It does some time I registered in Formspring.me and lately I have received several questions on the mathematics education, why they turn out to be so boring to us, or the cause of the typical distaste to the same ones. So I have decided to tell you what was what motivated me to study mathematics and to live of them.
Let’s begin from the beginning (not, to Big Bang, no; a little later). In my house I have always heard all my life speaking about Mathematics: not in vain my parents are both mathematicians. For this motive since I have use of reason the numbers always turned out to be familiar to me. It might be said that instead of red and white globules, for my veins they cover rational and irrational numbers.
For ages the numbers have attracted me. In fact, one of my favorite games when scarcely he was 4 years old was to add the digits of the registrations of the cars when he was traveling with my father. Even when it was at home, it was playing at putting mathematics examinations in a slate, likewise he was listening to my parents to comment on what they were doing in his classes.
Later there came the puzzles of ingenuity, these of the truths or the outstanding figures in poems. Even some ingenious phrase on the mathematics. Little by little, and without realizing, I was beginning wanting to be a mathematician.
Little later, in the school, already it was aiming at ways in mathematics. As example, a pair of anecdotes. In sixth of primary, my teacher, a major master of the old woman (good, even more ancient) school, was correcting the problems for the system of the majority, that is to say, he was asking about the results that we had obtained, and the fact that more people should have it, this had to be the correct one. Everything was going perfectly, until one day I was the minority, and skylight, that did not matter for me. The teacher said that my result, to the being (for major derision) the only one that had obtained it (the rest of my partners obtained all the same one), had to be erroneous and I was located that it was checking again. So I got up and said to the teacher that it had it well and that if he wanted it was solving it in the slate. He accepted angry enough, I went out, solved it and, before his porpia puzzlement (of course, and the anger of my partners) it admitted that all the rest had it badly and only I well.
A pair of years later, in eighth (2nd of THAT today) another teacher (physicist, for more signs) asked us that how much was costing 1 divided one between 0. I raised the hand and said that this operation cannot be realized. The teacher (with a little of sarcasm) said to me that it was badly and that the result was infinite. The guffaws of my partners it was brutal. But that did not stop me and I said to him, that if that was true, of that time since 2 divided between 0 also would be infintio it was deduced that 1 equal age to 2. The face of decomposition that it never put will forget me, but if I gained 2 things: one was that of not having to do (together with another friend and partner) more final mathematics examinations this course, and two, I won a big admirer, since this teacher, whenever it sees me, greets me very ardently and with many happiness, which I also return it to him since it demonstrated to me that a teacher can be wrong and be able to rectify before a pupil.
Anyway, that not to be heavier, during the institute, my relation with the mathematics kept on being definitely increasing, I even gained some contest of games of ingenuity with another good partner who today tmabién is mathematical. But perhaps what more impressed me was my teacher of 3rd of BUP (1st of Baccalaureate today). She was a very peculiar person, old and passionate professor of the Mathematics. And that could transmit it to me. After every small hook of a class, it was always telling us something completely distitnto, but related to what we were giving. Sometimes his parentheses lasted 2 or 3 days, but it was always interesting to see the biggest network of interactions that are the Mathematics.
Finalemente I decided to study Mathematics and, of course, I never repented of my election. True it is that they were not given me completely badly, but that does not remove that he will dedicate a big effort to the career. After her, I decided for the investigation in mathematics and this yes that it is already the maximum thing. To solve a problem that nobody earlier had done it ever, is an indescribable experience (not, it is not like an orgasm). And here you have me today, teaching mathematics in the University of Sevill to and her spreading of the best way that I know in this small personal corner that it is