoffed at (understandably so, I would have reacted in a similar manner until recently).
Unfortunately, I am finished with my math classes. I truthfully would love to take more, but I'm not required to for my degree. I did recently find a new blog from the NY Times that might help feed my desire to learn more math. The Blog, written by Steven Strogatz, is about "the elements of mathematics, from pre-school to grad school, for anyone out there who’d like to have a second chance at the subject". His debut post features a video from Sesame Street, and truthfully, how can you go wrong with Sesame Street?
Also, for those of you who are interested, Strogatz was also featured in a RadioLab episode called Numbers.
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