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Thursday, October 4th, 2012 09:50 pm
logic has nothing to do with math angst
One of the sadder realizations I came to recently is how much one's app choices (when not bought in hysterical sale mode) tell you about them as a person. What you put on your homescreen, for example: my laptop's desktop has two files on it, one a cheat sheet for my server, while my phone has seven screens that I'm slowly but surely organizing in a kind of desperate hope that I can follow two conflicting impulses and fail. I want each screen to be thematic, but I also wnat the stuff I use most to be within a click, which is painful as my three most used items other than email and messaging and mp3 player are a Office Suite 8, Math Pro, and Sudoku, and Office 8 needs to be on the Office Things page and math pro and sudoku need to be with the games, because as a human being, I find doing simple arithmetic and gazing in satisfaction at my high scores more rewarding than pretty much anything short of breathing.
This is a lesson in what putting vulnerable children into math competitions from an early age does to them.
It also showed me my arithmetic is not nearly as fast as my simple multiplication, since from an early age we were not taught arithmetic tables, due to reasons with it being plus and minus I suppose, but we were multiplication tables, and that sticks. Arithmetic, even simple arithmetic, i stop to count. With multiplication, I honestly don't even remember tapping in the number sometimes, it's that automatic. I remember arithmetic drills from an early age mocking us about using our fingers--dear teachers K-6, screw you, it works--but multiplication had a soundtrack, sometimes with rhythmic dancing, and for the life of me, I resent that this was not a feature during those miserable third grade tests where Travis, wherever he may be, beat me by a second every goddamn time (and used his fingers, I saw him). And at the end of the year he got to drink a Coke in class (I remember this like it was yesterday) while I sat there in seething resentment and plotted a course of life that would one day lead me to Calculus AP and differentiation.
How to get girls into math; see above. It works.
I wonder if I just wrote all that to explain that in case anyone should ever see my phone and wonder why math pro is on screen two (to the right) in a prime position outranking Pandora, they will know the reason why is logical.
This is a lesson in what putting vulnerable children into math competitions from an early age does to them.
It also showed me my arithmetic is not nearly as fast as my simple multiplication, since from an early age we were not taught arithmetic tables, due to reasons with it being plus and minus I suppose, but we were multiplication tables, and that sticks. Arithmetic, even simple arithmetic, i stop to count. With multiplication, I honestly don't even remember tapping in the number sometimes, it's that automatic. I remember arithmetic drills from an early age mocking us about using our fingers--dear teachers K-6, screw you, it works--but multiplication had a soundtrack, sometimes with rhythmic dancing, and for the life of me, I resent that this was not a feature during those miserable third grade tests where Travis, wherever he may be, beat me by a second every goddamn time (and used his fingers, I saw him). And at the end of the year he got to drink a Coke in class (I remember this like it was yesterday) while I sat there in seething resentment and plotted a course of life that would one day lead me to Calculus AP and differentiation.
How to get girls into math; see above. It works.
I wonder if I just wrote all that to explain that in case anyone should ever see my phone and wonder why math pro is on screen two (to the right) in a prime position outranking Pandora, they will know the reason why is logical.
