Schoolwide News

A couple years ago I attended the Joint Mathematics Meeting in Boston, USA. The JMM is one of the largest conferences for mathematicians in the world, so it's full of people like me who love to play around with problem solving. I was walking by a group of people I knew who were working on a problem in one of the many alcoves dotting the conference center, and I stopped to say hello.  "Wanna math with us?" one of them asked me. I sat down and we played around with different ideas for a couple hours.  

I loved how my friend used "math" as a verb. Expressions like "Let's math together," "Wanna math with me?" and "I feel inspired by all the mathing I did today" capture the creativity and vibrant nature of mathematical problem-solving.

Using math as a verb shows how alive the subject is, hinting at the creative and dynamic processes involved in problem-solving.  It transforms mathematics from a static set of rules into a living, breathing activity that encourages exploration and innovation.  When we math, we are not just answering questions; we are crafting solutions, discovering patterns, and constructing new ways of thinking. This approach showcases mathematics as an evolving art rather than a rigid structure.  Mathing invites curiosity and imagination, inspiring learners to ask "what if" and "why not" as they tackle challenges and uncover the mysteries within numbers and shapes.

There is a well-known legend about Carl Friedrich Gauss, a brilliant mathematician even in his childhood.  When he was in primary school sometime in the late 18th century in what is now northwestern Germany, his school master wanted a bit of quiet time for himself (or so the story goes), and asked his pupils to add the numbers 1 through 100.  Thinking this would take them some time to finish, he sat back to read.  But Gauss finished almost immediately by looking at the problem as a whole. He noticed that 1 + 100 = 2 + 99 = 3 + 98.  He concluded that the sum of the numbers one through one hundred consists of 50 pairs of numbers, each equaling 101.  So he found the answer through multiplication: 50x101=5050.  

This story shows the difference between calculation and math.  What the school master asked of his pupils is calculation, but what Gauss did is mathing.  Mathing is what I want school math to be based around.  

It's important for students at EAB to understand procedures and algorithms – Gauss couldn't have looked creatively at the summing problem unless he already understood the relationship between multiplication and addition.  But he didn't take the problem at face value and start mindlessly calculating.  Instead, he thought about the relationship between numbers, and he played around for a bit.  

It's easy for kids in school to look at a problem and know what procedure to use to solve it, apply that procedure, and get an answer.  But there is a lot more to math than just the right answer.  There are entire worlds of different ways to look at and approach problems.  Thinking this way about problems opens up a wide landscape of possibilities.  Exploring this landscape, and experiencing all of its beauty and intricacies, is my dream for our mathing kids.