Mathematics, at its core, is a way to organize your thinking.

It starts by defining some basic

rules and then uses those rules to prove new ones.

One who has learned to think mathematically will be able to think through many other
issues in life, whether numbers are involved or not. Using discipline to form your opinions is
much better than using “feel good” emotions or laziness.

I took some graduate-level math classes many years ago, and to be honest, I have forgotten
most of the details because I haven’t used them. However, my mental processes were
changed forever, and I am very grateful for that.

Similar to others here, Calculus changed my sense of mathematics from something I did
well at but didn’t love. But it wasn’t differential calculus because I found that incredibly
tedious. When we shifted to integral calculus and engaged with the concept of
adding an infinite number of infinitely small bits to end up with a solid result - that really
excited me.

What I discovered was the thrill of engaging with big concepts and ideas - that also provided
a way to solve real world problems.

Then I moved to “proofs”. My full semester courses in proofs was another game changer - as
it was an intense challenge of logic and imagination - learning how to envision these
concepts.

Another shift came in a differential equations class - but not on the diff eqs. Rather, the prof
introduced us to the difference between something being “at rest” and “stable”… Introduced
the concept of stability - what systems are stable and which aren’t? He connected this to
ecology. And used the image of a pendulum on a rigid radius - which is at rest at two points
(straight down and straight up). But the pendulum is only stable (resistant to small changes)
when straight down.

This one shifted my perceptions because it offered a superb example that, again, relates
powerfully to life - and other math.

2.8k views

Andy Howell, Software Developer

Answered Jul 22, 2018 · Author has 80 answers and 21.9k answer views
I've only made it through introductory multivariable calculus. I took it 35+ years ago and
again recently.

It still amazes me that we can deal with the infentesimal and the infinite. Reiman sums are
intuitive, yet amazing. Successive approximations on steroids.
When I first encountered Newton's law of cooling/heating a learned we could estimate how
long someone's been dead or how long it will take my coffee to cool, I thought that was
pretty nifty. The idea of each layer of insulation slowing down the heat transfer further as
the the temperature differential exponentially decays. I look at lowly house insulation
differently.

I still have further to go, but as I look at things around me, I see a glimmer of the math
behind life, the universe and everything :)

Another thing I've learned is just how vast the subject is. It suprised me that a
mathematician working in one area might not have a clue about another mathematician’s
field of study. I thought of math as being one homogeneous thing, but it certainly is not.

I want more. Next up, differential equations.

I used to think maths was a very uninteresting subject before i found out about powers, then
i just kept finding new stuff that blew my mind. Now, i have arrived at the conclusion that
it's a neat subject which i find quite enjoyable.
I can remember three big paradigm shifts I’ve experienced with mathematics. The first was
when I studied calculus for the first time (years ago now). Up to that point I thought
mathematics was a very dull, boring process of solving for variables, using reams and reams
of paper and long list of trig identities that were meaningless and complicated.

Calculus and, more so, differential equations showed me that mathematics were instead
very powerful tools that allowed us to analyse complicated, living systems and find solution
for systems that changed all the time, but had boundaries. Paradigm shift number 1.

Shift number two occurred during my first ever Modern Algebra course in college, when I
flirted ever so briefly with becoming a mathematician. It was a more personal paradigm
shift that saw me quickly realize that I liked answers I could do stuff with. Hence
engineering over mathematics.

The third shift was larger in scale. I remember when I thought that algebra was it’s own
branch of mathematics, geometry it’s own, calculus it’s own, and so forth. Then I read a
book (and more importantly did more math) and saw that, instead, it’s a variously-
interconnected, only dimly glimpsed web of …Platonic stuff? My mental image of
mathematics closely resembles what I imagine a global scale, 3D map of the ocean is like:
we’ve explored some of it pretty well and thoroughly, and gone to the bottom-most trenches
in a very few areas, but otherwise that’s a huge amount out there we know nothing about.

