Math sometimes gets a bad rap. Traditionally, it’s not the most well-liked subject in school. Students often complain that it’s difficult to understand. In fact, in a 2023 survey, math ranked only above foreign languages as a subject in terms of people’s favorite. 59% of respondents said they liked or loved math when they were in high school. Some of these math lovers, perhaps, are now fans of the Meme For Mathematicians Facebook page. It’s the perfect place to go to have a chuckle or two if you’re a professional mathematician or just an average fan of crunching numbers. Bored Panda reached out to Ben Orlin, the creative mind behind Math with Bad Drawings. We asked Ben why math should be important to everyone and what are the best ways to learn and teach it. Read our conversation with him below! More info: Meme For Mathematicians | Instagram | Rough History Math with Bad Drawings | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter (X) | Books We might think that not many people go on to study mathematics, but in 2020, about 1.9 million students got their bachelor’s degrees in mathematics. The 2018 Cambridge International Global Education Census actually found that mathematics was the most popular subject among students.
Ben is a Yale graduate in mathematics and grew up in a very mathematical world. His dad is a math professor at MIT, his sister is a math teacher as well, and his wife is a research mathematician. But Ben decided to become a teacher of mathematics in quite an unconventional, less academic way. “At its best, math will blow your mind into little pieces, and then stitch those pieces back together into a whole new mind that better appreciates the weirdness of our universe.” “Then, if all else fails, slap some dollar signs in front of the numbers,” Ben recommends. “‘Negative four’ doesn’t always capture the imagination. ‘You owe me four bucks’ always does.” Follow Bored Panda on Google News! Follow us on Flipboard.com/@boredpanda! Please use high-res photos without watermarks Ooops! Your image is too large, maximum file size is 8 MB.
