comparemela.com

Common I'm Kim Jack and it's are and when I cast my mind back to my school days I'd like to think that I was a decent each student except when it came to one subject mathematics my aversion to numbers is a mystery and I still get a little bit ichi thinking of those torture a situ the afternoons when I had a double period of it and had to wade through trigonometry and directed numbers my guest today say it does not have to be that way they have an impish is fiction to rid the world of math phobia and one unusual way of doing it is through street performance my 1st guest star a sample she can be found in schools public squares and at festivals with a top hat on playfully engaging the public and fun practical that's related dilemma's through her organization mats busking originally from Portugal She's also a part time mathematics lecturer so are welcome thank you but I've been told that I need to have my calculator on standby and I'm a bit nervous I have been going you know quizzes can we just get that either way no quizzes I don't like being tested the only question I've got can you press the buttons in your calculator I get an article regarding target perfect Ok and listeners also need to have their calculators on the ready and so you let us know what we need to do when we need to do it my other guests Eugenia Chang has in the past use puff pastry and custard to bring mathematical concepts to life she's written to popular books about math including one titled beyond infinity an expedition to the outer limits of mathematics She's currently a scientist in residence at the School of Art Institute in Chicago Eugenia Welcome to you thank you very much for having me let's start at the beginning because I'm curious how you developed a passion for math were you exposed to it had home Eugenia Yes I was exposed to math at home because fortunately for me my mother she works in statistics and she showed me the most far and exciting little pieces of math when I was growing up so she showed me really. Really exciting things that captured my imagination and convinced me that there was something much more exciting out there than the things we were doing at school you see catches you imagination Well one of the 1st things I remember is that she showed me how you can draw a graph that corresponds to squaring a number and this just made my brain stretch out in strange ways I hadn't felt before and that got me really excited somehow about pictures and math being part of the same thing so while. I've never heard of someone that had their 1st math moment with Graph So it's really cool it is very cool and my mother also made sure that math was always a part of daily life not just by counting things or by sitting down for breakfast and say oh let's do some times tables but just by seeing it everywhere and by talking about it and incorporating it into life and having less of a boundary between what is math and what isn't math can help so that you don't have a chance to go oh no it isn't much help I'm scared whereas it's just all around us like words and like music and like nature and it's just part of life I'm quite curious Who do you know that you mention seeing a graph to transform numbers into squares were you fascinated by squid as well because I probably remember being fascinated by squares and I don't remember being fascinated by numbers at all and I admit I'm still not really in any way interested by numbers and so Kim when you said something about you not getting on with numbers I thought that's Ok actually because math isn't just about numbers it's about understanding things and one of the myths about math I think is that it's all about numbers and all about adding in multiplying and doing arithmetic very fast whereas it's possible to be not that great x. Arithmetic but to be able to understand abstract mathematical structures that's like how things fit together like building Lego or like baking and using ingredients to make so. I think delicious and because I've been teaching art students they're all very good at some aspects of oughts and many of them are by their own admission pretty terrible at mathematics at least pretty terrible arithmetic and some of the students are so weak at arithmetic that they can't really do basic multiplication certainly not division and yet when I show them abstract structures or talk about things like generalizing a circle into higher dimensions they can do that and they can get excited by it and so they can bypass those terrible things like oh long division or other like pointless exercises like that but understand how things work logically and that is a key I think to having a brain that functions well yeah that one important part of math that is also common with other sciences is that it's Ok not to know it's important to deal with I wanted to say the word failure as in you haven't worked things out yet but not failure in the sense of or you really rubbish because you haven't done this thing about so I think that's a very important aspect you need to understand that when you don't know something that's more exciting because you are about to go on a journey to find things out and that you don't do it alone that those people there already have the knowledge people to accumulate or that knowledge people that can help you think you know it can be a social activity as well and I think