mathematically speaking

To my dear Year II students,

I hope you’ve all reviewed by now. Here is a reviewer that you might want to try answering. If you are having a lot of difficulty answering it then you might have a big problem come test time

For those who would like to consult, I am online most of the time (unless Mateo is clamoring for some caring and attention ) so feel free to message me, my YM ID is andrea_adolfo.

Study well and hard. Good luck and God bless!

To my dear Grade 6 students,

Here’s the reviewer that I promised Study well and hard. Good luck!

I have always found numbers with only two factors intriguing. Numbers like 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, etc. When I was in grade school, I’ve thought of them as something special, even when I didn’t know yet what they are. I was perplexed that big numbers (or at least big for me then) like 59 cannot be divided by any other number. I imagined having to distribute evenly 59 items and not being able to do it. Imagine sharing candies whose quantity is a prime number among your friends. Unless you have exactly the same number of friends as the candies, it will be an uneven distribution.

Although a lot of people, even some mathematicians, don’t like primes, they hold a special place in my heart. When asked to name a number, I would more often than not, name a prime number. Whenever I feel like betting in the lotto, I would choose prime numbers aside from the special dates of course. Ramil and I became a couple on a 7th and we got married on a 17th. As I’ve said in a previous meme that I’ve done, I love prime numbers.

Mind you, these numbers have quite a following. There are mathematicians who devote their lives to studying prime numbers. There’s an infinite number of prime numbers and the largest one so far is 2^^32582657 -1 - this means multiplying 2 by itself 32582657 times then subtracting 1. This number is so big, it actually has 9808358 digits! This number cannot even be written on a single blackboard. Lest you think that mathematicians are totally geeky, a human DID NOT find this number, a computer did. If you are interested in knowing this specific number, you may visit this page and be dumbfounded.

Whenever I reach the topic of prime numbers with my students, I always ask them…“what’s the use of studying prime numbers?” Most of the time, I would be answered with blank faces or someone giving an answer related to prime factorizations, GCF, LCM, and fractions. Math is everywhere, we use numbers everyday but let’s admit it what’s so important with numbers that only has one and itself as factors? These numbers are actually more widely used nowadays, they are used for coding. These numbers help keep our personal information secure whenever we use our credit cards and whenever we access secure pages over the internet. Specifically, they are used in cryptography, the study of message secrecy.

Well, if you’re still with me by this time, I guess prime numbers are not boring after all

Image from http://strix.org.uk

Math is rarely a liked subject by most students. It’s only fitting that my first post would be all about my love affair with this subject.

So why math? This is the question that has been asked of me time and again. As far as I can remember, I’ve always had an easy time with numbers. I never went out and admitted it though until I went to college and took up BS Math. I still remember feigning dislike for it so that I would fit in with my other classmates. They would voice out their dislike for math and I would do the same. I kept on doing this despite the fact that I would get really high scores in our math tests. In the end though, I decided to stand up for it by pursuing the course of my choice despite the unpopularity of it.

Again, why math? I loved how I only have to listen to our math teachers and would barely review for our math tests. Having nurtured an aversion for anything that would require memorization, I fell in love with the subject that asks little to no memory work at all. I loved the feeling of solving a very difficult problem after mulling over it for some time. I found myself looking at beautiful solutions and thinking of them as works of art. Okay, I’m sounding a bit too geeky even for my own tastes.

My love affair with math is not just between the subject and me. I guess I was fortunate enough to have great teachers who made math fun for me and nurtured my love for it. Being in the academe is just me passing on the torch. Hopefully, I get to infect more students even with just a liking for it the same way my past teachers infected me with it.

So come on now HEdCen studs, let’s spread the love