Quote of the Week...from James R. Newman

The most painful thing about mathematics is how far away you are from being able to use it after you have learned it.                                              James R. Newman

I found the above quote and decided to use it, although I hadn't heard of James R. Newman before.  He was a mathematician as well as a popularizer of the field, writing a number of books.  What attracted it to me was how strongly I have agreed with its message over the course of my lifetime...well, at least that lifetime after my mathematics education in school passed from arithmetic to geometry, algebra, theorems, and proofs.  Seeing how my life veered in a direction from a career that directly used mathematics...careers like engineering, physics...and of course, teaching mathematics...I've found no occasion whatsoever to employ anything I've learned beyond simple arithmetic...not even basic algebra...and at college I've taken courses in calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, and mathematical statistics.  This has to be the one subject in school for which the grand majority of graduates will find little or no application in life...beyond that basic grammar school arithmetic competency.  Yet I find the subject intriguing and from time to time delve into it...

In a way, mathematics is an area that anyone can do...even one untrained in it.  If you're not trying to get something extraneous from it, such as a passing grade in school or math-related job, then you don't have to worry about impressing others or being as fast or accurate as them.  Ultimately, removing the competition and time pressure angles from studying mathematics can make this field more attractive for life-long learning.  Of course, it also helps to have a good amount of free time at your disposal!  Still, YouTube is loaded with free math courses on just about any level, and the Internet provides many resources that in former eras would have been more difficult and expensive to amass...

I've decided to go "back in time" and approach mathematics as something to embrace instead of fearing...in the process hoping that I will better grasp some of the principles contained within it than when I was "under the gun" in school...