Pushing a greased elephant up a hill – some people think it would be easier to do that than to do algebra.
Why is that?
Maybe they think they don’t have the “math gene.” You know, the one that allows you to find that ever evasive “x”? Even the letter x is mysterious. Think about it. It’s not the most commonly used letter in the alphabet, and just saying the letter seems to have a negative connotation.
There are those that think they’ll never find x – they think it’s constantly on the move like a fugitive, trying not to be discovered, hiding in dark alleys and behind dumpsters. But what if we changed our thinking? What if instead we thought of it as that poor little helpless puppy who just wanted to be discovered? Wouldn’t you do anything in your power to find it?
I hear people say, “I can’t do math,” or “I have a mental block when it comes to algebra.” Or better yet, “When am I ever going to use this in real life?” Well I promise you, when you get abducted by aliens and your only way home is to solve a system of linear equations, you’ll be glad you know how to do it. OK, I might be exaggerating just a little.
The truth of the matter is, you may not need to know at what time Train A catches up to Train B if it is traveling at twice the speed of Train B but leaves one hour later than Train B, I’ll give you that much. But you might need to know how to figure out how much material to buy to fence in a yard, or to tile a floor.
Maybe finding out how much solution is needed for the proper ratio of a chemical mixture is something you’ll need for your job. You might want to know how to calculate earnings on different types of investments, or the probability of a certain event happening. The list goes on and on.
Here’s the point: in order to be able to do all of these things, you need to be able to think logically, systematically, and analytically, as well as be able to problem solve. And guess what? Algebra teaches you to do that. Yup, I’m not kidding.
I’ll prove it to you. Ready? Here’s a good one.
You start with 1 penny on Day 0.
On Day 1, you double it, so you have 2 cents. On Day 2, you double that, so you now have 4 cents.
Every day, the previous day’s amount is doubled.
Now, let’s say I hire you for only 30 days. You have the option of one of the following two salary structures. You could either take $1,000,000 at the end of 30 days OR I start you off with 1 cent before you even start working. On Day 1, I double that 1 cent, and continue each day according to the algorithm above, for 30 days. At the end of 30 days you will receive the sum of the 30 day’s earnings. Which option would you take? I’ll make it even more interesting…instead of $1 million I’ll make it $5 million. That’s a lot of money for 30 days of work! BUT, is it the RIGHT choice??? Let’s look at it more analytically, shall we?
If you start with one cent and double it every day for a week, here is what you would have:
Not very impressive after one week, is it? I bet that $5 million is looking pretty good right about now, huh? Well, let’s look at what happens after the second week:
It’s marginally better, but still nowhere near $5 million!! You are probably thinking who would be foolish enough to choose this option??? Let’s keep going…
Now that’s starting to look a little more promising! But it’s still so far away from $5 million! How can this option reach $5 million in 9 days???
Now here’s the kicker…I said in the beginning that at the end of 30 days you would receive the sum of the 30 days’ earnings. Want to see me really blow your mind?? If you add up all 30 days of earnings, you end up with…wait for it…
$21,474,836.47. Boom. Mic drop.
Now, this particular example is probably not going to happen in real life. I’m fairly confident that a company would go out of business if they offered this salary structure. But at first you probably thought the $1 million option was pretty good because there was no way that one penny could turn into over $10 million in 30 days. We approached this very analytically, making a chart so that visually it was easy to understand.
Now, I’m not going to go into the mechanics of the formula and how it works, but suffice it to say, if we hadn’t done this example and I had just given you an equation and said “Here’s a formula for exponential growth”, you might look at me like I have 3 heads. More importantly, the concept of exponential growth might not make any sense at all to you. And quite honestly, I wouldn’t blame you. That might be the equivalent of me saying, “You have 12 pencils and the mail is delivered at 4 pm. If the dog’s bone is bacon-flavored, how long will it take the dog to bury its bone in the backyard?” But if we can apply something tangible to it, so that it makes more sense to us, doesn’t that make it easier to understand? And yes, my friends, this concept of exponential growth is actually algebra, and it’s used in the real world. Biology, physics, economics, finance, and computer technology all use exponential growth.
So let’s get rid of this notion of “when am I ever going to use this in real life?” or “I can’t do math.” It doesn’t fly with me. You can do it, you just have to do it. I can’t make it any simpler than that. You. Can. Do. It. Is it going to be hard? Probably. Will you understand it right away? Maybe, maybe not. Will you get discouraged? Most likely. Does that mean you shouldn’t try? Of course not!
I guarantee that even the most notorious mathematicians have made mistakes. Even they have failed miserably at some things they’ve tried to solve. But they persevered, and you should too. Give yourself the chance to be successful – you really have nothing to lose!!
I implore you to think of algebra not as some course you have to take to get through high school, but rather as a tool that will help you to function in the real world. Even if a topic doesn’t seem like something you’ll ever use in your life, think of it more as learning how to process information, how to approach a problem systematically, how to determine if a numerical answer makes sense. I promise you, if you change your viewpoint, you’ll be determined to find that little puppy!
Pushing a greased elephant up a hill – some people think it would be easier to do that than to do algebra. 
You start with 1 penny on Day 0. 
