Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Learning Journey

The concept of ‘Math in Nature’ is as innate as a person taking their first breath. Most would agree that our conception of math in its basic form has been derived as a means to describe aspects of our environment as an element of a much larger sociological agreement. So to say that “math exists in nature” is as redundant a statement as saying that humans themselves exist in nature. However in researching this topic one can not help but marvel at how well ‘mathematics’ corresponds with the grand scheme of things and ultimately makes one wonder what came first; an issue of the chicken or the egg as it were.
Whatever the case, we can rationalize that math in nature is factual in its tangibility. It is this outstanding quality that makes the use of math in nature a tremendous resource for the classroom. Too often we force mathematical concepts on the basis of blind faith, while examples such as these are quite literally all around us. Demonstrating math in nature is an ideal approach for illustrating what many students will regard as arbitrary information and should be utilized by all teachers as a tool to increase learner interest.