all these things we talk about that you're describing about your experience with math and I'm spouting out here is it's not like what we do in school well only going back to school a lot of pheno 2nd but I want to ask you sorry what sparked your interest in that I'm not really sure unlike you genius I didn't have much formal math around me I mean I used to do quite a lot of paper folding and paper cutting and constructing things out of paper and my mom has an interest maker and my dad used to make things as well so I think that aspect of just sorting. Things out whether it is cloth or paper or numbers I think that dressmaking has a lot of math in it that you don't necessarily think of as math some people say it's applied to politics topology being the study of shapes of things and has a lot of study of surfaces and dressmaking consists of taking something that's basically flat a piece of material and turning it into something 3 dimensional with an interesting shape and I love clothes that have particularly peculiar shapes so that when you take them off the hand you can't tell what they're doing at all which means that they have really interesting to politics and I admit that's me thinking rather mathematically about clothes but I really do believe that math is everywhere and that being exposed to math at home in some form is really fantastic for children like to talk a little bit more about the way we learn math at school you both have touched on this a little bit but I want to get into it specifically because my encounters with math were about knowing so it was a tense encounter. But there has to be a degree of rote learning right I think those are not about you multiple tables like you need to learn I got to actually not learnt any multiplication tables and I astonished people when I say that and nobody ever believes me but I honestly haven't Well I memorized 2 of them I memorized 67 and 7 eighth's but those are the only 2 that I've memorized honestly can I have 5 you. Yes actual high 5 Yeah you know you do you know you must know I didn't the only reason I needed to learn them was because back in Portugal at that time and very mind my primary school teacher was outstanding in the way that she didn't use corporal punishment like he was still common in other classes you know we would have the threat of a wooden ruler being used on our hands if we didn't know that so that was and I think I was more concerned with the humiliation of being punished. In front of everyone else but I didn't have a problem with it because our could usually work it out well I just had this thing that I thought he was inappropriate to be made to memorize so I kind of refused to the same with train lines were supposed to memorize train lines in Portugal that really was ridiculous when I was a little I know. So no I think commuting do we have to learn some of these by rote you don't because you fuming gauge with things for long enough they just become part of you you will just knowing the facts right there some of them you can understand for example if you're going to trying to do you can picture for dots in a square and that's a pretty easy picture to have in your head and so is a 3 by 2 grid 6 dots in a 2 by 3 grid we see them on things like dominoes and once you've seen that enough times you have that picture in your head and then it's not really quite the same as rote learning it's still in your memory somewhere but I wouldn't say that it has been rote learnt because when I talked to my art students about why they were put off math in school they all say that memorization is one of the things that put them off whereas if you use something and the it and get a feel for it somehow goes into a different part of your brain I guess my question is if you are in a classroom of 30 pupils of all varying degrees of math skills I just wonder if you can always have the privilege of sitting down getting them to fully understand different things and just having that one on one time what you were talking about seems to be an approach that requires time and money and not everyone has that it does require time that's why we should invest more in education because the thing is at the moment we're using the resources that we have and I just really don't think we're cheating anything and I think that's a much worse waste of resources if we're going to think about whether it's expensive where spending all this time and money on teaching things that so many people end up hating and as a result they just. Ballot from their brains as fast as possible I mean how many people a so relieved when they finish having to do math and they never have to do it again feel you and then what is it that they use in their daily lives well not very much because even arithmetic we don't need to do any more because we've all got calculators on our phones but you do realize that Eugene yelling Let me tell you nothing but you do you it does work it does work for some people right but those people will be Ok anyway so what about all those other people that we're completely putting off so it was a lesson to use those resources to not put people off I read somewhere and I agreed with that I must admit someone saying we'd actually achieve more if we just stopped teaching math altogether and I think 1st then you then we wouldn't be putting anyone off yet and the people who like math