Math for the Future is a project with the goal of reestablishing an interest in math education. Unfortunately, the math and science scores in our country are low and getting lower. There needs to be a reformation of how kids in this country see math because it is so vital to society. We hope to stimulate an interest in math by providing a lecture series of different interesting fields of mathematics. We believe that math has two appealing components, its intrinsic beauty and its universal application.
Math is one of the few things in the world that makes sense. The world does not function in a random manner, it follows rules, and math is the eternal quest to understand these rules. Seemingly different things piece together in a comprehensible way through math. Why do we find buildings like the Parthenon so aesthetically pleasing? The architecture models the golden ratio, the most pleasing ratio to the human eye. But is this ratio a random number? Of course it’s not. Math does not work that way. If we look at the Fibonacci sequence, one of the most recognizable sequences in math, and divide each term by the one preceding it, we rapidly approach the golden ratio. The world has a beautiful order to it, and that order is called math.
Math is used for everything. It does not matter what we are doing, watching, hearing – it all involves math. When an outfielder sees a baseball hit toward his area and “judges” the ball in order to figure out where to run, he is doing math. When a meteorologist tries to understand wind and weather patterns, he is doing math. When a company tries to price its product at an optimal price, it is doing math. No matter what you are interested in, math explains it. Math is broader than just numbers and variables, although it is those things as well. Math is an understanding of how things work. There is so much in the world we do not understand, and math is the key to opening the doors to those seemingly incomprehensible things.
For these reasons, we cannot fall by the wayside in Math education. We will host lectures by experts in mathematics who can help stimulate interest in high school and undergraduate students in Manhattan. The current problem is that kids do not stay interested in math. Our theory is that by stimulating interest in kids at a young age, when they are deciding what they want to study in the future, we can keep kids interested in math.
