Here’s something I hear people say that makes me sad:

“Oh, don’t ask me to do math. I was an English major.”

Or other variations of the same. I wonder what the folks who say this are thinking. Is it that you have to have some special arcane Mathematics degree to be on speaking terms with numbers? Is it that people who love words or history or music can’t also love triangulation and differential equations?

Another thing that makes me sad? When people make the assumption that everyone finds math tedious or boring or hard. When they say things like: “Okay guys, I’m sorry, but it looks like we’re going to have to do some math now.” Like it’s a chore, something nasty that could never be cool or fun.

I do understand that a lot of folks out there find math weird and scary, or mind-numbingly dull. The thing is, there’s all sorts of mathematics. There’s number theory and geometry and algebra and statistics and topology and that’s not even getting into disciplines that use math like astronomy and chemistry. In my opinion, saying you hate math is like saying you hate reading. There are a lot of folks out there who think they hate reading because the only books they’ve been exposed to were the classics force-fed to them in school (that’s not to say classics are bad, but they aren’t necessarily the best thing to encourage a love of reading in all people).

Anyways, the point of this post is not to rag on people who don’t like math, especially if they’ve actually given it a fair shot. But I would like to encourage folks who think they “aren’t good at math” to give themselves (and math) another chance.

That’s part of the reason I’m always thrilled when I find a character in a book who is good at and/or enjoys math. Here are some books with main characters who like math and/or are good at it:

The Magic or Madness series by Justine Larbalestier

The Midnighters series by Scott Westerfeld

Into the Wild Nerd Yonder by Julie Halpern

What am I missing? I know there are others…

Also, what books are there that show a character who doesn’t think she or he can do math, who learns otherwise?

And what about you folks? Do you feel intimidated by math? Do you think you’re good at it? Do you think it’s cool? Boring? Terrifying? I created a poll over on my livejournal if you would rather click buttons…

I’ll end with a (to me) beautiful and awe-inspiring video that I discovered via APOD that captures the feeling mathematics gives me: That the universe is absolutely, mind-blowingly enormous. That there is SO MUCH out there and we can’t even see or understand. That we can see the patterns and we can try to understand the rules. And that success isn’t finding the answers; it’s seeking them. It’s asking the questions.