Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Build a Mathematical Mind - Even If You Think You Can't Have One: Become a Pattern Detective. Boost Your Critical and Logical Thinking Skills.
    Build a Mathematical Mind - Even If You Think You Can't Have One: Become a Pattern Detective. Boost Your Critical and Logical Thinking Skills.
    Build a Mathematical Mind - Even If You Think You Can't Have One: Become a Pattern Detective. Boost Your Critical and Logical Thinking Skills.
    Ebook112 pages1 hour

    Build a Mathematical Mind - Even If You Think You Can't Have One: Become a Pattern Detective. Boost Your Critical and Logical Thinking Skills.

    By Albert Rutherford

    4.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    • Mathematics

    • Problem-Solving

    • Learning

    • Mathematics Education

    • Algebra

    • Power of Knowledge

    • Power of Visualization

    • Overcoming Obstacles

    • Ancient Wisdom

    • Transformative Journey

    • Misunderstood Genius

    • Power of Observation

    • Power of Understanding

    • Overcoming Challenges

    • Power of Creativity

    • Mathematical Thinking

    • Visualization

    • Critical Thinking

    • Number Sense

    • Algorithms

    About this ebook

    Would you like to be a proficient mathematician… without using numbers?
    There is so much more to math than geometry and calculus! It is present in almost every life aspect, from improving your communication skills to how to fit your luggage into your car.
    Did you always hate math because you couldn’t understand complex formulas?
    Don’t let a few equations or a bad teacher deter you from building a mathematical mind. Learn the best cognitive tools to revolutionize the way you make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
    Boost your critical thinking and analytical skills.
    Mathematical thinking involves analyzing data, patterns, and relationships and evaluating information and arguments, which can help improve critical thinking skills.
    Adopt a mathematician’s mindset. Tinker, invent, make educated guesses, describe with precision, and use probability to your advantage.
    Build a Mathematical Mind – Even If You Think You Can’t Have One is an action manual that will help you sharpen your everyday life skills such as:
    - improving your logic,
    - understanding how probability works,
    - and making estimations.
    This is a research-backed math manual you'll love to read. It contains examples for faster learning and greater everyday impact.
    Hone your problem-solving skills and make better decisions.
    Albert Rutherford is an internationally bestselling author whose writing derives from various sources, such as research, coaching, academic, and real-life experience.
    Improve your communication skills.
    Mathematical thinking involves clearly and concisely explaining ideas and solutions, which can improve how you communicate. With enhanced precision, you will have a keen attention to detail and the ability to be accurate in your thinking and talking.
    Increase your confidence.
    Developing mathematical thinking skills can increase your confidence and self-esteem, being able to solve difficult problems and understand complex ideas.
    If you ever felt ashamed for not getting math, this is the time to heal that wound. Give math another chance. Let it make you unstoppable!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPublishdrive
    Release dateJan 31, 2023
    ISBN9798375396880
    Build a Mathematical Mind - Even If You Think You Can't Have One: Become a Pattern Detective. Boost Your Critical and Logical Thinking Skills.

    Read more from Albert Rutherford

    Related to Build a Mathematical Mind - Even If You Think You Can't Have One

    Related ebooks

    Teaching Mathematics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      The Myth of 'I'm Bad at Math'

      Oct 28, 2013

      The Myth of 'I'm Bad at Math'
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math: Sorry, education reformers, it’s still memorization and repetition we need.

      Oct 2, 2014

      I was a wayward kid who grew up on the literary side of life, treating math and science as if they were pustules from the plague. So it’s a little strange how I’ve ended up now—someone who dances daily with triple integrals, Fourier transforms, and t

      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Math That Takes Newton Into the Quantum World

      Feb 28, 2019

      In my 50s, too old to become a real expert, I have finally fallen in love with algebraic geometry. As the name suggests, this is the study of geometry using algebra. Around 1637, René Descartes laid the groundwork for this subject by taking a plane,

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How I Rewired My Brain to Become Fluent in Math: The building blocks of understanding are memorization and repetition.

