Math Bitterness

/ bensbitterblog

So many expressions.

Something just doesn’t add up. It seems like we are all just so divided. Maybe it is just time to subtract something from all of our lives. Either that or we need to multiply our efforts. I just think there is no common denominator anymore. I just feel like if we just took a fraction off the cost of things, we would finally be able to afford something. Do you see how I just added (pun intended) all those maths terms into stupid expressions we use everyday? Math is everywhere. There is no way we can avoid it. And yet for some reason we spend an inordinate amount of time requiring it in all our schools. I don’t know about you, but after algebra, and a few math problems, like when trains are going to hit each other, there is no use for it.

I’m pretty sure I’ve never used a trigonometry problem in my life. Probably because I don’t even remeber trig. Here is the problem with math. You spend your whole growing up period being tortured by math teachers that have no idea how to make it fun, or explain it very well, and all of a sudden, they put totally foreign items on the tests for you to make up that you know.

Then, you finally complete your 16 years of math, and you think you are scott free. So you whistle dixie after you get out of college and throw your book up in the air, knowing your will never have to solve for X again.

And then you decide to have kids. Oh crap. In addition to them being the biggest messes in the world, and so freaking needy (I want food, I’m hungry. I want water, I’m thirsty…) but they come with homework. Not school work that teachers should be doing for them at school, but homework. They do everything they can to avoid it, but at some point you yell at them to do it, and then they need help with it. You know what they always need help with? Freaking math. Just when you thought you would never have to see it again, there it is…Tripping you up again. Making you remember poorly how to teach your kids to do it again. Even worse this time is that no teacher to help your remember how. You have to rely on your kid’s poor memory of how to do your kid’s homework.

Leave it to math to make even your life to seem boring.

The worst part is that math promises to balance the universe. Remember in the Matrix when Neo and Smith were just balances to an equation? Wow that sucked. A super cool action movie rendered boring by math. Somehow, those two were just a math equation. Same with us. As interesting as we think we are, is made irrelevant just by knowing that we are just a bunch of 1’s and 0’s. Think social media makes your life interesting, or more good looking? Nope, you are just another bunch of 1’s and 0’s. Nothing is interesting about you, thanks to math. You’re the worst math!

ARRRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHH

Bitter Mathter of Disgust Ben

27 thoughts on “Math Bitterness”

  1. I’m tempted to add you to my ‘blogs I follow’ list after you ‘liked’ my interview with author Rachael Wright. However, as an Engineer I used math every day for almost 50 years so my mind is divided about the proposition.

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  3. Yes! I recall a distinct sense of foreboding when my daughter switched over from happy addition to morose subtraction. All I have to offer tutorially is to either get over the shame of using fingers to figure things out, or hide all evidence of the remedial under your desk.

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  4. Your mathematical opening was terrific. I used the full word to avoid that uncomfortable math/maths divide. Divide? Now I’m doing it. Tomato … tomarto … potato … who the hell says potarto? Let’s call the whole thing off …

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  9. This is hilarious…probably because I hated algebra in high school. I still don’t know why X=Z or what it all means or why we even need it. I’ll be sharing your post with a blogging buddy of mine who likes math just so I can show him I am not alone in bitter mathing. Arggghhh.

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  10. Ugh. When my kids brought their high school math homework home, I wanted to scream! They always said, “That’s not how the teacher said to do it!” But if you get the right answer, what’s the difference?? Lol. Show your work, blah, blah, blah. They teach it differently now, all that common core crap, making it harder for kids…harder to even see the simple way of doing an equation. So glad the kids are adults now!

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