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    Cogito Ergo Sum - 2001 Palanca Essay

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    jane

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Cogito Ergo Sum or What I Know For Sure Learned From Mathematics Queena M tee-chua Cogito ‘What excuse would this one have this ine, 1 sighed as Miguel warily shulied his way to the front. He had the ditncion of searing the lowest on two Consecutive algebra tests, and I seriouly doubted he ould ever pass the cours, Yet every cats hour, though seemingly tormented by every postulste I tered, he would nile on hit pen and frantically scribble on his mabicolored pad. I watched him ap. proach, sympathy superseded by cynicism, “Mavam, I studied. fied. I never ally ad problems with math before. But now I need help” The edest of thre, Miguel graduated top of his batch fom secondary school in a barrio (“where visitors are honored und every. boy inows everybody ese") sandwiched betwen ligan end Dave. , ‘This feat ermed him a scholarship toa wel-known university in Ma, aia. On the eve of his departure, the town feted him, and amidet ‘ast pig and grilled fowl, he vowed to make everyone proud, To return with dismal marks was unthokabl, “I would rather dic” he proclaimed, A slow of diagnostic tests Iter, I discovered that Migucl had a Selective grasp of mathematics. He manipulated whale numbers wit dish, delicately forming the digits with neat—even clegant--ea. ligraphy. Decimals and percentages he regarded with tincasy ever. nee, but tongue stuck out in concentration, he would finally manage to make sense of them. Fractions, though, were another mater, Rel. 2 Cogito Ergo Sum gating them tothe status of ordinary natural nombers, Miguel re tgrded the bars dividing top and otom a inconveniences tobe ex ured, and tobe inserted as en eftorthought. He recognized practi= cally no geometric terms, and word problems were hostile, alin, Like ‘abridge that heretofore had borne only light cargo, the integrity of his mathematical foundation had alwaye been in doubt. “Ther is no way for you todo algebra wel if you haven't mas tered arithmetic. We ean work together, but you have to start at & basic level, most iy, Grade Five arithmetic. Youhave to work hand very std,” He gulped, “How long wil this take? Two weeks? Thee?” Legend has it that before the time of Christ, the Greck geometer Euclid was summoned othe royal presence. The young Ptolemy had grand plans—improvement of irgation, construction of temples, ‘and the establishment of a great libeary, Thus, he would need to ‘compretend geometry (in fact, sl 13 volumes of the Elements) 3s soon as posible, Who else could ensure thi, but the asthor himself, the most erudite mathematician inthe civilized world? At this, Euclid bowed deeply. I would be an honor tobe the king's tutor, yet there was something His Royal Highness should understand. “There is no royal road to geometry.” Learning could ‘not be accomplished ina day, in a week, or in a yest. Euclid ad devoted more than half his fe to produce his tomes, and there was ‘no ay thatthe king could become an expert in faction of tht, time. The royal read to geometry isthe same as that traversed by ‘comaion people—one lined by years of perseverance reflection, and hard work, Silent for some time, Ptolemy sequiesced, “Teach me, and [will ‘bea ready pupil” The kings lestons lasted throughout hse, Euc’s protege became « man of wisdom, and was loved by the people Royalty does not exist here yet we acta if we ae al ened 10 the royal road to—everythng. As s mieror of the Information Age pethaps, ve are beguled by speed in all ts forms. We se this a the ings we ‘Chemical, we take amphetamines (ie any wonder 3 ‘Cogito Ergo Sum ‘we call them “speed"), and constantly seek the “rush” bestowed by nicotine and caffeine. Instead of basking in the favors and the cam raderie of « home-cooked meal, we ruin our health and our fal ties by downing synthetic fast-food fare (express lane, pless) in be tween back-to-back mosings. We consume instant cates by the buck erful, devour instant noodles by the ton, and elevate the microwave ‘oven toa kitchen god. ‘We sce this inthe things we do, We chennel-suct every night, our fingers expending more energy thin the rest of our body put together, while our brains mindssly shift through sil another phos phoreseent parade. We navigate through the traffic maze, risking lie, limi, and sanity, byper-viglany contributing to the cacophony at ‘very switch ofthe light. Shunning the stirs, we fidget in font ofthe clevatr, and rush inside when the doors open, only ta immediately punch the Door Close button. In the gym, our multitasking selves bitrate mergers onthe cellular, release frenzied text into esberspacs, 1nd tune out the ret ofthe world through headphones—al the while