Me and Math. An expression of affection.

At the risk of sounding too obtuse for eight tenths of my readers, I would like to share a brief history of me and math at this time. I promise to try and make it acute story. We can use parabolas as a sort of parable to describe, in mathematical terms, my ongoing relationship with math. (Figuratively of course)
YOU: stop with teh clevr and get to the point!

My first experiences with math are remembrances of First grade where we learned to count by 2s, 5s and 10s. My teacher Ms. Beady gave us songs to help us memorize the multiples.  I in turn used them in my own classroom.

I never had much of a mind for figuring. I could have really used a tiger mom back in my pre-k days. Now, before someone claims I had horrible parents, let me just say that they tended to focus on reading, rhymes and songs. Surprise, surprise. Those are muh skillllz!

Granted, anyone worth debating with will point out that my above statement is terribly reductionist in nature and overly deterministic. Like, 'Oh, yer mom didn't buy you flash cards when you were three so you're going to suck at math.' SN: for those of you who took me at my word, welcome to the horde. Please enjoy the Kool-aid!

Ok, fine. It's not all my mom's fault. But the kids who had flashcards flipped in their faces did have stronger bases and did have a confidence I always lacked in that domain. I kept my head down, as in w-a-a-a-a-y down into the lowest scoring percentile of my class. But it didn't get bad until I had the same math teachers for seventh and eight grade. Alone, each was fine to talk to. But put them in front of a class together and they were the shade of evil old married couples can be when they've been together long enough to really start looking the same. Evil. Like finish each other's mean sentences, evil.
So my first year of high school was horrible because my "teacher" Sister Peg was an odd, old beastie who used analogies I could barely grasp, "You've got apples you can't have oranges, says you." I never said any such thing to Sister Peg. *NEVER* But anyway,  thanks to the old married duo, I never had pre-algebra either, so I cried a lot at the board.

Next came Ms. Sumner. She said at the start of class that if you didn't like Algebra, you were sure to do a lot better in Geometry because it's all about lines and whatever. Like if you're more artistic and less of a "math person" you'll do great here. It has practical app--I stopped listening just about there. I liked her prim style of dress. It was easy for me to think of her as intelligent despite her thick Boston accent. She made me keep my notebook neat and I wanted to do so well for her.

Well, I middled for her at least. Hey, it was my second year of high school! I was in both the drama and art club. Moreover, I was trying to decide between Bobby and Rubin. Should I go with Tom or hold out for Nicky? I'm the only one who's not in love with Paul or Matt. Am I gay?You know, chaos theory!  Real maths.

So then we moved from Boston to Cape Cod. And along came Mr something or other. He could make me feel special through making me feel stupid. That's quite a delicate balance.
For instance, one time, in front of the whole class he actually said, "Now this is a fairly simple concept. Everyone should catch on rather quickly with the possible exception of Erin."
See that, special and stupid. No remainder.

Obviously, no more math was required so no EXTRA was taken for the subsequent duration of high school. Adiós, to you too, Spanish! I didn't take the SATs and so I made my way to a junior college in Boston. (Mostly so I could still party on the weekends with my old high school friends and not have to live with my mom anymore.)

It was at this time that I met and made friends with Algebra.

I don't remember my professor's name, but I worked with her all the time outside of class learning how to accomplish those repetitive formulas.

Algebra is so simple it takes the leg out of elegance. 

Help, I've fallen and I can't make maths

It became kind of zen for me.
Step one: look down at paper.
Step two: follow memorized steps.
Step three: feel good about a job well done. 

I for real started to love it. Deans list. A's in e-v-e-r-y-thing. After one year of junior college I transferred to a 4 year school, tested out of the math requirement and thusly have been outsourcing simple dealings with numbers in my personal life ever since.
Of course I've taught and enjoyed 5th, 6th and 2nd grade math and still love explaining why we should always use the distributive property when a pen and a cocktail napkin are handy. But by and large, for me, math is just another language to appreciate puns in.
And so..
Have you seen yet the algebraic expression:
9x-7i > 3(3x-7u) for those of you who aren't rolling your eyes, let's work it out!
Parenthesis first! So, we rewrite the equation, like so:
9x-7i > 9x-21u
Now on to variables! Make sure they match up! Looks like we can take 9x from both sides! (Cheery by nature, not cuz I hate ya) Ahem:
-7i > -21u
You've got apples you can't have oranges, says you. Translation: I have never slept with a man because I married Jesus. NO, not the literal translation. What sister Peg means is, You can't mix your variable. Even if you can mix a fruit salad. It's a mixture. Just saying. Right so, divide both sides by 7 because that will leave i or  1 by itself. Thus:
i < 3 u

This lends us  an easy enough frame work to try our own problems.
The first one I came up with was:
15x-6i > 3(5x- 6u)
But I didn't want to have any of the original numbers, so then I did:
12x-2i > 6(2x-1u)
Mais, that was too easy, given that every number was divisible by 12. The last one I played with was:
14x-8i > 2(7x- 12u)

Yeah, I know. But anyway..
Can you come up with your own? Some of youz is wicked smaht. I just know it.
The trick's to remember that the sum of the first variable, (in our case we kept using x--which in no way is required), must be equal to the sum of the first integer you multiply to find the x function on the left side of the expression. To illustrate:
?=?(?x
Also bare in mind that both the i and u variables must be divisible by three by the time you reach step 3 (and have thereby removed the parentheses through multiplication.) Do one, it's fun!  Or you can just use this: handy tool. Dormi arigato Mr. McGoogle.

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