Math is a Game

People love to hate math. How often have you heard someone brag about how bad at math they are, or say that they aren’t a “math person”? Is there a way to make math less about tests and more about creativity?

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[justinward]

Trying to change America's education system is like trying to breathe underwater.

[jeffreycanfield]

People hate math because of how boring school makes it out to be. Very few math teachers actually show students how interesting math could be.

[WAQWBrentwood]

I believe it starts with the very word "problem". The concept of treating math as a "puzzle", rather a "problem" would help especially in the lower grades before "math phobia" sets in.

[willianv]

I'm getting to know your channel today and I loved that you used a brazilian meme at 0:35 and another great brazilian meme at 3:45. Thanks for making teaching and learning math more fun!

[thephysicistcuber]

any speedcubers? any BLDers? any FMCers? any pyraminxers? you got it...

[PrenticeNeto]

I love the fact that this video has TWO brazilian memes, lmao

BTW, in my opinion this video is a perfect example of memes used cleverly.

[abedc]

IMO, as an average person, I think most of people hate Math because of Educationer/Teacher sucks at teaching it. On the other hand, many Mathematician and Math enthusiast are weird, not in a good way and therefore sucks at inspiring it.

[tinslam]

So many memes in an educational video. Perhaps adding memes to math makes it more appealing.

[True_Comrade]

Math=My brain tells me I'm right, but my grades tell me I'm wrong.

[Naverb]

Thank you so much for this video. I have recently written a couple short (15-20 page) papers on the topics of active learning in the classroom (games, activities, computers, etc) as well as an essay comparing mathematics to art, where complex structures are built from simple ideas just like a captivating painting is built from simple brushstrokes. All this is in the hopes of writing up a longer work on this exact topic, and this video has been an inspiration in convincing me to pursue this! I'm glad to hear I'm not alone in my views about how the public perceives and is taught mathematics today :)

[semicharmedkindofguy]

I love mathematics, but I used to hate it when I was younger. It was a chore memorising all those formulas coming out of nowhere. For example, we were taught matrices in school without any introduction to why or how it came to be or used, we were just memorising multiplication formulas and such (we weren't even taught their relation to linear equations then). It wasn't until I started reading articles and seeing videos that I started to see the beauty of the whole thing.
The problem with the educational system is, I think, they focus only on the end result, leaving out all the intuition and logical reasoning one uses to obtain the end result. And many teachers aren't good at teaching math either (I had a teacher who taught pi=22/7 and left it at that). We should instead take an approach where the class is given an interesting problem to solve, with students coming up with ideas on how to solve it, the teacher guiding them along the thought process until they reach the portions that are in the text book. I wish that was how I was taught.

[umnikos]

3:00

Before watching the solution:
I did some math in my head, for n that's a power of 2, the number of matches will always be n-1. We can prove it using induction (that's the only way I see (even though I never learned induction in school))

After watching:
Oh crap that's super clever... I suck at math

[DullFiction]

I used to love math, but calculus is kicking my nuts into depression

[gilgameshe.e]

in my last math test in high school ( which, with other subjects, will decide where I will study ) I decided to solve the complex Geometry question over a simple multiply one, my score was 95%, I still remember how I was laughing in my to home ;)

[useit]

This legit summarizes all my thoughts on the topic, great video as always!

[josephpostma]

Math is getting fun for me experimenting with different firing angle and range a stuff with my mini mortar.
I wanna get into a physics class, math did used to be so boring.

[victorpaesplinio]

I love mathematics just because it is full of amusement in every single ideia!

I am Brazilian and I am glad to see a Brazilian meme at 0:34! At 3:47 this is also Brazilian! I love this channel

[TiaguinhouGFX]

What if I am not satisfied with just being able to do math but want to be a true genius at it?

[xavierkreiss]

This video is excellent, although perhaps not in the way that was intended.
My level in maths is abysmal - I can do simple numerical calculation, no more.
And I hate the subject because I never understood anything further than that. No, it wasn't the quality of the teaching: the other guys in my class managed, and we had the same teachers.
About the video:I have never thought maths was all about memorising multiplication tables and taking standardised tests.
But the video gives a clue when it speaks of ways of making maths interesting or fun. Ok, let's have a look: sudoku? That's a very good example of the problem: friends explained the principle of the game to me several times, but I never found the idea interesting in any way. The video also mentions Rubik's cube. I never tried because I didn't find that interesting either. 
And the problem regarding the tennis players in the video? I was able to follow from beginning to end and yes, I agree that the second solution is clever. But there again I wouldn't say I found it interesting. 
And remember:"interesting" is a subjective notion. You can't tell me that I'm wrong and that it IS interesting. It may be that to you, but not to me.
Does this make me a "non-maths person", incapable of "doing maths"? Some say there's no such thing, but I have no opinion on that. All I know is that I was never any good at it, that I never found it interesting. 
And the video is right: from the age of 10, the more I failed at it the more I hated it.
Towards the end of secondary school a maths teacher I liked wrote in my quarterly report that I was a "very good example of an intelligent pupil totally impervious to mathematical reasoning". 
After secondary school and a year in university, I enrolled in a journalism school and became a journalist.

So what games do I enjoy? Crossword puzzles, especially the cryptic kind. And various kinds of word games.

[alchemy]

Every single person is good at Math. If you don't believe me just wait when someone still owes you money because the have been paying you in increments.