If you are one of those who hated math in school and wondered why we even do sine, cosine, tangents and of course, why i is a complex number, and if yes, why math was so complex, don’t worry, you ain’t alone!
I never got good marks in maths (or math-related papers) but that didn’t stop me from exploring it further and trying to understand where and how the “hell” can it be applied in daily life.
There’s a question we are never asked (nor ask ourselves) at the school/college level and that is do we need the math life or is it the math for life that we need? Taking off from there, I shall delve a bit deeper into what made me take up this topic. While in school, I’d find heights and distances (using trigonometry) to be more practical than calculating the area of a cylinder or a cone inside a square. Then came what can be called ‘Organic Chemistry’ of Mathematics – Calculus; Differentials, Integrals and Differential Equations and a whole bunch of interrelated concepts (Real Analysis would only come in later). Like Benzene’s different forms (reactive or otherwise), Calculus got me worried. But only in the beginning. No sooner did I master the logic, the application became much easier. That however did not come to my rescue in my 12 CBSE Maths Board Paper in 2016 (that’s a different story, for a different day! 🙂 ) but what matters more is the interest in the fine concepts than marks in an exam. This is where the question that struck me years ago comes into the picture: Do we need the math life or math.. for life? What’s the difference between them?
As I moved to college, then came the broad-based application of math (particularly probability and calculus, the two most dreaded topics in my school days) in Economics and the way it was applied showed that there’s a fine logic that can be created to explain phenomena that otherwise cannot be explained just in simple English. Justification for the price being inversely related to the quantity demanded through mathematical equation(s) provided me a clear picture and furthermore justified the necessity of math life where maths and related areas are embedded into every other field with an objective to enable math-based assessments to act as means to an end rather than be an end in itself. Moving away from economics, we find that the application varies as per the profession, and to not make things too dry, I’d say the way we perceive the application of math has a lot to do with our own reasoning for their usage. How relevant is math in a particular situation should be the question that should strike us rather than ask where’s the complete necessity for math; for there’s much that it can help us understand beyond quantifying and helping predict outcomes.
Coming to the dilemma: Math life vs Math for life is a doubt that has been going on in my head for a long time now (long enough to make me even ponder over whether a blog was necessary on this), what’s the distinction between both? Math Life, in my opinion, would include the broad-based application of mathematical logic and concepts to everyday phenomenon – be it forecasting, sampling, matrix applications to understand game theory outcomes, complex calculations to understand the speed required for diff types of rockets; to beat escape velocity of the earth and be launched into the orbit, to understand/quantify resistance offered by materials to build solid cars, tanks, aircraft and many more ranging from comparing countries based on growth calculations and forecasts, understanding what the possible profit expectations of firms are & what are the expected spending levels of governments (through nonlinear programming and multivariable calculus) given various other variables that impact in many ways. This is critical and becomes necessary for higher-order math to be incorporated for such are the outcomes and the seriousness of the subject naturally goes up. And therefore, the necessity of complex mathematics becomes more pronounced as fields diversify and one shouldn’t be surprised about that. It only reaffirms its universal applicability in order to quantify, condense and generate relevant conclusions. Data might be just numbers and classifications but without the math, the analysis would get one nowhere whichever field it may be (ranging from economics to HR to law to sciences) ; one would never obtain the average without taking the ratio of sum to the no. of observations; one would never obtain ‘expected value’ without multiplication of the happening of an event with its probability and summing it up.
What then about math for life? This is where it gets interesting! I’m sure one must have come across the following pictures at some point or the other.
Well, that’s the math for life in the simplest of terms. No kidding; Can anyone put math to better use than this i,e to describe all the small things that fill up our lives? That’s where we distinguish the importance of math at a professional level from applying math at a personal level. The beauty of mathematics is that it transcends all boundaries & to be able to describe small things through simple equations is enough evidence that it needn’t always be the case that math life is important. Math for life is equally important but it depends on how we use that minimum knowledge we know… and I believe, math for life comes first, and then comes the math life (should it come). And as time passes, we find that simple things like calculating interests on loans, the tax we need to pay, the liabilities we owe, the assets we own, computing and comparing risks in portfolios, and whatnot. A whole bunch of things that any common man (each of us) needs to figure out throughout his life evolve around that math which in fact is sometimes overlooked ( and ends up featuring in the ‘aptitude’ sections of competitive exams which we then tend to make a lot of fuss about). We forget that math is an enabler to attain a solution of a problem than being the solution in its entirety and end up making a big deal of the method.
Let me ask: Integral calculus is all about (as seen in the first picture), summing up all the individual parts to make up a bigger part (with a constant in place); what if we have a function wherein if we integrated it from 0 to 1, we’d obtain the probability of us saying no to a friend whenever he asks us to come and join him for a movie. What if we integrated another function wherein the solution of the equation would give us the ideal number of friends we should keep? Likewise, what if we had a cubic function that had to be differentiated with respect to ‘x’ and the solution would give us the maximum number of times (x) we ought to unlock our phone in a day Or the number of times you had to look at someone and fell in love with them (is Poisson Distribution coming handy here?) Or the number of samosas that can be eaten ‘given’ the constraints of appetite, money and moving around? Math would certainly be more interesting if instead of ‘word problems, if we used it to deal with real problems (when applicable). What if we taught that ‘x’ needn’t be an Ex, y needn’t be a Why but can be solutions and problems where there’s a positive relationship between both (and under certain conditions, have inverse relations too..)!
Not sure how many have got the idea but yes, we need both the math life and math..for life, for as my good friend Stuti, from UoH put it : it’s not just the math life but math for life that we… have evolved to use!
The Vintage Nerd 
It was a good read. I like how you have related Poisson distribution with falling in love xD
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