Mathematics as a Diversion

In the old Sherlock Holmes movie Terror By Night, starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, Holmes and Watson are deep in the midst of solving a mystery aboard a train. Searching compartments for suspicious characters, the two run across a rather stuffy, rude, middle-aged traveler who they discover is engaged in the totally-fun hobby of mathematics! That scene always struck me, because the way math was taught when I went to school made learning it nothing less than traumatic (in spite of the fact that I had exceptional SAT math scores of 780 and 800 in high school). I've written earlier, in the deep recesses of this blog, about the horrible way that I believe math is taught in schools (almost as a test of the student's character). Instead of encouraging high anxiety among math students, teachers of this very interesting field could very easily transform the learning experience into one of fun entertainment, because just about anything concerning mathematics can be converted into a game! I discovered, for example, that during classes like calculus and differential equations, it became quite fun to solve integrals and "diffy q's". As a matter of fact, there is a good series of "math puzzle" books, the authors of which would probably by horrified by hearing anyone referring to their works as such: the Schaums series. Schaums books cover an enormous range of highly technical topics while being structured in a very student-friendly manner. Anyone wanting to immerse themselves in an area of math may be pleasantly surprised at the way each chapter presents new concepts, has problems fully worked out, and contains a whole slew of supplementary problems to boot. It's just a slight mental adjustment for one to look at each of these "problems" as a game to play!

Can you guess where I'm going with this? Yes, I'm adding another "eights" to my self-improvement series (where I update my personal progress in an area every eight weeks on this blog): Schaums Math on the Eights. I'm sure that there are many other very fine publications that teach math well, but for my purposes, I want to have some fun in the process! I also have another motive for doing this: my daughter is going to be entering secondary school and I want to be fully equipped to help her master the new concepts she will be facing with as little trauma as possible. Since I already possess several Schaums math books, I can start up right off the bat!