Beauty and the Math Beast
By: Shefali O'Hara
Tags: Careers, Feminism, Mathematics, Women, African American

Beauty and the Math Beast

Why Overcoming your Fear of Math will help your Life and Career

Photo by Ryan Jacobson on Unsplash

Do you Hate Math?

Many women don’t like math. Some feel uncomfortable with it. A few have even expressed fear of numbers. By refusing to confront the math beast, though, I think they are doing themselves a disservice.

When I was a child, I read about Mary McLeod Bethune. Born in rural South Carolina after the Civil War, she saw sharecroppers being cheated. The poor black farmers were paid less than they were owed because they could not do math and had to rely on those who weighed their cotton. Not all of these were trustworthy. Ms. Bethune was able to intervene on behalf of one of her father’s friends to make sure he got full payment.

She was able to do this because she knew math.

Is Math Still Useful Today?

I think it is. I know I use math regularly. When I go shopping, I use it to compare prices and weights to make sure I get the best value for my money and to check my receipt before I leave the store. When I fill my gas tank, I calculate my mileage. Once a month I use math to balance my checkbook and check my budget and once a year I use it when I file my taxes.

Math is useful when I want to alter a recipe or a pattern, and when I tip for service. (As a New Yorker, I grew up with tipping 18% but I’ve since altered that to 20%, which has the advantage of being easier to calculate.) When I laid out my garden, I used math to determine the square footage and when I plan my day I use it to help me schedule and calculate timing to get to events.

I’ve also done calculations that have helped me determine how to make investments and whether or not it was a good idea to buy a house.

Recently, when I was in the Czech Republic, being able to run numbers in my head helped me know the dollar value of items I was buying in koruna, the local currency, as well as the exchange rates so I could trade in euros I had acquired in Vienna without being cheated.

Why Not just use a Machine to do my Math for Me?

Of course, we have technology now to help with calculations. But technology is not always fail safe. Once, while traveling in Colorado, we encountered a snowstorm that caused a power outage. We were hungry so we stopped at a Subway. The guy behind the counter told us he couldn’t serve us because how could he figure out how much we owed without power? I did the calculations on a napkin, so he sold us sandwiches and chips. We left satisfied instead of hungry because we could do math.

Could Math help my Career?

Math is not just useful in these types of day to day concerns. It’s also useful for your career. If you get an opportunity in a different city, for example, how do you know if taking it is a good decision? You can use math to determine if it makes sense in terms of cost of living and quality of life.

You can also make the case for a salary increase more easily if you are comfortable with numbers. I believe that one reason women tend to get paid less than men is that they are not as likely to negotiate for what they want. Part of this stems from a discomfort with numbers. The effects are twofold — a general unease makes it harder to broach the subject. Additionally, it’s harder to marshal good facts and figures without using formulas.

For all of these reasons, I think it behooves women (and men!) who are uncomfortable with math to get over their discomfort.

Why are you Anxious or Scared?

This might be a good question to ask yourself. What about mathematics makes it difficult for you? Is it that you were told as a child that you weren’t good at it? Is it test anxiety? Is it simply that numbers seem unapproachable and hard? Being honest with yourself and examining the cause is a good step towards accepting this part of yourself. It’s OK to be math-phobic. You have plenty of company. But you don’t want to stay there.

So, how do you conquer your fears?

Start Small.

My advice is to take baby steps. If you are nervous or afraid, pushing yourself too hard is just going to make things seem impossible. Besides, if you look at the examples above, most don’t involve complicated calculus or differential equations. Typically grade school math will be sufficient for most applications.

If you can learn to do arithmetic more easily along with some fractions and percentages… I realize for the mathematically challenged, even this might seem daunting, but it’s not a hurdle that requires genius, it just needs time and practice.

Pick up a workbook at the most basic level and set aside a time each day to practice for 10 or 15 minutes. Just work a few problems each day. Don’t feel embarrassed if you start off with your child’s first grade textbook. It’s OK. It doesn’t matter where you start, all that matters is that you try. You can gradually work up to more complex problems at your own pace.

Making it More Interesting

There is a joke my uncle told me when I was a kid. We are Gujurati. (Gujurat is a state in India). Supposedly that means we are good with money.

The joke goes like this:

A Gujurati mother was trying to help her son with his math homework. He kept failing to do the sums. “Mummy,” he said. “It’s too hard!” So she took away the papers and gave him some coins instead. “Now try it,” she said. All of a sudden, he could easily make all the calculations!

The joke is supposed to be funny because Gujuratis allegedly enjoy handing cash. While it might be offensive, I thought it actually had a good message — if you find something difficult, find a way to make it more interesting.

If doing sums in a workbook has you stumped, turn it into a game using something you have an emotional connection to.

Maybe you love shoes. Go into your closet, get all your footwear, split it up into categories — sandals, pumps, boots, sneakers — and use these to do your calculations. Or if you love cats— come up with currency using images downloaded from the net of adorable kittens.

Or just use money, if that’s what you want! Use piles of pennies, nickles, dimes and quarters. Or, my personal favorite — chocolates. As a reward for doing my sums correctly, I’d eat the “numbers”.

Note: If you decide to use beer or any other alcoholic beverage to do math, make sure you don’t drive afterwards! And you may want to have a sober friend check your work…

Find an App

There’s an app for everything these days. A friend of mine and I even found an app for staying hydrated. If there are apps for things as basic as drinking water, you know there are apps as well as online games and so on for doing math. If this is what you need to get you going, then go for it.

The goal is not to become a mathematician. The goal is to become comfortable enough with numbers so you can improve your life. You decide when you have reached that goal.

Who knows, you might decide, once you’ve conquered that challenge, that you’d like to go further. After all, some people find playing with numbers fun. Maybe you’ll take up Sudoku. Or actually take over the family budget. Maybe you’ll be someone who enjoys the beauty of mathematics.

Or maybe you’ll be someone who treats it like eating your veggies or doing crunches — not particularly enjoyable but a necessity that gives you satisfaction now that you’ve mastered it.

Whatever you feel, know that once you master the basics, you will be better able to take care of yourself. And that’s always a good feeling.