The Truth About Learning Math

Math is everywhere, all around us, and is an integral part of our daily lives from cooking and baking, shopping and planning, to fixing and building things. Unschooling math with real-life activities and math manipulative toys such as dominoes, dice, pattern shapes, Cuisenaire rods, graphs, trays, rulers, scales, abacuses, calculators, building and woodworking tools, and money games. Numeracy is developed in play through measuring, estimating and counting.

“Mathematics is the language of nature.” ~ Naval

“Math is discovered. To be invented requires an inventor, but math exists outside of humanity. But ultimately, the laws of the universe will be reduced down to a single equation, perhaps no more than one inch long. But leaves the final question, where did that one inch equation come from?” ~ Michio Kaku

“Regrettably, many of us have never been allowed to see what mathematics is. It has been obscured by pointless emphasis on routines rather than ideas. This failure to distinguish what is important has led many people to see mathematics as a collection of totally arbitrary rules which have to be learnt by rote, and performed with the exactness and precision of a religious rite. Ask a person if there is much to remembered in mathematics; if they speak of an overwhelming mass of material, their education in this area has been counter-productive, not merely neutral.” ~ Laurie Buxton, [Mathematics for Everyone, Introduction, p. ix.]

“Actually, most mathematics courses do not teach reasoning of any kind. Students are so baffled by the material that they are obliged to memorize in order to pass examinations.” ~ Morris Kline, [Mathematician]

"If math is such an important subject (and it is) why teach it in a way that is dependent on a child’s weakest mental ability: memory, rather than her strongest mental ability: imagination?” ~ Geoff White

“The mathematical rules of the universe are visible to men in the form of beauty.” ~ John Michel

“Mathematics is the structure created or discovered in the human attempt to solve problems.” ~ Randy Maddox

“Mathematicians don’t come up with the proofs first. First comes intuition. Rigor comes later. This essential role of intuition and imagination is left out of high school geometry courses, but it is essential to all creative mathematics.” ~ Steven Strogatz, Infinite Powers

“The profound study of nature is the most fertile source of mathematical discovery.” ~ Joseph Fourier

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” ~ Albert Einstein

“You need experience, adventure, and explorations more than you need algebra!” ~ John Taylor Gatto

“If a child is poor in math but good at tennis, most people would hire a math tutor. I would rather hire a tennis coach.” ~ Deepak Chopra

“Schools: Keep the young public ignorant of real mathematics, real economics, real law, and REAL HISTORY [WC emphasis].” ~ Milton William Cooper, [Behold a Pale Horse]

“Everything I am interested in, from cooking to electronics, is related to math. In real life you don’t have to worry about integrating math into other subjects. In real life, math already is integrated into everything else.” ~ Anna Hoffstrom

“At the age of five, when I entered the first grade, I could add, subtract, and multiply because Dad used to play numbers games with my sister and me in the car. He taught me the mastery of those skills within a matter of a few hours, not years and years as it took in school. We did all calculations in our heads with such gusto I seldom use a pencil today even for much more intricate computation.” ~ John Taylor Gatto, [Underground History]

https://twitter.com/mirceamacavei/status/924409499401768962

https://medium.com/q-e-d/learning-math-while-unschooling-6835a345f98a

https://www.livingmath.net/
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“One of the most widely held misconceptions about mathematics is that a math problem has a unique correct answer.” ~ Keith Devlin (Mathematician)

"I have done mathematical work for the U. S. Intelligence Community, the U.S. Army, private defense contractors, and a number of for-profit companies. In not one of those projects was I paid to find “the right answer.” No one thought for one moment that there could be such a thing.

So what is the origin of those false beliefs? It’s hardly a mystery. People form that misconception because of their experience at school. In school mathematics, students are only exposed to problems that (a) are well defined, (b) have a unique correct answer, and (c) whose answer can be obtained with a few lines of calculation.

But the only career in which a high school graduate can expect to continue to work on such problems is academic research in pure mathematics"

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Ted Talks even has a Math in Real Life Series:

https://momath.org/

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Fun Math Games & Tools

https://www.funbrain.com/

https://wehavekids.com/education/How-to-teach-Abacus-to-kids

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https://www.unschooling.com/t/new-math-vs-old-math/40