What`s The Point?

Pfft, what`s the point of trigonometry anyway? I`m never going to use this!!!

While that may be true, maths is so much more than just numbers and circles. To me, maths is a way of thinking and approaching problems in life, a lens with which to view the world and a tool kit with which to make sense of it. It`s how I get definite answers to problems and make decisions based on more than pure guesswork.

A key aspect of maths is analysis and precision - the ability to look at something for exactly what it is and take it to pieces and make sense of it. I`ve been looking recently at getting a new smartphone, and I was confronted with the choice of whether to get a contract or to buy the handset. Having been trained in maths, I immediately thought up a calculation that would show me which was more expensive over the long term. Then I built a spreadsheet to compare all the different tariffs to see which was going to be the best deal!

My partner is often accusing me of being logical. Even with things that are not numerical, I have a knack for seeing past all the confusion and coming up with a logical approach. It involves things like, knowing what can be ignored, seeing the consequences of one thing on another and how that relates to the whole problem. When I was doing a job application, I started getting confused over how I should write it and what I should focus on until I spotted a very interesting pattern - I noticed that some aspects of the job were mentioned more often in the job descri ption than others. So I read it a few times over and it suddenly jumped out at me what the main skills they were looking for were. So I highlighted those skills the most in my application, and funnily enough it got me an interview!

One of the things I value the most about my mathematical training however, is my understanding of and ability to see structure. A huge part of mathematics is about structure and a very large amount of time in my degree was devoted to understanding mathematical structures. That might seem very abstract and a total waste of time, but now I see structures wherever I look and I see what they are composed of and how the fit and work together. Structure is everywhere: from organisations of people, to rail networks, the internet, to how a book or film is put together... even your personal diary has some sort of structure. And I have now a native ability to instinctively see those structures underlying every aspect of life, to see order when others see only chaos and to know that even the most daunting and complicated looking things have an underlying structure that can be understood - with a little patience.

So while you might feel frustrated sweating over some equation, when the sun is shining outside and you could be sitting under a tree licking an ice cream cone, have some consolation that the work you`re putting into learning now will pay off one day and give you a little more clarity and understanding of the world which can be so confusing at times.