we deal with objects that don't feel anything
the rules are there because it's fun
and sometimes restrictions are good
because if it's too general
then you don't really get to discover
anything interesting at all
but it's the beauty of math
i mean, you're dealing with objects
you're dealing with concepts
that are logical
not logical
that are not bounded by reality
they don't feel
numbers don't feel anything
you can add them up
you can subtract them
divide them
isolate them
they don't feel anything
you can manipulate anything you want
anyway you want
you can do that
within the rules of mathematics
you can do that
you can add
and you can do repeated addition
which is multiplication
you can subtract
you can multiply
you can repeatedly multiply the same number to itself
which is exponentiation
you can divide
what else?
you can do the opposite operation
to get the original one
in a basic level
you can always reverse things
you know, when you do something bad
you know, let's go back
you can always redo
you can always reset
and in life you can't always do the same
numbers don't feel anything
and that makes it easier
we can't do the same manipulations that you do
it's not the same
it's not as easy
when dealing with the real world
because you're dealing with people
you can't just manipulate them
when you do something--a mistake
you can't really reverse
you can't really go backwards
you can't reset
you can't really take back
whatever you do
or take back
whatever you did not do
you can't go back from the start
you just learn from it
you just learn from these mistakes
you hope
that you don't do them again
but the truth is...
you might do them again
hoping for another outcome
this is a transcript of a recording i did last may 2018. the recording is way more emotional than the text so i'm not gonna share it. i was emotional when i recorded it so... yeah
i understand that not all all mathematical objects are reversible. for example, a matrix M may not have an inverse so getting back the factors that will result to M may not always be possible
but generally, and in the high school levels, most mathematical objects are reversible. well, except when we deal with zero-- it does not have a multiplicative inverse.
i recorded this when i was almost a year into my teaching profession. i don't really remember what triggered this comparison but i can guess.
i feel like this is in response to my difficulties in navigating the real world. suddenly, i realize, that people are not as compliant as numbers sometimes. it was a shock.
i feel like i can deal with numbers more than people. but that's what makes humans fascinating. they're complex. we can't really pin them down into categories like we do numbers.
we deal with the gray--not black and white
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