Math is Fun

KAMAL BARUAH

The other day my wife was talking about a father–son duo that enjoying math even while on drive. Professor Sharma plays math with his son, who aspires to study in CMI - Chennai Mathematical Institute. I wonder how it could be interesting as I felt boring because it’s often too abstract and cumulative nature. Despite acquiring a degree in Royal Science, I failed to relate math to our everyday experience.  Many students also find inherent difficulties as they require a firm foundation to learn new things on mathematics.
My interest on math was never developed during school days. Our entire class VI shockingly failed once in half yearly examination. I had to renew my devotion to the subject as I had to teach math to our daughter at high school. It gave dividend exponentially although I had the single most frustrating subject I had ever faced in schooling. And our daughter scored perfect hundred in mathematics on board examination. I was jubilant then.
It was the first day of my Management class in Chennai. Professor Iyengar illustrated his point with a diagram on the blackboard. We happily replied “Red Cross”. The South Indian with U-shape teeka in all white dhotis and half sleeved shirt was utterly disappointed. We had a group of students of various discipline from arts, science, commerce to military personnel. The senior flag officials like Brigadiers used to be a student. The teacher knows, they may not be able to learn new things on Quantitative Method without previous knowledge and he started with one solid hour from reminding us the basic symbols of math such as +, -, ×, ÷ to the level of the first chapter. Indeed he made mathematics in funny and easy way.
Chennai has connection with math since ages. The professor reminded us the magic number 1729 discovered by a little boy from south India, who is obsessed with mathematics in his childhood. His estimated IQ score was 185 which is greater than Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking 160-190 and 160-170 respectively. He is Srinivasa Ramanujan. It is the sole number which can be expressed as the sum of the cubes of two different sets of numbers 1729 = 10^ 3 + 9^ 3 = 12^ 3 + 1^3.
He had made remarkable contributions in various fields of mathematics. He once quoted from his mother’s reply about this little mathematical anomaly, “What on earth are you talking about? There’s no way that’s true!” The sum of all positive integers equals ?1/12 i.e. 1 + 2 + 3 + ? + ? = -1/12? After all, Ramanujan Summation defies basic logic. How could adding positive numbers equal not only a negative, a small number but a negative fraction? He proved it is just that, an anomaly. I failed to understand how a mathematician tries to tell that the sum of all positive integers and so on to infinity is equal to ?1/12. Isn’t that clearly ridiculous?
The birth anniversary of the famous mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan is celebrated as National Mathematics Day. He was born on 22 December 1887 in Erode near Chennai. Child prodigy Ramanujan failed every subject except mathematics of his first Arts Examination for he could not enter the University of Madras. Despite the hardship he continued to study independently. He gained recognition for his brilliant research paper work after publication in the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society on the numerical evaluation of “Euler’s constant” and on the properties of the “Bernoulli Numbers”.
Ramanujan kept writing his work to many British mathematicians until Cambridge Professor GH Hardy found his unproved theorems interesting and appeared to be new and important. He had to struggle his life for a livelihood. He wrote Hardy to get a scholarship either from the university or from the government. Indeed the University of Madras gave Ramanujan a scholarship and Hardy brought him to Trinity College, Cambridge to begin an extraordinary collaboration. That led to important results of highly composite numbers for his graduation with a Bachelor of Arts by Research.
Ramanujan left a number of unpublished theorems that Hardy passed on to Watson for study. The quality in exception for his works, Hardy made him to the elected member of London Mathematical Society. His finding served to open up new direction in research and his formula number pi is still used today in magnetic signal, satellite and GBS trekking. He made substantial contributions to the analytical theory of numbers and worked on elliptic functions, continued fractions, and infinite series.
Today I had stuck up with one simple math equation that went viral and divided the internet last year. 8 ÷ 2 (2 + 2) = ? Is the answer 16 or is it 1? Before I summarize the result, my daughter quickly got the answer 16. It is based on the modern interpretation of PEDMAS/BODMAS. But we older generation got the answer in otherwise ways. This is yet another lesson in order of operations. This equation really brings it down to the basics school days. Mathematics was a younger field back in Ramanujan’s day. Despite of all difficulties and challenges, math is always fun. Everyone wants a taste for mathematics and can’t escape the day-to-day.