Watch Mathematics interest is the key to learning mathematics well, but how to cultivate mathematics interest? Most children will ask, "Mom/Dad, why do I want to learn math?" when doing math problems? To understand this problem, children may be closer to the essence of mathematics, so that children can get "mathematical thinking". Today's article is to help parents sort out how to answer the child's question.
The other day, she chatted with a friend about the problem of children's math learning. She said that although his son's math score was good, he did not seem to have a great interest in math. Different from his love of football and reading, math for him was: he would do it, but not take the initiative.
In fact, this kind of problem happens to many children. Mathematics is like a mountain pressing them. First, it is difficult, and second, it is forced. In addition, the cooling of Olympic mathematics and the reduction of academic burden seem to be telling children, "I can't use the entrance examination anymore, and I can learn math less hard."
In this case, when a child is asked to do math problems, he will sincerely ask "Why should we learn math? Can there really be so many things in our life that we can use math?" Or some children dare not raise such questions because they habitually listen to their parents' words, but secretly generate resentment, thus planting the seeds of not liking math.
School teachers often say that "learning mathematics well, mathematics is closely related to life". Mathematics is really important, which is irrefutable, but why should we learn mathematics?
How should parents who are not proficient in mathematics answer this question? Instead of making mathematics just a hot potato in the eyes of parents, children really understand the essence of mathematics learning and accept mathematics from their hearts. This is the key.
Many articles are about how to learn mathematics, which is the same as heaven and earth put mathematics in a very important position. As for why it is important, few people mention it. Therefore, the Bund gentleman found an old friend - the head coach of the Olympic math team of the United States, a professor from Carnegie Mellon University, to answer this question.
Mathematics is an intuitive correction
The first thing to tell your child is that math can help you correct your intuition.
Many times in life we like to use intuition to judge the right or wrong of a thing. But when intuition gives us contradictory answers, and we are confident about an answer 100%, mathematics plays a role in making up for the shortcomings of human intuition. A very simple example is the coin toss game.
The Bund once saw a question:
"If your friend said that he tossed a coin 10000 times and got 5227 heads, should you trust him?"
Subjectively, 5227 is about half of 10000, so it is credible. But in mathematical terms, if you toss a coin for 10000 times, you can get 5227 positive times. The probability is 2.81 times the negative sixth power of 10, and the probability is zero.
Luo Boshen, head coach of the U.S. Olympic Maths Team, believes that mathematics exists in this way in life. When something obviously does not conform to intuitive judgment, you should explore why. At this time, mathematics came on the stage to help people make judgments and make rational decisions.
Recently, the Bund gentleman saw an article that a father gave his fourth grade girl a budget of 8000 yuan and made a shopping list for the Double 11 Festival to test the child's mathematical ability.
Daughter Guoguo worked hard all afternoon, and the calculation thought was quite clear: including the pre-sale price, deposit, red envelope discount, and the final transaction price, which were clearly listed to help her judge whether it was worth buying. This also helps her to judge whether the advertisement is a real offer.
Mathematics is the beauty of regularity
Some people will also question: it is estimated that the third grade of primary school is enough for these calculations. Of course, mathematics is more than just counting. Secondly, we should tell children that the beauty of mathematics lies in its regularity. For example, 3, 6, 9, 12... is the simplest rule.
Exploring regularity is much more than that. In real life, there are many very beautiful laws. For example, the golden section, Fibonacci series, binomial regional normal distribution, calculation probability, central limit theorem, and so on constitute the whole world.
Therefore, mathematics is not boring. The beauty of mathematics lies in discovering its laws. It is a language that uses digital counting systems, equations, analytic geometry, calculus and so on to express the world.
Why is discipline important? Professor Luo Boshen said that because laws are what we humans have been looking for in the world, we look for laws and try to understand them.
If we don't look for laws, the world will be chaotic, chaotic and difficult to understand; And when we find rules, we can use them to help our lives.
Here are not only the rules of numbers, but also abstract rules. For example, if we know that traffic jams will occur in the early morning every day, we can reasonably avoid traffic jams.
It is in mathematics that the law makes us understand why some solutions are like this, while other solutions are different. Because every time you do this step, the next step will happen naturally. So learning mathematics is the same as making decisions in our life. We need to seek some rules.
