Are You Confused by Mathematics?

or maybe a little afraid of it?

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Comments are open for all on this one, not just paid subs.

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Help Me Plan A Book I Want to Write

A year ago, I started writing my series on mathematics, “How to Not Suck at Math.” The first five posts are not behind the paywall. The fifth post is a stand-alone essay taking on the “I’m just not a math person” idea. It has links to the first four, which cover addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, and the importance of prime numbers—and why thinking about numbers in terms of their prime decompositions is the key to mathematical fluency—and can be found here. Parts 6 through 11, behind the paywall, gradually get more complex, with the most recent one covering the Pythagorean Theorem, the one thing everybody remembers from high school (a squared plus b squared equals c squared).

I’ve gotten more email about the math series than almost anything else I’ve written, and the emails have been almost universal in their sentiment.

A few people have written to tell me they don’t enjoy the math posts, as they’re so right-brained and creative they can’t possibly twist their brain into the left-brained pretzel it would take to understand math. I deeply appreciate this post by

Jason Jonker

, in which he tackles that narrative, head-on, and owns it for the excuse it is. I’ve long suspected that this is a story that smart kids make up to tell themselves because math is the first thing that makes them have to try. Their first experience of needing persistence, something that they didn’t have because they had never needed it before, throws them for a loop.

But those emails are few. Most people tell me their stories of math-related trauma. They tell me about the parent, teacher, or other adult who thought math was easy, or should be, and made them feel small, stupid, and worthless for their own difficulty. Often this difficulty wasn’t even real difficulty, it was just something that they didn’t instantly understand the very first time. Then they tell me how this experience pivoted their life away from a track that might have included mathematics as part of a career choice — how they ended up majoring in English or history or sociology, but they always regretted, and resented, the turn of events that pulled them away from math.

Then they tell me that reading my math posts makes math seem clear, sensible, and achievable. Even if they have to read them slowly and more than once, they finally end up believing that they get it, and feeling stronger for it. They thank me for writing them.

All of this makes me think I should write, and self-publish, a book about how to think about math.

But I have questions.

When Did You Get Confused by, or Scared of, Mathematics?

What were you studying when math seemed to be beyond you? Was it algebra, when the introduction of letters started confusing you? Was it trigonometry, when the relationship of triangles to the world around you didn’t make sense and nobody could help you make it make sense? Did you get weeded-out in Calculus, in a major that required it as a university weed-out course?

Was it even earlier than that?

Is it that you think math is for “smart people” and you’re not all that “smart”?

Is it that you don’t think math has much to do with real life?

Is it something else, I’ve not mentioned here?

I want to write this book for everyone who thinks that mathematics is beyond them, but I’m especially concerned about the many parents who want to homeschool but feel that they couldn’t do justice to their kids with regard to math.

This presents me with a quandary about the audience to aim it at and how to position it — as for homeschoolers but good for others, or as for everyone but especially good for homeschoolers?

Comments are open for everyone until I close them (which I will do when I get too busy to keep up, when they get contentious, or when I feel I have enough input, whichever happens first). I get far too much email to respond to much of it, but I (eventually) read it all — my email is hollymathnerd at gmail dot com.

Update on My Shift Away From Politics

A little over a month ago, I decided to stop writing culture war takes. Watching people right of center decide that cancel culture was an appropriate tool for them to take up against people who say words they don’t like, even people with no power or influence, was more than my anxiety disorder (PTSD, in all its varieties, is by definition an anxiety disorder) allows me to handle. I’ve never been conservative enough for the right or lefty enough for the left, which is why I used to regularly get emails both castigating me for my snarling, vicious, misandrist hatred of men and my disgusting, simpering, internalized misogyny, “pick me” handmaiden status.

It’s the lot of a centrist. We serve as a Rorschach for both sides.

But my responsibility to prioritize my own mental health didn’t leave me much of a choice. Once the right decided that the proper punishment for liberal (not leftist) women was to be deliberately traumatized until they comply (this was said explicitly, with thinly-veiled sadist fantasies going around Notes) I knew I had to stop writing about politics.

Since then, I’ve lost a considerable number of paid subscriptions. I am happy about this, since if people want to read culture war takes they should give their money to people who write them.

But I’m also a little disappointed, because my culture war takes, while fun, were easy. Embarrassingly easy. In retrospect, they were humiliatingly easy.

The Surprise of a Greater Challenge

I had no idea how difficult writing was until I pivoted and started writing about other things. Culture war takes are not hard to write. I can write a culture war take on the desktop main screen while chatting with Josh or one of my other friends on the right monitor and streaming Star Trek on the left monitor.

That’s not bragging. It’s an indictment. It’s a thoroughly embarrassing admission, not least because I didn’t understand it when I really, really should have.

Our politics are so shallow and tribal, so easily pigeonholed, that the vast majority of the time you can guess almost all of someone’s political positions by knowing just one or two of them. People enjoy having clever, snarky framing given to them for the positions they already hold and the things they already believe to be true.

Writing about other things has been much more challenging, and I’ve enjoyed the challenge. I’ve got multiple posts in my drafts including book reviews, thoughts on the spiritual and psychological significance of the movement towards remote work, an exploration of atheism in general and why I’m an atheist, an exploration of male/female dynamics in the workplace, my attempt to define spirituality, a collection of my own most beloved American icons, and a paean to autumn that I will publish after editing it and adding foliage pictures during October. The latter will likely end my Monday Morning Love series (which was always destined to be short, as there’s a limited supply of things I love enough to write an essay about them, ha ha).

I’m also making slow-but-steady progress on a novel about boy/girl twins, of whom one grows up to become a criminal defense attorney and one grows up to kill an abortion doctor (and thus need a criminal defense attorney).

But most of those are things I’d write anyway, because I write for me. I simply enjoy the astonishing privilege of having people who enjoy reading what I write for me.

The Math Book Growing Inside Me

The math book is not something I’d write anyway. But it feels like something I need to do. I find myself thinking about it when I need to be thinking about something else. I find myself doing number theory problems and simultaneously thinking about how I’d explain the process to someone else.

I find myself doing ratios in my head for a drawing, and imagining explaining to a little kid asking the “When will I use this?!?!” question — or to an adult who never outgrew that refrain — that artists use mathematics. (So does everyone else.)

Your comments will be helpful — thank you in advance!

And thank you to everyone who stuck around despite my dropping culture war takes as a topic. It means a lot to me.

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