Why Math?

I think that I have always been interested in math. I think my interest in math comes from two sources. The first source being my own curiosity. From a young I have always liked to take things apart and look at the guts of things. This is because I like to understand how things work. If you think about it math is that exact same thing. Math can be used to explain anything. My math teacher taught me something that changed the way I look at math. Some people see math as just a bunch of numbers, because of my math teacher I do not see it that way. So my math teacher walked up to the board and drew a big 2 on the board, and then he asked what is that? The obvious response is well that is a two, but he said, no that is the symbol that represents the idea of two. The numbers are just place holders for the actual manipulation of physical things. That is a little crazy to think about, but it is a great way of looking at it. The second source of my interest in math comes from my dad. My dad is a math teacher. He has taught at Park City at the junior high, high school, and even for UVU at the college level. Because of that he has always talked to us about math. Most families do not sit around the table and talk about complex numbers, or have math competitions. Because of that I feel that I have been more exposed to math then most kids.

You may say, oh this kid is a high school student, what does he know? I am only a senior, so I am only taking BC calculus this year, but I have interest in some of these unsolved problems. To give you some perspective on my prior knowledge I plan to talk about the Riemann hypothesis zero’s, the zeta function included in those. I also plan to talk about Fermat’s last Theorem, and how it deals with elliptical curves. Or maybe the P vs. NP problem and how it deals with computer science computation. Now if you know any of these problems, you know that I know what I am talking about, and if you do not know anything i just said, you will after I am done with this blog. Through my research I probably will not be able to explain a full in depth analysis of every problem, the math would kill some of my audience. However, it is not too complicated to explain the basic idea of these problems and what their discoveries are. For example, Fermat’s last theorem deals with high integers values of the Pythagoras’ theorem. Now that is rather brief, but it did not require me to know very much math. Hopefully though, I will gain an advancement in my understanding of math, and I am excited to do so. 

I plan on learning this information from books, videos, and other enthusiasts of math. For example, my calculus teacher has several books on Euler’s and Fermat’s conjectures, that he let me borrow. Another great source for math junkies is YouTube. Channels such as Numberphile, Mathlogger, and 3Blue1Brown are all great sources on these unsolved problems, and math in general. The most common source for information these days is the internet, so I will be looking through many websites as well for the information to compose this blog. Sometimes when mathematicians put math in terms for a general audience in these posts, they over simplify for conceptual reasoning. I hope to be able to overcome that as much as possible. However, I am human so I will probably make a mistake of two but, out of the 9 to 12 people who will ever stumble upon my blog, I am sure someone will correct me in the comments like they always do.

I hope to get a few things out this blog. My first hope is that I personally learn a lot about math, and its workings. Not only the material but also its contributors, and the legacy of these great mathematicians. Second, I hope The people who reads this gain something. Knowing how bad of a writer I am, I can guarantee I will lose some people in my rambling of some complex obscure math equations. Even though that may happen I hope people will gain a new perspective on math. Maybe I have this unrealistic standard but, I see math as a beautiful representation of nature itself. Out of all of this I hope to show some people what I see.