I first had the idea for this series of posts and podcast episodes while cleaning out my home office. Clearing out might be a better term for it because I’ve been transforming a bedroom that used to belong to our son into an inspiring work space for myself. While I generally find the acts of painting and wallpapering tedious, I have loved being in my new space since my very first work session of the year back in January.
Side note here…I’m sure at some point I’ll be talking about the sheer amount of math I had to use during this process. You designers and decorators out there…just know you are absolutely math people!
Back to the story. Sometime in February or March, I was going through some shelves and boxes when I came across a book from my days as a middle school teacher. I’ve never read it cover to cover, but I had it on my classroom bookshelf for students to read. This book is an alphabet book of interesting and somewhat obscure math terms. As I was flipping through it, the thought popped into my head that an alphabet season would be fun on the podcast…and since I also turn episodes into blog posts, here on the website!
So here we are with the post brought to you by the letter A.
There are many mathematical ideas beginning with A to choose from, but not all of them are things you frequently encounter or use. As I was narrowing down the list for today, I settled on some obvious ones. You can probably guess the first one….
Addition
If you were thinking of addition, you read my mind! Addition is one of the first number skills we learn as children. We sometimes joke about things being as simple as 1 + 1 = 2, but addition is a concept that applies to many situations in your daily life and they don’t all have to do with numbers.
As I know you are aware, addition is the basic operation of combining numbers or quantities. This is what we are talking about when we say 1 + 1 equals 2 or 2 and 2 is 4. Interestingly here, addition also includes adding negative numbers, an idea we typically call subtraction.
Can you think of some situations where you use addition in your day to day life? Here are a few:
- When you balance your checkbook, you add deposits to your balance.
- If you are buying several items at the store, you might add the prices of those things together as you shop to get an idea of the total cost.
- When you plan your day, you use addition to get an idea of how much time to block in your calendar for all those errands you need to run.
- Keeping track of things that accumulate, like points when playing a game or the number of guests as they arrive to a party, is also using the concept of addition.
The idea of addition might show up in other ways, too. When you combine ingredients to make a meal, you are adding them together. When you decide you need more space, you might build an addition onto your home…adding another room to the floor plan. You add meetings to your calendar, items to your shopping cart (or buggy as we say here in the south), and your two cents to a discussion.
How often do you add that new song or podcast or show to your playlist?
Remember what I say about being a math person? If you interact with math, or a mathematical idea in any way, you are a math person. You use addition all the time, so I’ll let you do the math on that.
Area
A is for addition, and it’s also for area. When you think of the word “area” while reading a post about math, do you roll your eyes and groan, recalling the time you spent trying to remember the “right formula.”
Friend, area (and math in general) is so much more than a formula to remember.
Area, as a concept, means space. Specifically, space within a certain boundary. As in, how much space does this thing, like a garden or a bedroom or a table take up. If you’ve ever looked at a couch in the furniture store and wondered if it will fit in your living room, you’ve used the concept of area.
Are you thinking of other ways the idea of area might be part of your life? When looking for an apartment or a new home, was square footage a factor in your decision? Square footage refers to the available living space, the area, of a home. When you are looking for that home, are you also thinking about location? Meaning, do you want to be in a specific school district or within walking distance of downtown? That is also area.
Redecorating or renovating that home involves area, too. When you are painting or wall papering (like I’ve been doing in my home office) or buying new floors, you need to know the area you will cover. Same when you are buying grass seed or sod for your lawn or building a raised bed for your garden.
If you’ve had any of these experiences, that makes you a math person.
Angles
A is also for angle. In math, an angle is the span of space between two sides of a shape that come together at a single point. Think of a triangle, for example. Two sides begin at a single point and extend out in slightly different directions, forming an angle between them.
As I was thinking about where angles might show up in your life on a regular basis, I came back to the home example. Most rooms in homes are rectangular and have right angles in the corners. Same with windows and doors. When you are placing furniture in a room, do you like things to be at right angles in the area or do you prefer to place them at different angles…or catty corner? If you are making these decisions, you are a math person.
Anyone out there still using analog clocks? Telling time involves knowing how to read the angle between the hour and minute hands on the clock face.
Angles show up in other ways you might not even recognize. When you are parking your car, have you ever had to back up and readjust because you entered the parking space at an angle that wasn’t quite right? This goes for parallel parking, too.
The expression, “let’s look at this from a different angle,” is one you’ve probably heard or even said yourself. Here, we are thinking of the concept of an angle without tying it to a specific shape or measure. Same idea if you’ve used the phrase “he did a 180” when talking about someone’s behavior or attitude.
Which makes me think of another use of angles. If you enjoy performing tricks on bikes or skateboards and you practice or know what a 180 or 360 or 540 or 720 is, those numbers refer to angles…and revolutions, which might or might not be in a later post.
Average
The last math concept I’d like to talk about today is average. This is what we call a measure of central tendency in statistics and is often used to describe a data set. I might be willing to bet that everyone interacts with this concept. Do you have an idea of where?
It’s all over sports stats like batting average and points per game. It’s in finance, with interest rates and average daily balance. In school, I bet you were concerned with your GPA…your grade point average.
We often think of average as being somewhat in the middle…which is loosely what it means to be a measure of central tendency…and I would bet you’ve described something or someone as average, meaning it wasn’t the best or the worst, but somewhere in the middle.
If you are paying attention to averages in any way shape or form, you know what I’m going to say…you are a math person.
I’m so glad you joined the conversation today! I’m on a mission to change the way the world sees math, and that begins with you. If you found value in this post, if something you read made you pause, or if you suddenly realized the hidden math in something you do every day, now is your chance to join the movement!
How can you help? When you subscribe to, rate, and share I See Math People or A Pocketful of Pi more people will see it and the more people who get the message, the more mindsets can begin to shift. That, my friend, is how movements gain momentum.
I am honored you joined me today for this discussion of a few mathematical concepts beginning with the letter A. I truly hope you heard something here you can relate to and that it made you stop and think about your relationship with math. Noticing where you interact with math is the first step to shifting your mindset and seeing yourself as the math person you really are.
I’m Jennifer Mason Hardin and everywhere I look I see math people just like you.
