Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Applied mathematics is challenging ??


Mathematics is the only subject which avoids so many if and buts.When a person says he is not good in mathematics we immediately deduce that he is not an intelligent. Why mathematics is tough ?? Small child when it is in LKG / UKG it is asked to memorize number 1 to 25. Up to 1 to 10 it can do addition and subtraction using fingers then it blindly follows some algorithm for > 10. When it goes to 1st standard , It is mandatory to memorize upto 5 tables .. i.e look up table in modern term. Slowly the mathematics becomes abstract and not like concrete science. When the child writes 10th standard exam , for him maths and science are two mutually exclusive subjects !! Then 12th exam all vector ,analytical geometry , trigonometry , differential equations , calculus etc... Mathematics has become a abstract scoring subject , hitting a six with out knowing in which direction the ball is hit !!
In engineering , First few semesters we study Laplace transform , Matrix algebra , vector algebra , complex theory , Fourier analysis every thing before the real application-subjects such as electromagnetic theory , circuit analysis , Signal processing come into the curriculum. So we are still studying abstract mathematics for first two years in our engineering. Last two years we try to derive the mathematical aspects of Em Waves , Signal Processing etc.. They are not aligned !!The ultimate truth is Maths teachers do not teach the application of Mathematics and Science teachers think we know the mathematics of the subjects !! So again Mathematics and Science/engineering not connecting to each other !!

So we finally realize we are good in maths , we are good in engineering but we can not read some research papers because when we fuse together 'Applied Mathematics' we are still bad in this !! How many of us know the physical meaning of Eigen value and Vector !! How Fourier series is derived from Taylor series !! How Maxwell derived em equations 24 years before the experiments done by Hendry !!
Our curriculam should teach mathematics parallel to science and engineering . Alignment should be perfect.In general , from next generation on wards we need to insist our children to concentrate on applied mathematics rather than pure mathematics !!

5 comments:

AgentHunt said...

The education system has never focused on learning. We never learnt mathematics. we learnt only techniques on how to solve a "so called" problems.

SHUBHA said...

Nice article....

jithendrian said...

Thanks Shubha
Thanks
shailesh, You are absolutely right, They taught 'how to solve the problem , but not why to solve the problem !!'

Unknown said...

really nice one jitu, a touching blog for us science people, one other author had discussed, he said d way we learn maths like trying to eat iron when human body is deficient of iron, do we do dat? no we take food supplements, similarly maths should be taught in parallel to a problem at hand n not like trying to eat iron, nice blog da, go on!!!, a read treat

Ashwini Vanmali said...

Wow! This is so true!! Most fo us do not know the real application of maths..!! Hope our kids get to learn differently!