People Actually Really Like Mathematics

Sure, people tell you that they don’t like math. They’ll say they’re bad at it, that they hate it. That they’ll do anything to avoid it, that the very thought of it gives them the heebie-jeebies.

Don’t believe them for a second, though, because actually? Everybody likes math. The proof is that even people who profess to hate mathematics do a lot of it by choice, for fun. The issue is what people see as “doing mathematics,” and how disconnected what they enjoy is from what happens at school.

There may be other examples of popular mathematics, but mostly I’m thinking of games and puzzles.

Mathematics is the art of necessity, but not everything is necessarily true. Some things just happen to be true. My name is “Michael” though my parents could have named me “Marvin” or “Melrose.” Other things have to be true; they’re forced to be the way they are. These are the inescapable facts of existence, the ones we can’t wriggle out of. So it’s not some sort of coincidence that ever since I’ve had children, I’ve been a parent. And you may not be shocked to learn that ever since I’ve been a resident of New York City, I’ve lived here. Much as I wish at times, there’s no escaping your home as long as you live there.

One of my favorite games to play with students is Mastermind. It’s a game of code-breaking and logic. It’s a game that puts you in direct contact with necessity and possibility, and I use it in class to help students grasp the difference between those two kinds of reasoning.

It’s not a “math” game. It’s a board game, the kind of thing my friends’ parents would have in their basements when I was a kid. But it’s all about logical necessity. That’s not science. It’s not a sport. If anything deserves to be called math, these sorts of games do. What else would they be?

And once we’re on the lookout for logical necessity, it’s all around us. It’s printed in the newspaper (KenKen, Sodoku), sold at the toy store (Guess Who?), and built into our computers (Minesweeper). The reason it’s everywhere? People love this stuff. They love how it makes them feel and think. It’s mathematics; they like it.

The point of course is that very few people recognize this in their school mathematics, which is dominated by a different experience: that of carefully following steps.

Now is that so bad? Absolutely not, people also love carefully following steps. They love assembling LEGO cars and (even if they won’t admit it) IKEA furniture. There’s joy in successfully executing a tricky procedure…

…but it’s not quite the same as thinking logically, is it? And why can’t people experience both in school?

I’m getting a bit too close to preaching to the choir for my own personal comfort. What I’m trying to emphasize is that there’s no reason to define “mathematics” as an activity that is identical with the math that people study in school. That’s entirely artificial. True, all definitions here are pretty artificial. Still what’s distinctive about mathematics to me is its obsession with what is logically guaranteed to be true. And that’s an obsession shared by billions of game players and puzzle solvers around the world.

Mathematicians and educators can sometimes be heard asking, how do we get more people interested in mathematics? And I think the answer is, mostly they already are. The question is whether we and our institutions are interested in their mathematics. And mostly, we aren’t.

One thought on “People Actually Really Like Mathematics

  1. Nice post.

    It segues into one of my favorite quotes:

    “A failure of imagination does not constitute an insight into necessity.”
    — Patrick Barrow

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