“DADDY, maths always gives me a headache. Why do people even learn math? It’s only about numbers and letters, it doesn’t have any practical use,” said John showing his dislike for math.
“No son, math is the most practical subject you will ever learn. I get my salary using math at the institute. Okay, let me show you some amazing usage of math,” replied his dad. “I’ll give you a real life example. Will there be a better example than my work? I have to do math all the time at my office. I use math to tell how much profit my company got this year or how much profit we will achieve in the next five years if we worked in a certain way. It is through math that I tell my company how much they need to spend and when they must control their expenses. You won’t believe what the world would be if there was no math. Should I tell you what the world would be if there was no math?” dad asked.
“Yeah sure, this could be interesting,” replied John.
“Okay, let’s see how things would be if there were no numbers in the world. How would I get my salary if they were no numbers? How would you know when to go to school if there were no numbers to tell time? How would doctors know how many times the heart beats in a minute? How would you know how much is a minute? Even other sciences like chemistry, biology, and physics require math,” explained his father.
“Okay, I understand how important the numbers are but what about letters, why there is ‘x’ in math? Why do I need to solve equations for x? Why do I need to remember so many formulas and why should I draw figures in geometry? And you should know how hard trigonometry is, my brain just stops working when I study it,” John sent a chain of questions towards his father.
“Okay, okay. Let me answer these questions one by one. First the question about using letters in math. I too couldn’t understand things when letters first started appearing in my math book. I talked about it to my teacher,” daddy explained.
“She told me about the use of it. She said that if I wanted to know the number of rabbits and dogs from a given number of legs, I could do this using equations and putting these unknowns values as any letter, for example ‘x’ or ‘y’.
“And formulas let one do things that are complicated in minutes. Some formulas let you calculate big numbers in your head. By using formulas you won’t have to do the entire problem but a part of it and the answer would come surprisingly quick.
“By using geometrical figures, engineers and architects build amazing buildings and beautiful designs. I know trigonometry is a bit more difficult than others but if you get used to it and understand it you won’t have any problem with it. Do you know that the first person who measured the circumference of Earth used trigonometry to find it? Galileo said that the language of universe is mathematics. The satellites we see above us are sent in space using a lot of calculations.
“Do you still think that math doesn’t have any practical use?” finished his dad.
“Now I understand that math is really important and I hope that by using math we can solve many mysteries of the universe,” said John with a smiling face. “I will now try to understand mathematical concepts so that it solving math problems becomes easy for me.”
