So today is National Square Root Day, according to my newspaper. I can’t think of anything I’d rather less acknowledge, much less celebrate, than a Square Root. In fact, just typing the words makes the hair on my head stand up!
Who thought this one up? And who cares?
Jerry and I had a talk after reading about this in the newspaper. He was trained as an engineer so he has an up close and personal association with math. I go to him directly for all of my math needs; however as you may correctly surmise, I don’t have many. I asked him which were the nine days in this century when we would celebrate it. He promptly said 1/1/01, 2/2/04, 3/3/09, 4/4/16, 5/5/25, 6/6/36, 7/7/49, 8/8/64, and 9/9/81. I asked him if this had anything to do with prime numbers and he said no. (To make sure he knew what he was talking about I checked on Wikipedia and he was correct).
I hate math. I never understood it, never was any good at it, and almost lost my happy home over it when I took Algebra in 9th grade. If it hadn’t been that my Uncle Bill lived with us and was a smart man, I would never have made it out of that class. I was totally flummoxed by algebra. I saw the numbers 1 and 2 as real things. What I couldn’t grasp was that “a” and “b” was supposed to be something mathematically real too.
Beginning in September of that year, my Uncle Bill and I sat on the couch after dinner every night and worked on algebra. What I really don’t understand is how he put up with me. Although by nature I am pleasant and easy-going, trying to learn algebra brought out all the latent aggression, hostility and pig-headedness that was lurking in my soul. I can remember acting like a brat, but my Uncle Bill just let me get it out of my system and then we started again. I think over that year my grade in Algebra slowly rose from a C- (which was the worst grade I ever got on a report card) to maybe a B-. I find it interesting that every report card I ever got in 12 years of schooling is in a “baby” book that my mother kept up…every report card except for Algebra. So I just have to guess at those grades. I may have done better than that because I did make the Honor Society that year, but if I did it was only because of the patient instruction of my Uncle Bill that got me to that point. If I was as bad as I remember being, if I had been my mother I probably would have grounded me for the whole year.
Because it was required for college entrance, I signed up for Geometry the next year – and breezed through that with straight A’s. I had theorems and angles that I could see and feel. My brain computed those; it had slipped a cog over “a”s and “b”s.
My distaste for math at a practical level has played out in two ways in my life. One is that after I was divorced and had to be accountable for the balance in my checkbook each month, I quickly developed a “sense” of how much money I had. I never balanced my checkbook because that would require doing some math. I just wrote checks until I “felt” I had written enough for the money I had in the bank. I would note on my bills dates and amount paid and then chuff them into a manila envelope, label the front “September 1972” and put it in a drawer. After Jerry and I met and began talk about a future together, he asked me how I handled my finances. I showed him, and it is to his credit that he didn’t faint. He did say, however, that if we married we would have to let him handle the finances. That was fine with me and has it has worked now for 33 years.
The other way it has played out has been that I never, ever would accept a job as treasurer of any organization I belonged to or to apply for any job that entailed any kind of math beyond a very elementary level. I have a super-conscientious nature and if I’d had to balance an organization’s checkbook and found myself a penny off, I would have had apoplexy thinking that people might think I deliberately stole that penny. But also there is an irony in that the first “real” job I had in my whole adult life was as the Secretary to the Vice President of Finance in the company where I met Jerry. In working for the VP, I had to do all kinds of spread sheets and I had to figure percentages of profit and loss for his huge stock portfolio (all this long before calculators and computers) and have that on his desk by 9 a.m. every day. I know I am not a total idiot when it comes to math, but I have to confess that I absolutely HATE it.
So I am not the best person to help the mathies of this world celebrate National Square Root Day. If I thought they were doing this as a tongue-in-cheek kind of thing I wouldn’t give it a second thought, but to think that there are people in this world who delight in thinking and playing with Square Roots is just too much for my brain to take in.
However, in a spirit of “everyone to his own poison” I will grit my teeth and say to them via this blog, “Happy Square Root Day, you nerds!”
Who thought this one up? And who cares?