The way proofs are presented always turns me off, no matter how much I may have been
interested before. This is made worse when professors or other presenters explain concepts
in a similar way. I learn better with examples and when I can see how different things are
related; the theorem-proof-corollary repetition does nothing for me. That may be the
convenient, thoughtless way for a machine to do something, but a thoughtless machine is
exactly what it turns you into if you study math that way. It is memorization at its worst, and
it's disguised by the Rudinesque elitists as "mathematical maturity." Yes, you need to be
able to read and write proofs, but just knowing theorems and proofs and being able to
regurgitate them at a whim is not going to do anything for you if you cannot communicate
their concepts in a straight-forward way.

Student: "Can you please explain what a tensor is? I'm having a little trouble with the
definition."

Professor gives the universal property, straight from the book.

Student: "I know that, but what does that mean? Can you please given some kind of
example?"

Professor: "…"

I cannot say I have changed my mind about any aspect of mathematics. It is a beautiful
subject,with so much variety in its intellectual concepts and operations.

Believe it or not, math is changing. Or at least the way we use math in the
context of our daily lives is changing. The way you learned math will not
prepare your children with the mathematical skills they need in the 21st
Century.

Don’t take my word for it. I am not a math professor. I almost failed out of
calculus in high school. I do not claim to be an expert. I write about video
games, psychology, education, and philosophy. I understand the importance
of math, but it is not my area of expertise.

When I am writing about math education and I need a true expert opinion, I
reach out to Keith Devlin. He is co-founder and Executive Director of Stanford
University’s Human-Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research Institute.
He is also a learning game and app developer who founded a company
called BrainQuake (a part of the Co.lab/Zynga.org edtech accelerator). And, of
course, he is well known as the “NPR Math Guy.”

To most people, mathematics means applying standard techniques to solve

well defined problems with unique right answers. They have good reason to
think that. Until the end of the 19th Century, that’s exactly what it did mean!
But with the rise of the modern science and technology era, the need for
mathematics started to change. By and large, most people outside
mathematics did not experience the change until the rapid growth of the
digital age in the last twenty years. With cheap, ubiquitous computing devices
that can do all of the procedural mathematics faster and more accurate than
any human, no one who wants – or wants to keep – a good job can now ignore
that shift from the old “application of known procedures” to new emphasis on
creative problem solving.
Jordan Shapiro: What does this mean for mathematics education?

Keith Devlin: When today’s parents were going through the schools, the
main focus in mathematics was on mastery of a collection of standard
procedures for solving well-defined problems that have unique right answers.
If you did well at that, you were pretty well guaranteed a good job. Learning
mathematics had been that way for several thousand years. Math textbooks
were essentially recipe books. Now all those math recipes have been coded
into devices, some of which we carry round in our pockets. Suddenly, in a
single generation, mastery of the procedural math skills that had ruled
supreme for three thousand years has become largely irrelevant. Students
don't need to train themselves to do long computations, as was necessary
when I was a child. No one calculates that way any more! What they (we) need
in today’s world is a deeper understanding of how and why Hindu-Arabic
arithmetic works.

2. Yesterday’s math class won’t prepare you for tomorrow’s

jobs.
Jordan: But we’ve all seen statistics that show STEM (science, technology,
engineering, math) skills are in high demand. Certainly a math degree is still
good for job placement?

Keith: It’s still the case that math gets you jobs, but the skill that is in great
demand today, and will continue to grow, is the ability to take a novel
problem, possibly not well-defined, and likely not having a single “right”
answer, and make progress on it, in some cases (but not all!) “solving” it
(whatever that turns out to mean). The problems we need mathermatics for
today come in a messy, real-world context, and part of making progress is to
figure out just what you need from that context.

Jordan: Have you seen examples where people with the old skills are
struggling in a new economy?

Keith: In all four offerings of my mathematical thinking MOOC to date, I

have had as students, engineers with years of experience who suddenly found
themselves out of a job when their employers replaced them with software
systems(or sometimes overseas outsource services). Those engineers are now
having to retool to learn this other skill of creative problem solving –
mathematical thinking.
3. Numbers and variables are NOT the foundation of math.
Jordan: Just one question about video games: You’ve said games are the
best way to teach math. How does this tie in with “Mathematical thinking”?

Keith: The traditional symbols of math were developed to do mathematics on

a sheet of paper. Actually, they were originally developed to do it in the sand,
on clay tablets, later on parchment, and then paper (and blackboards). But in
all cases, it was a static representation of something fundamentally dynamic –
namely a form of thinking! Tablet computers and video games provide
interactive, dynamic representations, which means you can get closer to the
thinking, and break through the Symbol Barrier.

