"There is such a thing as a tesseract."
Reading has always been my favourite and math has always been my least favourite.
When I was 10, I read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. I had no idea that I was, essentially, reading about math and physics.
The ideas made sense to me in a way most math didn't. Pluses and minuses were difficult because the answers were just there. They were cold and hard, like somebody lecturing. My dad, holding up flashcards. Memorizing stuff was easy, but nobody could explain why I was doing it or what it would mean to me. To this day, numbers scare the crap out of me, but the ideas in science fiction books like A Wrinkle in Time and Sphereland, which I discovered when I was about 12, where easier to grasp, more adaptable. I could imagine them in my head and understand the concepts. It was just my imagination and somebody else's imagination having a conversation about dimensions that made absolute sense to me.
So thanks, Madeleine L'Engle. You helped adult me realize that child me was not stupid. Reading and math aside, you taught me at a very young age that thinking was fun.
When I was 10, I read A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. I had no idea that I was, essentially, reading about math and physics.
The ideas made sense to me in a way most math didn't. Pluses and minuses were difficult because the answers were just there. They were cold and hard, like somebody lecturing. My dad, holding up flashcards. Memorizing stuff was easy, but nobody could explain why I was doing it or what it would mean to me. To this day, numbers scare the crap out of me, but the ideas in science fiction books like A Wrinkle in Time and Sphereland, which I discovered when I was about 12, where easier to grasp, more adaptable. I could imagine them in my head and understand the concepts. It was just my imagination and somebody else's imagination having a conversation about dimensions that made absolute sense to me.
So thanks, Madeleine L'Engle. You helped adult me realize that child me was not stupid. Reading and math aside, you taught me at a very young age that thinking was fun.