negotiating endless laps and stairs, In church and in the cheater, ou ‘pegs and beepers continuously inerupt the flow of our commun: jon with Ged end ourselves, ‘We see this in the headlines. We erave instant wealth, 40 pio ried upon the tenuous temptations of jucteng, loo, and bingo, we fervently sacrifice our savings. However, since the ods aginst ge. ting ich through gambling bedevil us, some of us tarn to more im- mediate forms of geining wealth—robbery, kidnapping, extortion, murder, Ad we see this in our technology. We who demend instant knowledge shy away from the lary, and scour the Net insted, in the misbegotten belie that anything that i in the computer, or that contes by way of the computer, is unadulterated fact. Our PCs be- ‘ome obsolete every six months, and eage to save on milseconds, ‘we upgrade them to faster model, Instead of lingering over the clas: sles, we reach for abridged editions, or wort, clamor for Hollywood to prockim is own version. CNN has replaced newspapers in many homes, and most of us now abicully ect the vayeu as evens unl Cogito Ergo Sum in “real-time,” with nary a delay of hours or minutes. Music Tele sion, wit ts fastr-than-the-eye-can-blink frames, wreaks even more hhavoc on the concentation spant of our slready atertion-defc laypersive chien, Some things cannot be hurvied—pregnan todler tying his shoelaces. Sue, we cannot always go slow, but make haste slowly, counsels the sage. ‘Aller « decade of university teaching, I believe that lang for immediate gratification is one ofthe prime causes of academic flare ‘This Lwant-i-now mentality eannot work in rath. Algebrs students pore over a word problem fora gratd toa of three minutes (an eer ity for our MTV generation), and demand that Teacher surrender ihe answer. Geometry sudents declare that they hate proofs, they Jha math, and thet anyway, math has no place in veal if, (In $02: ey characterized by instant learning, the processes of reflective di course and cctcal thinking necessitated by math verily cannot st Sy, sunt, vive.) Celeus students groun a the elegant notations, snd wheedl their insiractor for ugly shortcuts instead. The coup de grace? Re view schools and tutors flourish, driven by pupils and parents who expect a week of intensive rehash to make up for years of neglect. ‘Who among us hasn't been guilty of the phenomenon of eraraming, Which assumes that semester's worth of lensing ean morph into overnight wisdom? “Together with our need for importunate satiation is our tlue tance to persevere and our loathing of hard work. At an exclusive school, paren spoke up. “My son sil rads his math back at #00 ‘pim. Kawawa nama (poor boy), s0 [tell him he has studied enough for one night.” Does her son sleep right away? “No, he is on the computer" (online chatrooms and game sessions mos likely mas querading as assignments). When I asked 500 college sophorares how many of them studied math every day, one hand shot up. A ther 15 studied math once a week, while the other 486 students ‘admited that hey skimmed their books only one day befare the exam, One pel exis, “College is one big par! ‘An exorbitant inappropriate one, however. 5 ogo trgo Sum ergo Miguel was strugting with fractions. Repeated iustrations ofthe Pizza ni concep, graphs of equally-partitioned pizza ces, ven the Presentation ofan actual pizzs, with te lure of consumption contin. {ent upon comprehension, produced only sinidgens of rote replies, ‘mere rides hovering on the margins of perception. Only when frac tions were deemed equivalent to percentages did Miguel rex “Why didnt you say 80?” he chided ‘Yes, Miguel, factions are one way of looking at porcentages, ‘which in tunis an aernatve method of dealing with decimals. 2 + 2 i8 4. (have long considered Winston's denial ofthis fc, under tor. ‘re the climactic denouement of Brave New Worl. That whole se. ‘naco I equated to an apocalyptic pseudo. Galien-hercsy charade which ‘eventually ed Winston to doxbe the very solidity of numbers por. tent of the ultimate subjugation of his mind and soul) Yes, two added ‘0 isos four, but so is two muhiplied by sel. The proverbial hall- cmpy las isso hall ‘We are dep a getting stuck in boxes, often selimposed. We Tabet our boxes with male, female, gay, rich, poor, middle-class, ru ‘al, city bred, suburban, inteligent, average, underachieving. Chi- ‘ese are good in math because they are good in business —never sind that after more than decades of investigation, edcstors cannot posit consisenly significant differences in mathematical performance ‘amiong ethnicities, and never mind that many Chinese Filipinos nowa, slays eschew commerce in favor of sist, sthleic, oe scene pur sts. Hoys are supposed to major in engineering, medicine, ot la, Airis should go to nursing, teching, or fine arts; and those who de” viat from these stiture ae