Jordan: So you're not only saying that technology renders basic procedural
mathematics skills obsolete, you're also suggesting that it offers new forms of
dynamic representation?

Keith: Yes, and a more efficient representation can make a dramatic

difference for students. Take a look at the example below from the
iOS/Android App Wuzzit Trouble. These are two representations of the very
same problem!

What I and a small number of other math learning game developers are doing, but most are not,
is viewing the game as a representation of mathematics that replaces the traditional symbols with
one that takes advantages of the many different affordances that video game technology offers,
particularly tablet screens.

4. We can cross the Symbol Barrier.

Jordan: So, mathematical thinking is the abstract logic that underlies the procedures, right?
Does this mean the symbols--numbers as we know them--could change?

Keith: No one, least of all me, is saying we should abandon the traditional symbolic
representation for mathematics. You need to master that language if you want to go on to a
career in science or engineering, and many other careers as well. Most advanced mathematics is
inherently symbolic, and I cannot see any current technology changing that. What I do say, based
on a lot of hard evidence, is that, because of the Symbol Barrier, we should not make the
symbolic representation the entry pathway into mathematics. It disenfranchises too many
otherwise able people. What video game technologies can do is provide a User Interface to
mathematics that much better suited to beginner-level learning. Today, study of the symbolic
representation can be postponed until after the student has mastered the basic mathematical
thinking in a more efficient way.
Jordan: I'm having some trouble grasping what this means in practical terms. Can you give me
a real world example?

Keith: The same thing happened in computing. Starting with the Macintosh, then Windows, now
(to some extent) tablet touch-interfaces, we have made computing accessible to everyone. That
does not mean it is no longer useful to learn how to code. But in my day, the only way to use a
computer was to begin by learning how to code. Today, you first learn how to use a computer,
then you learn to code. That opens up computing (and coding) to far more people.

5. We need to know math’s limitations.

Jordan: You once wrote a book called Goodbye Descartes: The End of Logic and the Search for
a New Cosmology of the Mind. Of your work, it is certainly among my favorites. Can you briefly
explain the argument you make in that book? Why would a mathematician make an argument for
the end of logic? And what does Descartes have to do with this?

Keith: In today’s world, where our Cartesian-based sciences and technologies play such a huge
role in our lives and our societal structures, it is just as important to make people aware of the
inherent limitations of mathematics as of its powers. Mathematics is like fire. We need it’s power
to live. But it can also be unbelievably destructive, and must always be treated with immense
respect.

Just as we have made great progress in the natural sciences and engineering, so too other
researchers have made great strides in the sciences of the mind and in the social, psychological,
and learning sciences. (Those latter three are, by the way, the true “hard sciences”. Referring to
them as “soft sciences” is misleading, unless you understand the word “soft” in the William
Burroughs sense of “The Soft Machine”, i.e., us.).

Jordan: It seems like you're saying we need more interdisciplinary communication. I often write
about how important it is to understand that there are many different kinds of truths, many
different ways to make sense of our experience in the world.

Keith: When I moved to Stanford in 1987, I did so thinking I would benefit from being in one of
the world’s leading technology research centers. And I did. But what changed me far more, was
coming up against the world class expertise in the human sciences that Stanford also has. It was
after working with (actually, mostly listening to) leading human scientists, and philosophers who
consider those issues, that I was forced to reassess the role that mathematics can play in the
human sciences.

Jordan: It is dangerous to believe that one particular way of seeing the universe can offer all the
answers.

Keith: In the natural sciences, mathematics is the absolute ruler. If you break the mathematical
rules, you are no longer doing physics, or astronomy, or whatever. But in the human sciences,
mathematics is just a tool. A useful one to be sure, and getting more useful all the time, but still
and all, just a tool. My book Goodbye, Descartes was an attempt to articulate what I saw as the
inherent limitations of the mathematical approach (the “Cartesian approach”) in the human
sciences.

Follow me on Twitter. Check out my website or some of my other work here.

Jordan Shapiro

I am full-time father of two little boys, Senior Fellow for the Joan Ganz Coo