Math tends to have a bad reputation in the eyes of students. Many find it boring, confusing, frustrating and/or useless (before they realize how much they actually will need it when they become adults). Apparently, over 100 million students across the globe even fail a math class every single year. But according to a 2018 Pew Research Center survey, over half of Americans say they actually did enjoy learning about math and science in school.
If you were one of those students, from the US or anywhere else around the globe, who couldn’t help but be fascinated by geometry, algebra, trigonometry and more, we hope you’ll enjoy this humorous list. Note Library shares a variety of memes that find the comedy in equations and come up with brilliant puns about mathematics. I have to admit that I certainly do not understand all of the jokes on this list, as it’s been many years since I’ve stepped foot in a math class, but I’m sure you pandas are much smarter than I. So enjoy!
Once we reach adulthood, it becomes increasingly clear why it was so necessary for us to learn math as children. It’s everywhere! Calculating tax in your head while approaching the checkout line in a grocery store or calculating how much to tip the server for your dinner out. Budgeting how much to spend on groceries this month and keeping track of how much milk to use every day to ensure it lasts the entire week. No matter where we look, we can’t avoid math!
When it comes to some of the most important reasons why we need to have an understanding of math, Prodigy explains on their site that it actually promotes healthy brain function. Frequently solving math problems and improving our math skills is actually like giving our brains a workout, which keeps them healthy and functioning in tip top shape.
Math is also important for us to learn because it improves our problem-solving skills. As silly as word problems seemed when we were children (Who would possibly need to be transporting 17 watermelons home?), they actually were preparing us for our adult lives. Through working out all of those tedious problems in school, we learned how to extract important information and turn it into a solution. “When students understand algorithms and problems more deeply, they can decode the facts and more easily solve the issue,” the Prodigy team writes. “Real-life solutions are found with math and logic.”
Math supports logical reasoning and analytical thinking, two things we all need. When we have a great understanding of mathematical concepts, we can use them for more than just manipulating numbers. They can also help us “see the pathways to a solution,” Prodigy explains. “Equations and word problems need to be examined before determining the best methods for solving them. And in many cases, there’s more than one way to get to the right answer.” You may not love math, but logical reasoning and math go hand in hand and will help you in all aspects of your life.
As we all know, math is incredibly important when it comes to balancing budgets and improving our personal financial literacy. Anything from doing your weekly grocery shopping to getting a loan to purchase your first car requires quite a bit of mathematical problem solving. As cool as it may have been during your school days to slack off during math class or ignore your teacher when they introduced new concepts, being a financially literate adult who knows they can always pay rent and afford to eat each month is way more impressive.
As with anything in life, humor allows us to have more fun, including math! Ilana Horn, creator of the Teaching/Math/Culture blog, wrote a piece in 2019 detailing how humor can be helpful in the classroom, and she noted that it can ease the tension that often finds its way into classrooms. Math class can be stressful, especially for students who don’t take to the subject easily or who are worried about their grades. Incorporating jokes, humor and memes can help humanize teachers and remind students that learning actually can be fun.