derided as deviants. Even if yas hard «asthey may, bioengincers the word over catnot isolate a math gene "ay mother was poor in math, ergo, there is no hope for me. What justification can be more potent than censuring my awn mother? Courage is the power to et go of the fail, we have boen told, Stil the adhesive urge to wallow waist-deep in the mu of the {amir is 50 much simpler, so much safe, so much more convenient, ‘The poor wil vays be with us, tones no ss then the Son of God 5 tn Nec td etna Cogito go Sum Himsel, so why should we even atempt to find win-win solution to the squatter problem? Our City of Man wil forever he inundated by semi-annual lods, cops canbe bribed, and by the way, is’ gridlock just a cosmopolitan malsise? So why should we even invest in sill ‘nother scheme for transport and pollution contra? Coss are high, ‘and besides, we are onl giving people what they covet long fo, ave film produces, sole the good times rl! And this isthe way we bane been taught, so this isthe way we will aways teach, mutter defeated ‘maestros whose archaic son plans have stagnated for half «century, i vas ssid that millennia ago, ou forefathers inthe northeen- ‘most esions abhorred building houses. Without T-squares, ensuring that beams would form right angles was at most a hit-and-mise pro: ‘ess. Consruction tears would leh bamboo poles at irepulr inte vals, and fights among exhausted workers would breakout when the comers callpeed Yet wba lore has i that aad showed then the way. Instead of | dwelling on the vagaries of sides, angles, and comers, he ulzed an ‘other tatio—diagonal. First, he would instruct the builders to align parallel side beams fora house. Then, before securing the end beams in place, he showed them how to measure the diagonals with cords $0 thet the digonals, and presumably also the sides, were equal. In this ‘ay, they ensued that beams of equal length remained perpendiclar to each other, forming square corners iis buta myth, you argue. Perhaps. But itis «well documented ‘at thet the Bagobos of Davao heed not ony earthy cus, but cee ‘il ones as wel This tm, isthe heavens that kad the way. Once a ear, in the fist week of December, the constellation Orion, which ‘he Bagobos call Baltic, rises at around 7 pm, heralding he plant ing season, when tools are gathered to clear the fields. Bat the stars are significant not only for ftming, but for hunt ing a8 well, Batatc has been used by the Bagabos to make tape, chrstened—what lse—dulat, which throw a spear when spring The Bagobos have copied the trap design from the bow glimmering from the lambert Hunter, and they have used these traps to snare boar, chicken, and birds Cogito Ergo Summ ‘Once while sauntering beside myriad matket sal, came face 'esface wth several bodly-strped bois of lth which stood out amit the haze. "99 pesos ony, for one bo” said the vendo. galing hod never been my fort. “Give me eight bolts, then. ‘How much would thy cost?" "792 poss.” she immediately uttered. Amazed, I lured, “That was quick! You compute a lot faster ‘han my college students!” “It's easy. Exerybody here knows how to di.” Visualizing the mental multiplication techniques taught at school, [ventured “T suppose you got 792 by muliplying § by 100 and then subtracting 8 She frowned, “No, that sounds difficu. I just muiply 8 by 9, them insert a 9 inthe mide,” A my puzzled star, she explained, “8 x9 is 72. Put 29 in the middle, 7-9-2, olay? It work ll he ime.” Why?” “Well,3 198 27,905 x99 s 297, 4x96 36,0499 8396." ‘She shrugged. “It's ike magi. | tl you, i really works!” ‘A further interview revealed that she had stopped schooling in third grade to support her orphaned siblings. In Miguel's class the day afer, I narrated my experience to skep- tical freshmen, who instanily wished out their ealulatars to ery ‘the computations, They phigred in varied factors, and grew increas. ingly excited. ll of us soon realized thatthe vendor's eoumting toch ‘ique held for bigger numbers compased of 8s, and magical as it ‘might seem, could be proven by number theory, This led the class to view 9 from diferent perspective. 9 is 5 ‘sare set one. 9s square, teal! exclaimed another, and rushed te the board, Cogito go Sum 9,4 square number, is also the sum af 3 and 6, both of which ‘are triangular numbers. Isa square then merely two triangles in ds ike? is the square which is the sum of two consecutive cubes: 9 18+ 2.9 is equal to 100 in base 3, 9 = 1 + 21 + 34 affirmed a “humanities major, professing to have “fallen in love with factrils ‘vay beck im high school, because they made fher} sil.” 9 is the ‘nuraber of cells inthe ssered-—magicl—square of Tang Dynasty cout fers, mused a history bull. 9 js also used when casting out nince in Aision, added « fellow aficionado, and wasn't this method an Ata ‘vention which was exentually brought to Europe? 