will still be able to do math that they like and instead of achieving a negative result we did cheat 0 which is better than a negative result yes the math is right there so how do you agree seems a bit extreme It sounds extreme really but I see the argument I think if we stop teaching math that will probably give us an option of returning to it in a new way rather than in the same weight so let's talk about your work because you use street performance to make math positive and fun give us an example I'm not teaching people to do math in the street I'm just having a good time and show someone something curious that Hansie appearance of a trick or something magical and the reason for it to work is that's not sleight of hand or any other trickery Ok so that's the idea. And one of the tricks we do and this is the one where anyone listening can get their calculations yes I have my own eyes out strange and by ready I mean you've got the screen blank but working and you have tested that your calculator really really works Ok what we do is you think of a 3 digit number like 123 but don't do 123 because I know that one Ok so you write your 3 Digit magic number on your calculator and then let's write the same. Number again so you end up with 6 digits Ok so not bad you just just write again and again you see no matter required to get it just write it again and now you have a 6 digit number in front of you that it's secret to me and I'm going to control the calculator so it's going to get rid of the bad luck by dividing this big number by 13 because so many people think it's unlucky and when you press equals you should get a result of that is a whole number because the decimal point isn't working I'm controlling a calculator got it and now we divide by another number number 11 yes done that and when you press equals you still have a whole number as a result in a decimal point and you wonder is that a pattern well 13 is a prime number and same with 11 a prime number is a number that cannot be divided by any other numbers other than one and itself but hang on we're not going to get very geeky here we're going to divide by your 3 Digit magic number Ok which she wondered did I remember this number hope you do and when you divide by your 3 Digit magic number you should get my message on your screen to get my message number 7 yes I think there really is a look. Now of course yes that what makes you know why can we figure this out how do we tackle this well what numbers do on my control I don't control the magic number but I do control your division by 13 division by 11 and the final message 7 so there's 3 numbers in this game that I control and how they related Well I ask you to divide by 13 divided by 11 I do lots of divisions to reverse engineer the problem you would do multiplications is how you go backwards on a division problem so if you multiply the numbers I control 7 times 11 times 13 which I'm not expecting to do with mental arithmetic you can use a calculator to be that you get. A 1001 as a result yes so far so good what's so important about 1001 well 1001 multiplied by your magic number will try Ok if you run your 3 Digit magic number I think it was 123 times 1001 you get 100 or 3123 and same words with your 3 Digit magic number that that one looks actually. When you go out and you do this I mean who you doing it for instance it varies so if is a street again it's whoever is around nowadays I do more festivals like Glastonbury festival the main thing in my business is catering for schools and sometimes for companies as well but is mostly about doing workshops stage shows where mathematics is the central part and when you go to school what are you wearing and you know how you're preaching it when you go to schools so all my costume is a ridiculously yellow top hat waistcoat and trousers like a magician turned yellow something wrong in the laundry I find my costume important and that's one of the things you learn from street into trainers and other entertainers is that the way you come across as important a laugh must impression that's non-threatening image can put people at ease Ok let's just take a little break a quick points to remind you that you're on the conversation today we're talking with 2 women on a mission to get people to appreciate the joy and beauty of mathematics that Eugenia chain is credited with making Matt a piece of cake literally by using baking to explain complex concepts in her books and on her popular You Tube channel and sitting across from me in the London studio is Sarah central she and Portuguese mathematician and founder of math busking teaches math to street performance Eugenia you specialize in using baking to explain complex mathematical principles why baking baking is something I've always loved to do. Ing and it involves taking some basic ingredients and putting them together in interesting ways to create things that are delicious and I love baking desserts and cake especially And the reason I like it is because it's completely nutritionally pointless which means it exists only for my enjoyment and I love thinking of math as something that is for enjoyment Yes it is useful but I think that if we emphasize how useful it is too much then that makes it sound a bit boring and so I try to emphasize just the sheer curiosity and interest and as source is kind of the magic of mathematics where you