Monday, October 20, 2008

why study mathematics

Did all of you think that what the use for us to study mathematics? What teacher has not heard a student complain, “When am I ever going to have to use this?” Did not most of us ask it ourselves, once upon a time? And unless we choose a math-intensive career like engineering, the truth is that after we leave school, most of us will never again use most of the math we learned. But if math beyond arithmetic is not all that useful, then what is the point?
Actually maths got a lot of usage for us although we did not notice it. We study mathematics for:
To understand creation – Maths is beautiful, suprising, enjoyable, and interesting. In fact, maths is the closest that we humans get to true magic. Maths connect ideas that otherwise seem totally unrelated, revealing deep similarities that subsequently show up in nature.
To train our minds - The investigation of mathematical truths accustoms the mind to method and correctness in reasoning, and is an employment peculiarly worthy of rational beings.
To understand history - In most sciences, one generation tears down what another has built, and what one has established another undoes. In mathematics alone, each generation adds a new story to the old structure. Biographical history, as taught in our public schools, is still largely a history of boneheads: ridiculous kings and queens, paranoid political leaders, compulsive voyagers, ignorant generals — the flotsam and jetsam of historical currents.
To appreciate the beauty - The mathematician’s patterns, like the painter’s or the poet’s, must be beautiful. The ideas, like the colors or the words, must fit together in a harmonious way. Beauty is the first test: there is no permanent place in this world for ugly mathematics.
To enjoy the mental challenge

Here, I want to tell all of you that maths really can let us enjoy the mental challenge. When we are doing a complicated maths question, we will use all of our brain to think of it so that we can get the answer. This can let our mental to experience a huge difference so we will feel very enjoy when we are doing it. I hope all of you also will like to study mathematics because it is actually a subject that make us happy.

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