The Why of Math

Many students ask, “Why study Math?” or more typically, in a plaintive tone, “Why do I have to study Math?”  Even our educational bureaucrats and politicians keep asking the question, seemingly in pursuit of lowering math standards so scores will artificially improve (a math sleight of hand trick all in itself!) It’s actually an excellent question, particularly given how Math is often introduced or taught to children today.  In my experience, there are many valid and thought provoking answers, as varied as the families, communities, and cultures in which the question may be asked. It could be as simple as:

“To get good grades on a college entrance or government service exam, so you can get a good job,” or even, “Because it can be fun.”

To try to answer the question a little more deeply, I’ve been pondering my own Math journey and the doors that others opened for me.  

Door 1 – My parents:  My mother was a kindergarten teacher who had taught in the primarily Black schools of South San Francisco, and though she never really got to the point of understanding Algebra (despite the later best efforts of my siblings and I to teach her), she knew how to introduce the joy of Math to children.  Utilizing songs, games, puzzles and the illustrations from an ancient copy of the 1926 Compton’s Pictured Encyclopedia, she made me fall in love with numbers.  I was also advantaged by having a father who was an engineer working on the Apollo moon mission, and while I didn’t know exactly what he did, I knew that Math was very important to getting the astronauts safely there and back.  

When I started school directly in 1^st grade (an advantage of having kindergarten at home), I was already in love with numbers, having given each digit a personality and an emotion I related with it.  What was drudgery for others was fun for me, and as I worked through math worksheets, the numbers danced on the page, talked to each other and celebrated when they got to be part of the final answer.  I remember being incredibly proud in 2^nd grade when I was the first student to be able to stand up at my desk and successfully repeat the whole 12 x 12 times table without looking.  Of course I was helped by the fact that my parents had posted the times table in our bathroom over the mirror and in our bedroom over my desk, and so I can still visualize the whole table.  As a reward for good grades in Math, after 3^rd grade I received a copy of the Giant Golden Book of Mathematics.    Here was a History of Math and what had been done with it through the ages, fully illustrated, from visual examples of geometric figures to pictures of ancient Egyptians designing the pyramids to famous mathematicians to modern computers.  They also took us to the Los Angeles Museum of Science and Industry, which featured the amazing Mathematica rooms, with interactive exhibits demonstrating mathematical concepts and what could be done with them. The “Why” of Math was starting to dawn on me.  And so, as with so many things, mothers, fathers, grandparents and guardians can open that first door to success. 

Door 2 – My 9^th grade Physical Science teacher:   It’s a long story, but a few years later found us living in rural Texas, as my parents had decided to try “the simple life” away from our rough neighborhood in Los Angeles.  So in the late 1970s, I started high school in a town of just 2,000 people.  I learned later that the schools there had only been integrated not long before we arrived.  My Introduction to Physical Science teacher was Miss Jo Zelma Brown, who had previously taught at the completely segregated Black school in town, and I can honestly say I’ve never had a better, more challenging, yet completely inspiring teacher.  It dawned on me almost instantly, “Here is the Why of Math.”  She expected our math and science work to be perfect, never sloppy, since she taught us how Math could be used to solve chemistry, physics, engineering, and practical household and farm projects.  Every day started with a quiz, in which we had to write our answers on a pad and hold it up. As she walked around the class, either nodding or looking disapprovingly over her large glasses, at first I was shaking when she came to me, but I wanted to please her, so I learned never to rush or be sloppy and to check my work and make sure I understood the homework.  Her classroom door was always open at lunch, and she patiently explained concepts for those who had started to trust she had their best interests at heart.  I was immediately motivated to start building things at home, using the basics of physics, and amazingly my contraptions worked, but only if I got the measurements and math right.  I began to see – here is how my dad got the astronauts to the moon!