Jerry and I had a talk after reading about this in the newspaper. He was trained as an engineer so he has an up close and personal association with math. I go to him directly for all of my math needs; however as you may correctly surmise, I don’t have many. I asked him which were the nine days in this century when we would celebrate it. He promptly said 1/1/01, 2/2/04, 3/3/09, 4/4/16, 5/5/25, 6/6/36, 7/7/49, 8/8/64, and 9/9/81. I asked him if this had anything to do with prime numbers and he said no. (To make sure he knew what he was talking about I checked on Wikipedia and he was correct).
I hate math. I never understood it, never was any good at it, and almost lost my happy home over it when I took Algebra in 9th grade. If it hadn’t been that my Uncle Bill lived with us and was a smart man, I would never have made it out of that class. I was totally flummoxed by algebra. I saw the numbers 1 and 2 as real things. What I couldn’t grasp was that “a” and “b” was supposed to be something mathematically real too.
Beginning in September of that year, my Uncle Bill and I sat on the couch after dinner every night and worked on algebra. What I really don’t understand is how he put up with me. Although by nature I am pleasant and easy-going, trying to learn algebra brought out all the latent aggression, hostility and pig-headedness that was lurking in my soul. I can remember acting like a brat, but my Uncle Bill just let me get it out of my system and then we started again. I think over that year my grade in Algebra slowly rose from a C- (which was the worst grade I ever got on a report card) to maybe a B-. I find it interesting that every report card I ever got in 12 years of schooling is in a “baby” book that my mother kept up…every report card except for Algebra. So I just have to guess at those grades. I may have done better than that because I did make the Honor Society that year, but if I did it was only because of the patient instruction of my Uncle Bill that got me to that point. If I was as bad as I remember being, if I had been my mother I probably would have grounded me for the whole year.
Because it was required for college entrance, I signed up for Geometry the next year – and breezed through that with straight A’s. I had theorems and angles that I could see and feel. My brain computed those; it had slipped a cog over “a”s and “b”s.
My distaste for math at a practical level has played out in two ways in my life. One is that after I was divorced and had to be accountable for the balance in my checkbook each month, I quickly developed a “sense” of how much money I had. I never balanced my checkbook because that would require doing some math. I just wrote checks until I “felt” I had written enough for the money I had in the bank. I would note on my bills dates and amount paid and then chuff them into a manila envelope, label the front “September 1972” and put it in a drawer. After Jerry and I met and began talk about a future together, he asked me how I handled my finances. I showed him, and it is to his credit that he didn’t faint. He did say, however, that if we married we would have to let him handle the finances. That was fine with me and has it has worked now for 33 years.
The other way it has played out has been that I never, ever would accept a job as treasurer of any organization I belonged to or to apply for any job that entailed any kind of math beyond a very elementary level. I have a super-conscientious nature and if I’d had to balance an organization’s checkbook and found myself a penny off, I would have had apoplexy thinking that people might think I deliberately stole that penny. But also there is an irony in that the first “real” job I had in my whole adult life was as the Secretary to the Vice President of Finance in the company where I met Jerry. In working for the VP, I had to do all kinds of spread sheets and I had to figure percentages of profit and loss for his huge stock portfolio (all this long before calculators and computers) and have that on his desk by 9 a.m. every day. I know I am not a total idiot when it comes to math, but I have to confess that I absolutely HATE it.
So I am not the best person to help the mathies of this world celebrate National Square Root Day. If I thought they were doing this as a tongue-in-cheek kind of thing I wouldn’t give it a second thought, but to think that there are people in this world who delight in thinking and playing with Square Roots is just too much for my brain to take in.
However, in a spirit of “everyone to his own poison” I will grit my teeth and say to them via this blog, “Happy Square Root Day, you nerds!”
2 comments:
I would never have guessed.
That is tooooo funny! I was great at Algerbra, but I really stunk at Geometry. Algerbra was logical, but Geometry had a lot of memorization that went a long with it. That is why I wasn't very good at History either...too much memorizing. My brain only holds facts that interest me and I never had a teacher that made history fun, so I just found it boring. I loved creative writing though...using my imagination was always fun!!!
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