I always hear people complain: "Oh, they made us study MATH in school, even though we're never going to use it in our daily lives…" — as though I'm supposed to empathize with these "victims." Oh, the terrible misfortune and torture they were forced to endure. Meanwhile I'm thinking — are you kidding me??
Math is your best friend!
Math is this incredibly magical gift that gets passed down from one generation to the next — like a giant puzzle that all of humanity has been putting together, piece by piece. Some folks in ancient Egypt who built the Pyramids wrote down all of the equations they used to build them. And it wasn't easy. They had to sit down and think very hard for hours until they worked out the equations of how to build things. Turns out those equations were useful, so people passed them on like little gifts — little keys to this giant puzzle. They'd find one key and pass it onward, and the rest of humanity from then on gets to benefit from that person sitting down and writing out their thoughts in a logical manner until they could prove it to themselves — whether through algebra, trigonometry, a derivative, a gradient, or a little calculus. But at whatever level of complexity you're working, using logic and reason to balance the equation is HOW YOU FIGURE STUFF OUT.
You wanna build a chicken pen? How much wood do you need? How much wire? How big is the farmyard? How much will it cost? Someone has to do the math! And the beauty of math is that you can actually figure it out — you get an answer. Not a rough guess or an opinion. You can work out numbers larger than what you have on both hands and get a real number that makes your life easier.
Oh, you're in the army and you want to figure out what angle to set the cannon at to have the best chance of hitting your target? --MATH.
Oh, you're the CEO of a company that makes widgets on thin profit margins, already in debt up to your eyeballs, working for the bank that lent you the money to launch your big idea — and now you actually have to make it happen? --MATH.
A Wonder of the Universe
the basic compound interest equation
MATH is how you figure stuff out — and plan for the future. Just like having different tools in a shed — a chisel, a hammer, a scraping blade — each equation solves a different problem. What is Math Good For? How about STAYING ALIVE?
All these people, across centuries and continents, have been grinding away at math problems — and you get to come along, la-tee-dah, and use any and all of their hard-earned equations —for free! Mind you - this was not always the case.
We've been gathering these magical spells, publishing them, teaching them, passing them on. It's the universal human language of logic and reason — a model for understanding the world around us. And yet most of us never take the time to dig in and learn it.
If you work for a living and you don't want to be poor in the future, you sure as hell need to start learning some math. Compound interest, baby. It's not as simple as it sounds — and yet it is magical and profound. If you're not familiar with the compound interest equation, then I implore you to spend some time learning about this little gem. Einstein called this equation man’s greatest invention. The sooner you learn it, the better your life will become.