Mathematics is the maintenance of curiosity
The third thing to tell children is that math will keep you curious. Curiosity is the point we have always stressed. Children with curiosity are more likely to have imagination and observation. It is also curiosity that makes the world progress.
If it is said that curiosity is the prerequisite for learning mathematics well, it is from another perspective that mathematics promotes the cultivation of curiosity.
This is particularly evident in Professor Luo Boshen, who began to like mathematics when he was very young. In junior high school and high school, he spent about 3-4 hours a day thinking about mathematics, including the time at school and after school. Although the amount of time is not much, we can fully and effectively use this time to think about some constantly changing problems.
When he was an undergraduate, he spent about 4-5 hours every day thinking about mathematics and devoted a lot of time to those abstract theoretical disciplines.
Although it is boring to finish these calculation problems one by one, reasoning proves that logic problems one by one are difficult and painful. Each step is actually a powerful thinking training for the brain.
In his opinion, mathematics has made many things possible, thanks to the mobilization of problem-solving methods and mathematical thinking in solving problems. On this basis, spread your own problem-solving ideas to solve various problems.
In addition, mathematics will make you dare to challenge some unknown problems, because once you get interested, curiosity will encourage you to find better solutions. Therefore, mathematics can make you try and challenge higher difficulty.
On September 18 this year, Alibaba released a global mathematics contest. In Jack Ma's opinion, IT (information technology), DT (data technology), artificial intelligence, IoT (Internet of Things), chips, computers and data are all closely related to mathematics.
Mathematics can not only make children more creative, but also help them enter a new world. In the future, mathematics will become the universal core language of the world and the top ability for everyone to survive in this world. Therefore, every child who learns mathematics well will have great achievements in various fields.
How to make children accept mathematics?
Having said so much, how can we learn mathematics well? Is there a way to enlighten children's mathematical thinking and let them accept mathematics? In the opinion of Mr. Bund, who has always advocated quality training, it should have these elements:
1. A good teacher
First of all, teachers. No matter what they learn, a good enlightenment teacher is very important. A good teacher is an important condition for children to fall in love with a subject.
The Bund gentleman interviewed many parents, and told me without exception that when choosing math extracurricular classes for children, the first consideration is whether teachers have experience, whether they have their own curriculum system, whether they can stimulate children's interest, etc.
2. Contact with life
The second is to be close to life. Mathematics that is far away from life will naturally lead children to the idea that "it is useless for me to learn this course". The math problems from life will make children feel "this is something I can use", which is easier to understand.
3. No need to brush questions mechanically
The third is not the sea tactics. Children's interest in mathematics has been extinguished, largely because of the repetitive exercises. The school's strategy is: as long as you brush more questions, you can always meet one or two questions that have been done. Although this will improve children's math performance, it is not true that they have mastered math.
4. Improvement of thinking ability
The last point is to improve thinking ability. As mentioned above, mathematics can keep children curious, and one of the important points is that mathematical thinking brings.
When children have mathematical thinking, they will have greater interest in mathematics, so they will go to study for thinking, not just to cope with the results.
Based on these four points, the Bund gentleman found Luo Boshen, the head coach of the U.S. Olympic Maths Team and professor of Carnegie Mellon University. Soon we reached a consensus with him and developed a grading course for elementary school students' mathematical thinking.
This is a course that enables students to learn to study and innovate their own problem-solving methods and obtain mathematical thinking. It is essentially different from mathematical calculation training.
Mathematical calculation has clear formulas and laws, which we are more accustomed to rely on. In reality, middle school students often use the train of thought trained by teachers to solve problems, with the purpose of consolidating and strengthening, so as to reflect the answer immediately when encountering similar problems.
But what really benefits students in the long run is to let them learn to find new solutions to problems themselves, so that children can learn mathematics.
Compared with the endless sea of questions tactics, mathematical thinking training pays more attention to guidance and inspiration. Help children flexibly mobilize various senses when encountering problems, and solve problems with their unique creativity, so as to fundamentally improve children's exploration and mathematical self-confidence.
(Statement: This article only represents the author's view, not Sina.com's position.)