      Sep 15, 2016

      I was a wayward kid who grew up on the literary side of life, treating math and science as if they were pustules from the plague. So it’s a little strange how I’ve ended up now—someone who dances daily with triple integrals, Fourier transforms, and t

      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Math After COVID-19

      Apr 28, 2020

      Math After COVID-19
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      We’re All Math People

      Nov 9, 2023

      Eugenia Cheng, mathematician and author of Is Math Real: How Simple Questions Lead Us to Mathematics’ Deepest Truths, on the power of math, as told to Elizabeth Landau. Stupid Questions A few years ago, a high school girl did a TikTok asking a lot of

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      An Existential Crisis in Neuroscience

      Dec 30, 2020

      Happy Holidays. This week we are reprinting our top stories of 2020. This article first appeared online in our “Maps” issue in January, 2020. On a chilly evening last fall, I stared into nothingness out of the floor-to-ceiling windows in my office on

      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Quit Paying Attention!

      Sep 1, 2023

      Quit Paying Attention!
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      There Is No Such Thing as Unconscious Thought

      Jul 26, 2018

      The great French mathematician and physicist Henri Poincaré (1854–1912) took a particular interest in the origins of his own astonishing creativity. His achievements were impressive: His work profoundly reshaped mathematics and physics—including lay

      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Multiple Intelligences

      Jun 5, 2023

      Multiple Intelligences
      17 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      An Existential Crisis in Neuroscience

      Jan 23, 2020

      On a chilly evening last fall, I stared into nothingness out of the floor-to-ceiling windows in my office on the outskirts of Harvard’s campus. As a purplish-red sun set, I sat brooding over my dataset on rat brains. I thought of the cold windowless

      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Neuroscience’s Existential Crisis

      Oct 27, 2021

      On a chilly evening last fall, I stared into nothingness out of the floor-to-ceiling windows in my office on the outskirts of Harvard’s campus. As a purplish-red sun set, I sat brooding over my dataset on rat brains. I thought of the cold windowless

      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Against Algebra

      Oct 6, 2022

      Against Algebra
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Literature Should Be Taught Like Science

      Feb 24, 2021

      In the past quarter century, enrollment in college English departments has sunk like the Pequod in Moby Dick. Meanwhile enrollment in science programs has skyrocketed. It’s understandable. Elon Musk, not Herman Melville, is the role model of the digi

      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Laugh Tracks

      Aug 16, 2023

      HOW did you spend your Thanksgiving?” It’s a straightforward question, and a straightforward respondent might answer something like, “Oh, the old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I n

      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Forget Me Not

      Mar 16, 2024

      Forget Me Not
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Graphic World

      Jun 5, 2023

      A Graphic World
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The “Tortured Artist” Inside All Of Us

      Sep 22, 2023

      Created by the Nautilus Marketing team We’re all guilty of judging a book by its cover on occasion, but for Jennifer Bruce it’s a full-time job. Bruce, an award-winning artist, has created the cover illustrations for a slew of fantasy novels. Bringin

      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Build a Mathematical Mind - Even If You Think You Can't Have One

    4.5/5

    4 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Build a Mathematical Mind - Even If You Think You Can't Have One - Albert Rutherford

      I have a gift for you...

      THANK YOU FOR CHOOSING my book, Practice Game Theory! I would like to show my appreciation for the trust you gave me by giving The Art of Asking Powerful Questions – in the World of Systems to you!

      In this booklet you will learn:

      -what bounded rationality is,

      -how to distinguish event- and behavior-level analysis,

      -how to find optimal leverage points,

      -and how to ask powerful questions using a systems thinking perspective.

      Logo Description automatically generated

      CLICK HERE FOR YOUR FREE GIFT: The Art of Asking Powerful Questions in the World of Systems

      Table of Contents

      I Have A Gift For You...

