A teenager asked that age-old question on TikTok, creating a viral backlash, and then, a thoughtful scientific debate.
This is a direct copy of a SciPop or news article preserved here because things on the internet have a bad habit of disappearing when you try to find them again. Full credit is given to the original authors and the source.
– Matty
- Smithsonian Magazine
- Dan Falk
It all started with an innocuous TikTok video posted by a high school student named Gracie Cunningham. Applying make-up while speaking into the camera, the teenager questioned whether math is “real.” She added: “I know it’s real, because we all learn it in school… but who came up with this concept?” Pythagoras, she muses, “didn’t even have plumbing—and he was like, ‘Let me worry about y = mx + b’”—referring to the equation describing a straight line on a two-dimensional plane. She wondered where it all came from. “I get addition,” she said, “but how would you come up with the concept of algebra? What would you need it for?”
Continue reading “What Is Math?”
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