Thursday, March 14, 2013

Math: A Love Hate Relationship

Growing up, math and I never got along; we just ran in different circles. In fact when I went through my "emo" poetry phase I even wrote an angsty poem about how much I really hated math. I was never bad a math, in fact I was always ahead of the typical math track for my grade. In high school I even took AP Calc and passed with an A. So why the hate you ask? Well I like things that are able to be interpreted which is why I love English, History, Anthropology, etc. That's why I tried to take the least amount of math as possible in undergrad.

I was able to accomplish my goal for a while and then I got into Grad School. For any of you who know anything about Geospatial Information Science (GIS) there is quite a bit of math involved, especially statistics. I found myself having to pull out old math books, having Grant (who likes math a little too much sometimes, hence his car "bling"), give me refresher courses, and wrapping my head around concepts that I blocked out a while ago.

Well now that I'm farther into my Grad program I have learned to make peace with math. We're not bffs by any means, but more like those cousins that you only see at family functions a couple times a year. In my job I tend to use math as well since I help out with the billing (especially now since my supervisor is on maternity leave). Needless to say we have to at least get along for me to survive in the tech environment that I planted myself in.

So the reason that I'm talking about math today? Well it's pi day! For those of you who don't know, the number pi is 3.14159265359 (and on and on and on) and is used in many different mathematical problems. Today is March 14 (3/14) hence why today is pi day. 

Pi is a number that I happen to use a lot in  my GIS studies especially since it requires geometry to map areas. Now when it comes to pi, we've never had a problem. We've always been very cordial with each other and I think this has the most to do with pi day. It was the one "math holiday" that I liked because, well we got PIE.  Pie happens to be my favorite dessert so it would make sense that today would be a great day. So enjoy your pi day and dig into your favorite slice (or whole) pie!

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