      Table Of Contents

      Chapter 1: Mathematical Habits Of Mind

      Chapter 2: Become A Pattern Detective

      Chapter 3: Probability And Experimentation

      Chapter 4: Describing And Speaking In Mathematical Language

      Chapter 5: Tinkering: Breaking It Down And Putting It Back Together

      Chapter 6: Inventing: Understanding Algorithms And Using Them

      Chapter 7: Visualizing: Externalizing The Internal

      Chapter 8: Guessing: Making Estimations

      Chapter 9: How Mathematics Changed The World

      Chapter 10: Final Words

      Before You Go...

      About The Author

      Reference:

      Endnotes

      CHAPTER 1: Mathematical Habits of Mind

      Ask any adult how they feel about math, and, aside from a few math enthusiasts, you’ll get a lot of lukewarm responses. People may say, Ugh, I hated math, or I was never good at math! I was much better at reading [or art, or music, or writing, or sports...], or "It was just so boring in high school. My friend and I passed notes the whole time. We have all sorts of reasons for disliking math: maybe we were taught in a drill and kill" method that bored us to tears; maybe we tried to fit in with a certain crowd in high school by convincing ourselves that we didn’t like math (think of Lyndsay Lohan’s character in Mean Girls ). Maybe we even liked math until we got to that infamous train problem in Algebra class. Most of us probably think we aren’t very good at math and may have started to believe we weren’t math people sometime in grade school.

      But what is a math person? What if I told you that you could be a math person, too? In fact, anyone can be a math person. This chapter will convince you that you can and should learn to think like a mathematician. The rest of the book will show you how.

      Many of us have an idea in our heads of what a math person is. Maybe it was the kid in class who raised his or her hand the fastest or the one who always went up to the board to solve proofs in Geometry. Maybe it was the middle-school mathlete or the student who took college-level courses in high school. Sure, one or two of these people may have solved previously unsolved problems, amazing and stunning the world's math community. The rest of them most likely didn’t revolutionize the field of mathematics but just enjoyed math during their school years and maybe beyond.

      So why did they enjoy math? What habits of mind brought them success in mathematics?

      These people knew how to think like a mathematician. Maybe they were born with a predilection towards logical thought, maybe they were trained by talented teachers, or maybe they just enjoyed mathematics enough when they were young they trained their own brains. The point is they learned how to think like a mathematician...and so can you.

      Despite what you may have thought in high school, mathematicians have a lot in common with artists, musicians, and other creative thinkers. Mathematics is a creative field that involves visualizing, finding patterns, asking what if? and experimenting. What you learned in school – memorizing your times tables or following steps to solve an algebra problem – has little to do with the creative thinking mathematicians do. Many mathematics educators have argued for reforming the way math is taught in school because it has so little to do with what math actually is.

      In 2009, math teacher Paul Lockhart wrote A Mathematician’s Lament, a short book that has become a foundational piece for many seeking to reform mathematics education. In his Lament, Lockhart argues mathematics is an art form akin to music or painting, but it hasn’t been recognized as such. He faults the educational system, writing, In fact, if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done— I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.[i]

      Lockhart’s Lament likens math education to learning to memorize the rules of music in school but never getting to hear music until later in life. If we think of the math we learned in grade school as a series of memorizations without getting to experience the art and creativity of doing mathematics, it makes us rethink who a math person is and who isn’t. So many of us who were turned off from math at an early age would have loved it had we seen what it truly is. How many people do you know who say "Music? Eh, it’s just so boring. I’m not a music person."

      This is the secret that mathematicians know: math is an art. They know they process mathematics as a musician processes a composition or an artist visualizes a masterpiece. Paul McCartney claims the melody for Yesterday, one of the Beatles’ most beautiful songs, came to him in a dream:

      ‘I woke up with a lovely tune in my head,’ he told author Barry Miles for the biography Many Years From Now, which was published in 1998. ‘I thought, ‘That’s great, I wonder what that is?’ There was an upright piano next to me, to the right of the bed by the window. I got out of bed, sat at the piano, found G, found F sharp minor 7th – and that leads you through then to B to E minor, and finally back to E. It all leads forward logically. I liked the melody a lot but because I’d dreamed it. I couldn’t believe I’d written it.’[ii]

      Similarly, some mathematicians have claimed that critical mathematics discoveries

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1