Trigon Empire

I do a lorra ear-books though Borrowbox. Sometimes I 🐸wish🐸 that a chunky book on my reading list was available in the audio medium but I don't go all into a rage about it; I just question why completely unsuitable books are rendered into .mp3 instead. Like who was thinking what when they published How to Draw a Map in audio . . . with no maps?

Rachel Riley [R] makes arithmetic look easy. Because, for her (and me), tricking about with numbers is easy. It's partly mind-set and aptitude but also partly training. Old style National School rote learning emphasized the training. Thus you get generational transfer of times-tables and arithmetical tools transmitted by national school teachers who were good enough at the tricks but really had not the bog's notion of the under-lying principles and no particular feeling for numbers. A bit like me being required to teach 2nd year college Physics when I'd failed my Physics "O" level at 15. 

I was in a pretty funny situation earlier in the month ear-booking through At Sixes and Sevens: How to Understand Numbers and Make Maths Easy by Rachel "Countdown" Riley. Obvs [hint: audiobook] without pictures. I hear Riley brightly uttering some bafflegab "a cubed plus b cubed all in brackets is not the same as a to the half plus two sin theta plus b raised to next tuesday" and adding confidently "it will all be clear if you refer to the triangle on page 14 of your PDF". Hint: there is no PDF b/c Borrowbox don't think it's important.

The ostensible reason for the book is for parents to help their kids with the math which the youngsters are being cold-bath-after-breakfasted at school. The first tuthree chapters are on-message and quite inspiring. Asserting that math anxiety is a state of mind and that we all (particularly grrls) should stop labelling ourselves (or anyone else!) as crap-at-math. But soon enough the Riley accepts the school math curriculum at face value and offers a number of different ways-of-seeing to help us crack the code. Which is fair enough given the Mission Statement for parents to help their kids with the math. 

But really? wtf are schools putting everyone through simultaneous equations? Puzzles which can be solved using SimEqs have been around for about 2,000 years and they currently get binned in the Algebra chapter of maths text-books. But that's it, they are puzzles. Riley professes to love fractions, cats and algebra and handles SimEqs by presenting a plainly out-of-reality but mildly amusing conundrum. The puzzle involves mix and matching school dinners where the menu offers rice, salad and tacos and various combos of kids who come back home with receipts for the cost of their dinner. In this fantasy land The Parent says "Let's work out what the cost of each item is". Because the price is bafflingly not on the menu? Ah ha, this is why the kids are comen como mexicanos it's because
R + S + T = alphabetical algebra.

1r + 1s + 2t = £10.00
3s + 2t      = £10.00
2s + 3t      = £14.50

There follows 5 minutes of ". . . we can now plug r = 2s into either the second or the third equation . . ." which may be clear as a blut of chili sauce IF you have the PDF but in audio-only it's just so much word salad. I like these sorts of puzzles; I'm okay at solving them; but it's a long way from a justification for requiring mastery of SimEqs for all teenagers in school because it will set them up for real life. Because in real life (if you-the-parent really needed to know the cost of a portion of salad at school) you'd send young Jimmy in with a note for the dinner ladies "Please tell my poor Dad how much the salad costs [£__.__]"

I had At Sixes and Sevens in my ears for 8 hours as I fossicked about doing outdoor chores. The last 2/3 of that time, absent the PDF, it was a warm bath of familiar nonsense - like overhearing two people talking Portuguese behind me on a bus. In 1984, my Portuguese was fluent enough to read a newspaper and get what I needed from people in shops and offices; now not so much - but hearing it again triggers happy saudades.

But 'ere: I did learn something which has been hidden from me in plain sight for all my mathy life. Trigonometry is all about the -metry of Trigons aka triangles in mathogreek . . . pentagon, hexagon etc. Trigan Empire in the title is a nostalgic reference to a 1960s childhood getting the glossy mag Look and Learn in the regular. Every issue had a two page spread following the dynastic antics of folks who dressed like Romans and carried swords but also had anti-grav space-ships and phasers. It was great!

Ans: rice £2.00; salad £1.00; taco £3.50