Miss Brown treated each student, Black, White or Hispanic, with personal attention, and kept raising the bar to the level she felt a student could achieve.  Many of the students were from very backwards farms and would leave school by 16 years old to raise crops and animals, with no thought of college, but she kept pushing and expecting more from each of us.  She’d say, “You’re going to need math to not get cheated on your crops, and you’re going to need math and measurement skills to weigh things and to figure out how much to feed those cows and sell them for!”  The exams for myself and some other college bound students had extra problems on them, since she knew we could achieve more.  Many students were afraid of her, even though she never raised her voice, in fact never raised anything but an eyebrow.  I realized later that we actually lived in fear of disappointing her since she knew we could achieve more.  She was not afraid to fail a student, but only for not trying.  Word got out that one would have to repeat her class, and so there was extra motivation to pass and even excel.  I don’t know any other word for her method than love, expressed in caring for each student and their ability to do their best.

I heard stories later about how Miss Brown had grown up in the town in the segregated era and had gone off to an HBCU, coming back to teach in the Black community.  I later found out that as a child she’d had to sweep the floors of a local business for a pittance, and had many times been kicked out of local stores and told to go “back across the tracks.”  By the time I’d arrived, she was teaching the all the children of the town, including of those who had treated her so badly, and I saw her deal with each student with personal attention, an equal level of discipline, and set the bar to where she knew each student had the capability to achieve.  We moved back to Los Angeles shortly after, but the rest of my high school and college STEM classes were actually easy given the basics and love for STEM she had ingrained in me.  To show the extent of her impact and the “Why of Math”, I was recently at a sporting event in San Francisco and was talking to a Texan sitting behind me we both realized we had grown up in the same small town.  At some point we just looked at each other and said, “Miss Brown!”  He told me of how her class had convinced him he had the skills to achieve, and so he went to college and eventually started his own successful business.  In retirement, Jo Zelma Brown has become a popular speaker in the community, speaking to students of all races on Martin Luther King Jr. Day each year about those times in the segregation era in the South and how the only path forward is that of love.  

Door 3 – My 1^st Year College Calculus Professor: After our farming experiment was over, we returned to California where I finished high school, but found myself behind the normal math progression.  As my rural Texas school system had started me a year behind, I had to take entry level Calculus when I began my engineering studies at UCLA.  This turned out to be a tremendous benefit, as my very first college professor was the amazing Dr. Raymond Redheffer (1921-2005.)  Despite being one of the most famous mathematicians and computer game designers of his era, Dr. Redheffer always taught entry level Calculus to make sure no students were left behind.  He taught all the material in the first eight weeks of the quarter to make sure the last two weeks were available for students to be fully prepared for his final.  Just like Miss Brown, he made the material practical and useful, and also brought in real life examples, jokes, stories and drawings.  His door was always open, and learning became a joy. Reading the material on the walls of his classroom and office, to my surprise I learned that he’d had a vital hand in developing the Mathematica exhibits I’d loved in the science museum when I was young, working closely with the famed husband and wife design team of Charles and Ray Eames on the beautiful learning exhibits. Here was someone who understood Math as Art and History, not just as a string of numbers and formulas to memorize, and wanted to share it.  Somehow my Math journey had come full circle from where I’d started as a child and was just as much fun as when I’d given numbers personalities.  I ended up taking every class he taught and a few years later launched in my career in the world of aerospace engineering.

So what is the Why of Math?

If you let it, Math can open the door to your future, a door behind which you do not know what adventure awaits!  It may just help you balance a budget, be a better baker or understand the statistics that drive our world, but it also may be excitement, discovery, a job or wealth, giving you the self-confidence you need to open doors for others, or even a new form of beauty you can share with the world.  But if you don’t open that door for yourself (and eventually for others) with the key of Math, you’ll never know.

Steve Sichi

BSEE, UCLA 1985; MSEE, Cal State Northridge, 1990

Steve Sichi has spent over 40 years as an engineer, inventor, manager, and executive in the global space industry, continuing to serve as a writer, entrepreneur and mentor. He lives in Los Angeles. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the B-RELYT Organization.