Complicated Math
I like this toon a lot. It’s me… all thru elementary school. Math confounded me. It can make me a little nuts at times… but in today’s world, balancing checkbooks is kinda passé… you just go online… the bank does it for you. (If you trust them).
All through school math was one of those subjects that caused me a great deal of harm, embarassment, frustration, and detention. It still does.
The reason you balance your checkbook, is to find if they made any mistakes, or that someone has “hacked” your bank account.
Joe: But often, just keeping closeish tabs on your balance will tell… that’s how I found fradulent charges in my account; I haven’t balanced a checkbook in a long long time.
I wrote a spreadsheet that I use as a check register. All I have to do is remember to enter purchases and deposits when I make them. As each item clears, I mark it in the spreadsheet. Excel does the math and balances the checkbook “on the fly.”
Having taught math to adults for a few years, I promise that you all can do it. Usually the issue is with one part of math that you just don’t get (fractions are a common one), and since math tends to build on itself (you have to be able to multiply fractions to add them easily, for instance), one weak point tends to make it harder and harder to continue. Sometimes all people need is a different explanation, way of looking at it, or even writing it down. The problem is in school that teachers often don’t know more than one way to look at things themselves, don’t have the time to spend that one-on-one to get a student past a problem, or simply don’t realize what the problem is.
Math anxiety is a real thing, though. A lot of people get worked up by the thought of math, and it can stimulate the same brain centers that light up when we feel actual pain. When I was able to take the time pressure off and make math quizzes and tests focused on just making sure the students understand (and don’t have a learning disability such dyscalculia, though even that can be overcome), and spent a lot of time building up their confidence, all of my students improved quickly. Including all the ones who swore they couldn’t do math. 🙂 (Which was most of them.)
Math is really like anything else (or like art!). You put hard work in and practice, and you get results out.
Every bit of math homework I ever did inevitably ended up covered in cartoons. Such is the cartoonist’s upbringing.
Mr. McDuff… where were you in my Math learning years! Gah… I wish all math teachers shared your philosophy. I did have a couple of math instructors who did… and God bless ’em… and I did pretty well under their guidance.
Yat… smartie… Yah… let the program do the math.
Shelby… agreed. I check to make sure no bozo boogerheads are using my cash for their nefarious purposes… I had this happen once. Somebody was using my ATM (???) in Florida… how they got my info, I don’t know.
Joe… I do keep an eye on things… but I don’t actually write in my checkbook much anymore… Randie is a little behind, probably because she doesn’t use the computer… she really ought to get one. It’d make her life so much easier.
Dada… I wanted to not pay attention in math… which is what I assume you were doing… But it required every bit of my brainpower in order to get just a little bit of understanding in there.
Things would’ve been a whole lot easier if I had just learned my times tables. Sigh.
Math isn’t the hard part for me. Remembering to write down expenses and income so you can apply the math, though? That’s the hard part.
Well Brig, if you were doing integral calculus in elementary school you were pretty advanced, I’d say. I’d also have to say the second integration is likely incorrect; either ignoring treating the variable x as a constant or not carrying through an integration by parts correctly. Although MAYBE you did the integration by parts AND integrated the second term – can’t tell as it’s blocked by Randie’s head.
Just as well, I’ve gotta get back to tooning anyway.
On a non-math related note: Portland misses you at Stumptown this weekend. I hope you have a swell time at the Salinas Public Library thing.
On a math note: Why does six fear seven?
A. Rat… Yah… It’s one of those habit things. I have one of those carbon copy check books… that way I will have a visual record of stuff. I like that.
Crow… GAH! Math instructors know the math! I actually have no idea what I put there… I googled complicated math problem… and this LOOKED good. Silly artists!
Unca Bad… Awwww…. I am missing Portland for sure this year! But I could NOT miss the wonderful opportunity to be on the local authors panel in my neck of the woods. All things happen for a reason… so I believe, and I was to be here this time around. Next year… though…. Smiles and I hope you are enjoying Stumping it! Twirl the ‘stache for me!
… because seven ate nine… or eight nine… or whatever… sheesh.
I was an engineering student before I became an artist, so math comes easily to me. But there are something’s I am horrible at. Like remembering names.
I was one of those people who breezed through math. It just came to me. In eight grade I tested at a 12th grade level, and at 12th grade my ACT score put me in the top one percent in the nation.
I think the two things that helped me the most were my memory and my music. We started memorizing stuff in first grade and we learned how to read music in first grade.
Art and math are related, I believe. Art has no “right” answer, unlike math, but they are very similar in that when things go together in the right way, they create something beyond comprehension until that moment. Math, art, music… they are all used to create new things from existing things. Entire vistas are opened up when just the right note, just the right color, just the right word, or just the right sequence are used.