9 is supposed to bea icky number, pondered another, didn’ there used fo bea show called Magis 9? No, 9is unlucky, rebated his seatmate swify— remember, Bata fll on Apel 9 ‘Through these molipl interpretations, the concept of & single ‘number eventually became a springboard to more sophisticated top- lcs, whose exotic names pid homage to equily esoteric ineages—9- flips, Krapekar numbers, regular polyhedra, the Feurbach circle, ‘Waring’s problem. “Who would have thought that e number eouk be salve?” Migusl mused aloud. However, even with these innovative leaming strategies, my st dents and Tare far from being pioneers. We do indeed stand on the shoulders of giants It snot because things are df that we donot dare; is becouse we donot dare that they are diffcu, warned Lucas Anngeus Seneca, tthe height of Roman grandeur. To play it sae is not ‘oly, echoes his modern-day counterpart fl dietor Robest Alena. ‘What can be more payil—and astounding —than Einstein's nsxence that time i but the handiaien of space, that science isnot aba sbsolte aftr al, and tat we shoul beware of inordinately trusting our senses? What can be more sublime than visualy-impaired Restle ° Cogito Brgo Sum Amibubuyog not ony being conferred a diploma in mathensatis at com: ‘mencement, but detain the valedictory as wel? They ae perhaps no more outrageous than the fac hat rosaries and fowets can stop— have stopped —cariers and tanks. Why zig when you can zag? ‘When we venture cut from 2 rut, magic happens. ‘sum Miguel hunched over logarithms for the thie time, his yes dark inthe solstice shadows. Thirty weks of three-hour tutorials hed ef us de. pleted, but now Miguel was only «year behind the res ofthe cas. Failure vas no Tanger fit accompli, since he had opted to take ano: credit remedial cours in eu of callegealgobra, This meant that Miguel ‘would have to enrol in algebra ance again next semester, and this tite he made certain to be prepared. GGlancing st his notations, I nudged, “thnk you need a hint.” His feverish computations stopped, “No! I know I cam get this, Please. Do you have g02" ‘According to the saga of Archimedes of Syracuse (he of bathtub-buoyancy-running down the streets naked-Eurcka fame), ‘was so intent upon his geometry that he remained obvious to the rival of the conquering army. When the invaders stormed up the shore they stopped at the sight ofthe aged mathematcisn, stooped. low, one hand steadying a staf, the otter inseibng figures on the ‘and, They shouted at him to stand and bow, and when —out of deep concentration or mute defiance or & mixture of the two—he did not ‘comply, one of them ran hm through wth a sword. Mortlly wounded, ‘Archimedes was sid to have whispered, “Butt ure was good math!” British professor Andrew Wiles knew what god math was. What cee but passion for good math would make him voluntarily sechide himset—for eight years—in his ate, etied by the most mesmeriz: ing mathematical conundrum of the past quarter-millentium? He told no one of his efforts, suflered setbacks which ented years of soltary correction, and had t invent new sven of solution. Yet in «he evlight years of the lst century, Wiles succeeded in proving that Fermat's final theorem was far from being the wild conjecture of Cogito trap Sum dying man. From his triumph sprouted fantastic novel insights linking heretofore unrelated feds of math, snd breathiaking ways of rviow= ing classic quessions—a revolution as epochal to math as cubism was to an, or nonviolence to polities. ‘Good ua, ike good music and good basketball emerges when ‘mind and heart ensble ws to conceive and crete—a ste that Einstein likens to that ofthe religious worshipper or the lover. When buoyed bby "the Bow” (or “the zone"), constant efor ages not so much from 8 deliberate program but straight from the heat, and becomes not drudgery, but a benediction. Happiness, concdes an anonsmous ‘herapis, consists in ving pasionacly, for iti only then that we ‘uncover Our tre seve. ‘We are the gencration who have more of everthing than cur parents have ever dreamed of. We have more stock options, we have more credit cards, we have more bargaining power. Our supermer ts are crammed with a fat-frve,ealrio-dtailed, miad-cow disease safe and what-have-you comnscopia. At home we have the corn pop per, combination wa somputer with modem with printer ‘ith sense-surround speakers, We insist on various rights —to be wall endowed, well-educated, well-traveled. Nevertheless, many of us fecl that surcy, there has to be more to fife than these. Making a mockery oftheir monk, service person nel Kbit aboot the inscecies ofthe next merida, unmindfl of cus tomers who in tuna, Sind thrls diminishing in stil snother prodigal spree. Spraviing in their desks and cubicles, employees and students

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