can put some simple things together and get something really exciting and something that you can feel this all started when I was teaching quite a high level advanced undergraduate algebra course actually at the University of Sheffield and I wanted my students to feel something so if I tell stories about food it turns out that everyone kind of perks up and has some emotional connection whether it's good or bad and that is a good starting point and I realized that I could explain practically anything using some kind of food or baking analogy how do you explain exponential growth what's the best way to do that exponential growth that she loads of ways doing this but one is using puff pastry which is the most delicious kind of pastry in my opinion because it has the most butter and so course it's the most delicious because it has the most fights in it anyway the way that you make it is really amazing because you take the there's some pastry dough and you wrap it around a block of butter So 1st this is the really fun part you bash the butter with a rolling pin to make it soft so that it's the same consistency as the dough around it and you wrap it up and you roll it out so that the dough and the butter in the middle of the package get thin equally because they're the same consistency so it becomes thin and then you fold it in 3 and so you multiply the number of layers by 3 and then you roll it out again so all. The layers become equally thin and you fold it in 3 again so that multiplies by 3 so you keep folding it in thirds and rolling it out so that the number of layers multiplies by 3 repeatedly and that's why exponentials are there what happens when you multiply something repeatedly and the amazing thing is that if you multiply something by 3 repeatedly and maybe even still got your calculator out and so you can try just hitting times 3 lots of times the number grows really fast so it starts kind of slowly let's see if I can multiply 3 a few times in my head that we have 3 and then 9 and then 27 and after that I'd have to think about it so when you make puff pastry you do that just 6 times and I think you get more than a 1000 layers just by doing that and not only do you get a 1000 layers but they're really really thin layers with butter in the tween them puffed up in the oven to me that shows how exponentials and the power of exponentials help us make something that's really amazing to eat and that you wouldn't be able to make without that mathematics because trying to roll out individual there's a pastry that at that thin would be impossible so I'm sure there'll be some math purists listening and who are thinking that that should be interesting enough as it is without resorting to party tricks and top hats to access it what would you say to them good for you. Yeah exactly. Do you think if you can get by without those things then good for you exactly you know what about everyone else I'm really sorry when people have that sort of attitude because I wonder how much of that is to a certain snobbery and a certain I earned displaced in the world because I am also met Matt and I can do the things that you lot cannot do and I think that's really horrible attitude to have I think underlying it all is snot the matter itself with is something else you know our view of education we are not really. Catering for other ways of learning and I suppose that's what's keeps this system going is that people that have succeeded it have that way of learning and therefore cannot even feel it so it is right to be so much someone else yes people who succeed because of a certain system of course they want to keep the system that way but fortunately some of us like Sar and me I hope despite the fact that we succeeded in that system we want to help other people who are not being served well by that system and it sounds like Sar and I have both gone slightly outside the system figures by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development o.e.c.d. Show a gender gap in maps at school level most countries around the world did either of you ever think you'd be less good at math because you were Woman No never never I think I credit my parents largely for this because my parents have somewhat gender reversed roles my mother is a statistician who commutes to work in the city a long time ago she was a woman with a briefcase on the train with the men in suits and I thought that was normal my father was a child psychiatry and so he worked locally when he was home or he was more likely to do the grocery shopping and cook us dinner and of course being a doctor he looked after us when we were ill and I also only had a sister no brothers so I never thought that there was anything I couldn't do just because I was a woman then I did go to a girls' school and I think that really helped because it meant that my whole education was completely free from gender stereotypes and it was only when I got to university when I was an undergraduate at the University of Cambridge I think it was one in 11 in 10 were girls and the rest were boys and it was the 1st time I really noticed it and I knew that if I was less good than someone it was just because of my brain and it wasn't because I was a woman but I did start feeling like I had to make sure nobody had a chance to judge me because I didn't want anyone to be able to say that I was less good by. Because