Why Should We Study Mathematics

Why Should We Study Mathematics

Although some math courses may require you to work through one calculation problem after another, making it feel as if those mechanical procedures will not stop until they have drained every last bit of your patience and energy, that is not the whole story. Having to solve all those definite integral problems when learning mathematics is like a football player having to do weight training and flexibility exercises. If you want to play football well—I mean seriously, at a competitive level—you must go through a great deal of tedious, repetitive, and seemingly pointless training. Do professional football players actually use those training routines during a match? Of course not. We never see players lifting barbells or weaving through traffic cones on the field during a game. But we certainly do see them relying on strength, speed, awareness, and flexibility, and to improve those abilities they must endure years of boring and demanding practice. In that sense, such training is an integral part of the sport.

If you choose football as a career or hope to join your school team, then you really have no choice but to spend your weekends on the training ground doing large amounts of repetitive and tedious practice. Of course, if you feel you cannot accept that kind of training, you can still play football—just with friends, purely for fun. You may still break through defenders with a brilliant pass, or score with a long-range shot like a professional player, and feel thrilled by it. Beyond that, playing football can strengthen your body and lift your spirits. It is certainly far better than sitting at home watching professional matches on television.

Mathematics is very similar to football. Your career goals may have nothing to do with mathematics, and that is perfectly normal; that is the case for most people. But you can still make use of mathematical knowledge, and it is even possible that what you are doing right now already involves mathematics without your realizing it. Mathematics is closely intertwined with logical reasoning, and it can strengthen our ability to deal with the problems and tasks before us. Once we grasp mathematics, it is as if we have put on a pair of X-ray glasses: we can see through the tangled surface of the real world and perceive its underlying structure. Over the centuries, through painstaking study and repeated debate, mathematical formulas and theorems have been refined and tested again and again, and they can help us avoid mistakes when handling real-world matters. With mathematics as a tool, we can understand our world more deeply and more accurately, and we can achieve results of greater significance. All we need is a good teacher or a good book to guide us through some of the rules and basic methods of mathematics.