Mathematics is a remarkably useful discipline.  It is the foundation of our digital and computing age; essential to the effective application of knowledge in almost every field, from engineering to medicine, economics to physics, from political campaigns to the study of language.

But we don’t study mathematics for all it can do, so much as we study it for all it can do…to us.  Francis Su, our Opening Ceremony speaker in the fall, noted that we study mathematics in part, because of the virtues that it instills in us: fortitude, perseverance, a love of the truth, and even faith (that there’s an answer to every math problem, whether I can see it right now, or not).

Galileo said that “[m]athematics is the language in which God has written the universe,” and Einstein said that “[p]ure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.”  We don’t read poetry or look at the stars because they help us build bridges or do the laundry—we marvel at the heavens or a sonnet because we’re human.

So, don’t fall into the trap of always asking your math teacher: When am I ever going to use this?  Why can’t I just use a calculator to get the answer?  The question is not what you’re going to do with the math—the question is, what is the math doing with you?

Have a wonderful day.