My Brain on Math

Today I made the realization that I speak equations better than I speak math in sentences. Derivatives/Rationalizing square roots, etc always makes more sense when I see it laid out nice and pretty in mathematical symbols. Am I alone in this? I don’t know.

As our Prof. told us, we’re supposed to write at least one in-depth blog. As I’ve been trying to understand what “in-depth” might consist of, I seem to have calculus and this blog on my mind all the time. I am actually really enjoying calculus, and thus far have not found myself frustrated or lacking the ability to understand what the teacher’s explained. I really like her method of teaching; she puts things in words and in symbols and writes it out while she talks about it. Seeing it employs multiple senses, which is something I find to be valuable since we all learn in different ways. After many years of school and learning, I find that I learn best in a kinesthetic/visual way. I have to see it, then I have to do it, and then it’s in there. Even better if I see and do it at the same time (following someone). So this method is especially valuable to me. I can also look back at my notes anytime I get stuck on homework and find the solution I’ve already done, remember how I did it, and duplicate it for the new problem.

As I’ve been thinking about Calculus a few connections have started clicking for me. Firstly, I used to think I was a very right-brained thinker. I was quite emotional as a teenager, and found myself drawn to psychology. However, as time has gone by, I have realized I seem to be more left-brained after all. Math comes easily to me. I prefer logical arguments over emotional ones. I enjoy a + b = c. Some of my favorite hobbies have been connected to having a mathematically adept brain, such as playing the piano and oil painting. I do both of these. I’m not saying either of them is specifically left or right brained, but oil painting does require the ability to map out a canvas in a geometrical sort of way and make it look like it does in whatever you’re copying onto the canvas. Piano is absolutely mathematical. Piano is a combination of counting and hitting notes that work together musically, to play it requires that you only have the ability to read the music and time your fingers accordingly, but to write it requires much higher levels of mathematical abilities and intuition. I’ve tried writing a few songs and have to say it’s quite difficult, but thrilling to write music. Both also require creativity and soul to make your work BETTER than other’s. So I would have to say they use both sides of the brain, but you need some mathematical ability to do both and be good at them.

One thing that I’ve found difficult is going from Philosophy to Calculus class (they’re back to back). It’s like I’m having to switch from one side of the brain to the other and I find myself feeling a bit relieved to get out of Philosophy and get to some logical thinking and real conclusions. See, philosophy is like a math problem that never solves. It’s like you’re constantly factoring and never reaching a resolution, because I might see that a + b = c, but my fellow classmate might see that a + b does not equal c but instead equals LMNOP. In other words, you can logic out any argument on any side of the argument because opinions are infinitely variable. At least, that’s how it looks to me. So I sit in Philosophy arguing out whether or not homosexuality is moral, and then I run to calculus and learn how to find the derivative of a square root and I feel relieved about it.

Last, I go to Chemistry. Chemistry is a whole lot of math. I thought it would only be a little math (i.e. conversions), but even today we did more math. Sure, its simpler math than calculus, but being in calculus feeds my ability to do the math easily. Even today, we were learning to balance reactions. Basically what goes into a reaction has to come back out of a reaction with the same number of atoms. This is identical to algebra. So for example you have $Na_2CO_3 + HCL \to NaCl + H_2O + CO_2$ . You have to balance this equation here because at the moment it looks like you’ve got 2 Na on the left but only 1 Na atom on the right. So you have to rectify this by making it 2NaCl on the right. Then you have to make sure you have the same number of all the other elements on both sides. It looks like we have an extra Cl on the right now thanks to our 2 in front of NaCl, so now we have to even that out and put 2 in front of HCl. Now we have an even number of H and O so we’re fully balanced. So in the end you get this equation:

$Na_2CO_3 + 2HCl \to 2NaCl + H_2O +CO_2$

It makes beautiful mathematical sense. And I realize I probably would have figured this out without calculus, but I just really like that these classes tie in so well together.

Anyway, this is my brain, and my thoughts on math. I also found myself thinking of calculus when I heard this song… I want to somehow change the lyrics to make a calculus song soon… guess we’ll see if I can get creative enough: