The Beauty of Mathematics

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Okay, today I’m not thinking about the south of France


lalalalalalalalalalala. . . .



Here it is, the end of the school year. French is done. Social Studies is done. Science, well, I could do more, we’ll see. Language Arts never ends, nor do any of the fine arts.

Curriculum is a constant knocking at the door. “Hey, Human Body!” “Hey, Fractions and Decimals!” “Hey, Five Paragraph Essay!” “Hey, Parts of a Cell!” “Hey, Aspects of Puberty!” “Hey, Elements of Design!” “Hey, Human Rights and Responsibilities!”


Hey, sometimes you just wanna insert earplugs, ya know?


But the year is about done, and the pressure is off, and today I taught the way I would teach every day if there weren’t some 500 learning objectives I had to be sure to cover. It was organic, and it took close to three hours, but I learned a bunch, got excited, and dragged 26 students along with me.

Today, we did math, specifically, the Fibonacci sequence. For those not in the know, it goes like this:

1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 . . .

The pattern is to add the last two numbers to get the next. It started in 1202 in Italy
(which appeals to me, being just a few years before the beginning of the Roman Inquisition, in which I’m very interested). Old Fibonacci was charged with the task of figuring out how many rabbits would exist in one year if a single pair were set loose in a field to do the dirty deed, as rabbits are wont to do, apparently.

Here’s what he figured out: Fibonacci Numbers and Nature

. . . along with other good stuff.


So, when we got through rabbits, we got into the very elementary genetics of the problems of brothers and sisters mating (the thought of which was too shocking for even pubescent boys to respond!), and managed, somehow, to get into the theoretical probability of two brown-eyed parents producing a blue-eyed child. (“Can we take a survey?” they asked, and this teacher rejoiced!) Our class was way outside the expected norm, with a whole lot of blue-eyed children of brown-eyed parents – so that’s the next exploration, I guess.

Back to Fibonacci. We drew out a series of squares based on the Fibonacci series. Kids were hooked. Then we drew a spiral line within the Fibonacci squares. Kids were blown away. There was K., my perpetual I-can’t-do-it kid, staring at his own work in amazement. “Can you believe you did that?” I asked.

“No.” That is what he said.

So, here it is. I think I’ve been doing it backwards, and I’m not alone. Somewhere around Grade 3, we start getting kids to learn the multiplication table. At Grade 5 and 6, which I teach, we expect them to know it, automatically. Most of them don’t, of course, and so every operation they have to do hurts, in a visceral way. I know, because that was my own experience as a kid.

We never tell them why they should want to do this. It’s like providing a map without saying anything about the treasure; there is no “x marks the spot”. Why would anyone care to follow?

In a strange coincidence, my principal sent a link today to a slide show called, “Beauty of Mathematics”. I showed it to my class, and they were so excited. They just hadn’t thought of math this way, and, to be honest, neither had I.

The end part, the didactic preachy part about reaching 100 per cent is nonsense, of course.*


I am working on trying to find a link or an attachment that I can post here. Meanwhile, you may have to do your own search for "Beauty of Mathematics" and put up with the God stuff that was NOT a part of the slideshow I showed my students, though the non-God stuff is the same.


One nice thing about teaching is that you get to try again next year. I hope I will have the courage, next year, to start with the turn-on, the treasure – Fibonacci, nature, and the amazing things numbers do – and then get to the steps you need to take to get to the treasure. I bet I’ll be able to entice a few kids who would otherwise would stay behind.






*On a completely different tack: when I googled this slide show so that I could post it on facebook, what I found was somehow attached to “the Love of God”, which gets you to 101%. The slide show was the same, but included God as part of the “equation”. Nauseating. Best I can do is post this blog and link it through facebook. God might try, but it can’t win.





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