I was a woman and I know that not everybody grows up with such certainty about those things which is why I've decided to talk about it and be a role model for people if they need one if anyone needs to be convinced I would like to help that son I never thought that math wasn't for me because of my gender and math and other pure sciences in Portugal didn't seem to have the buyers to I see here the u.k. Think the number of girls and boys doing those sciences and math are similar but it's about even now in the u.k. And something that you said Eugenia about your family's situation I read an article the other day that the single most powerful indicator of whether a girl felt she could do whatever she wanted in life was not what her mother or what women did was what kind of housework the dad to did that's amazing it's what the girl would see dad doing at home and the balance between the roles are hard and that much more of dictating of what to girl felt was available to her good and even more reason for me not to do any housework. But you genius and so did I think if you watch the film Cool didn't think it is about you know you haven't seen it was about 3 black female math whizzes working on the u.s. Space program in the 1960 s. And I'm just wondering what role popular culture can play in helping with math p.r. Essentially all we can measure we're on a huge role I'm fortunate played a really negative role in the past I think that so many mathematicians in the popular media have been portrayed as strange probably white men who are slightly odd don't really mix in society don't really have friends working a quarter by themselves maybe go insane and that's it makes a good story but it's not very realistic and it's not at all helpful so I'm really good. Ad but a new way of presenting mathematics has come up and I hope that that will continue if we remove the word math in what you said and talking about the strange men and kind of eccentric and so on that also apply to how musicians or other artists sometimes on the trade in some films but that doesn't seem to put people off oh that's really interesting I wonder if it's because music is something that is inherently more approachable because almost everyone listens to music anyway whereas people don't interact with math that much outside of what they have they've done in the classroom so your research mathematics seems like something that's very removed from most people's lives you're a musician as well aren't you yes and I was just curious if you think there is still a bridge between math and music that was important to you wonder if you like I do feel a bridge between them it wasn't explicitly important to me when I was young the thing that was important to be about music was it was something that I could do unfettered and it was something where I could express myself and so that is what really attracted me to it at the beginning now I realise that the structures inside the music are something that are very appealing to me and when I think about what music I like I realize that it's not tunes that I like it's really harmony that touches me the most and harmony is about the structure and the into relationships between notes that are being played at the same time as opposed to notes that are being played in sequence and in a way I think that is a little bit mathematical because Harmony is a bit like the grammar of how music is constructed so for me it's about that it's not about how nothing beats in a bar it's about how things fit together which is what I see as being the mathematics inside all aspects of life sir new genius thank you both very very much . Thank you thank you we've been talking about why math matters with 2 women whose mission is to get people to love mathematics up to Eugenia Chang teaches complex math to our students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Sarah Santos bars tricks from street theater to give people a positive experience with math She also next isn't Goldsmith University of London thanks for listening each day here on the b.b.c. World Service we take you back in time our personal accounts moments of history sex health religion politics. Culture the kind of blue record was just another Miles Davis record I thought so it was low pressure that that there probably was a least pressure overhead we're going to read a witness at b.b.c. World Service dot com or subscribe to the podcast. And in an hour joint Mickey Beatty for the arts are where the action hero Tom Cruise on his many stunts Australian author Thomas Keneally talks about his new book Crimes of the father and how hard is it to find jazz legend Billie Holiday's hoist actress and singer Audra McDonald tells us stay with us Pinney's room is next on the b.b.c. World Service the world's radio station. That's 22 hours g.m.t. Welcome to the news room from the b.b.c. World Service I'm Clare MacDonald president McCrone affronts sets out his vision.

Related Keywords

Bbc ,Radio Program ,The Conversation ,Pastry ,Pedagogy ,Memory ,Performance Art ,Theatre ,Doughs ,Sociology Of Culture ,Arithmetic ,Institutes ,Role Status ,Education ,Mathematics Education ,Multiplication ,Conceptual Models ,Hydraulics ,Family ,Baking ,Motherhood ,Women ,Social Events ,Radio Bbc World Service ,Stream Only ,Radio ,Radioprograms ,

© 2025 Vimarsana

comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.