Combating Mathphobia - an advice to school students

Don’t be afraid !! This is not another ‘supposed to be boring’ math lesson ! So please do care to read on. As a school student one is always expected to learn the three R's – reading, writing and arithmetic. Almost all people begin to develop a sense of arithmetic in their childhood. Yes, believe me – very few people suffer from dyscalculia, a condition in which the patient has difficulty in understanding numbers and their manipulations.

Numbers actually fascinate us even in our ignorance. A child is happier with five chocolates than he is with only one chocolate. I am sure that arithmetic calculations must have been a fun during the early years in school but all of a sudden when the arithmetic expands to mathematics, students develop a commonly observed syndrome which we may call mathphobia, meaning fear of mathematics. Suddenly, mathematics starts using English and Greek alphabets too, as if the numbers weren’t enough ! But you need to accept these changes. At first, take them for granted and then gradually try to understand why and how these are necessary. For instance, algebra deals with computations involving unknown quantities, because of which it becomes necessary to use alphabets x,y,z etc. Geometry requires the labelling of points, line segments, triangles etc. and that is why it is customary to use capital letters to label the points. A line segment joining the point A to the point B is thus labelled as AB and at the same time AB also represents the length of the line segment joining A to B. Naming the figures in mathematics is just as important as naming various objects around us. It’s a matter of simple observation that the size of the letters in this write-up is much smaller than those in the heading. Thus the understanding of the ‘greater than’ and ‘less than’ signs of mathematics is just a matter of common sense. You just need to exercise your brain. A major part of mathematics involves drawing various diagrams, called graphs. Graphs actually make the concepts clearer. Definition of a square or of a circle is incomplete without the corresponding diagram. Students, thus, need to stress more on understanding the diagrams and their labelling. One thing that has to be kept in mind is that the way of studying mathematics is very much different from studying other subjects. One can’t learn mathematics by reading the sums done in school ! One needs to practice as best as possible. Not merely the problems done in class, one should try to do problems from other books too.

Remember that “the only way to learn mathematics is to do mathematics” ! Now there are a large number of video tutorials on YouTube which explain mathematical concepts using interesting animations. Students can take advantage of such resources too. Above all, one has to love the subject to get the best out of it. So get back to your tables, pick up a pen and a copy and jump into the fascinating world of Mathematics. Let your mathphobia turn into mathmania !