We All Hate Math

Math. One of the scariest words for many kids and adults worldwide. Over the years I have had the unfortunate pleasure of tutoring various friends and kids and other unwilling participants with various math subjects. Not that I’ve ever liked math myself; I’ve always found it a boring necessity. I was just one of the weird kids who “got it”. The main problem with math is it’s pretty hard to BS it. In most other subjects, there’s always a degree of wiggle room where you can just make up something, and as long as it makes sense and you can talk other people into it, you’re gold. Even in science, there’re theories and hypotheses that sprout from someone coming up with what they think is true. This doesn’t seem to work with math. And for the creative at heart, figuring out problem after problem just isn’t worth the effort. Thus math is an evil beast contrived by the devil himself.

For those you who hate folks like me who do “get it”, rest assured that there is at least some justice in life. Because many of my friends and family have pegged me as the math guy, I’ve had the painful job of teaching the subject in various forms to these math haters. And believe me, teaching math to people who are repelled by it is about as easy as taking the square root of a negative number – yes, a corny math reference that roughly means that it’s impossible without using a little “i”magination (ba-dum, dum). As I struggle through these teachings, I continually ask myself, “So, how many different ways can I explain this until this guy/girl gets it?” So in short, I hate math as much as anyone else. Not only because it’s boring but because I’m often stuck dealing with it more.

Nevertheless, it’s pretty hard to live without math. Try to and you’ll end up gullible and poor, always paying more for things, even taxes – like people who play the lottery. It’s one of those subjects that won’t go away no matter what you do, particularly if you have kids and have to relive the horrors known as math. But at least you can take small comfort in knowing that you’re not alone. Trust me, it’s mathematically impossible.