Statistically Significant

I headed over to Quest Diagnostics this morning for a drug screen, as required for employment.  When my name was called, I met a very nice attendant named Cathy who took me into one of the back rooms.  We were chit-chatting while she was filling out some paperwork, and I explained to her that I was doing this for a new job in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  She wanted to know what I would be doing, and when I replied, “Math,” her eyes lit up with excitement.  It turns out that she was taking a remedial math class and had all kinds of questions for me.  She grabbed a form from the wall, flipped it over, and started scribbling down problems for me to solve.  I had a jolt of panic as I imagined her asking me to explain gradients or help her with her fluid dynamics homework, but it was mostly arithmetic she was interested in, adding and multiplying negative numbers and all the rules that go with it.

We had a few minutes of fun figuring out how minus signs work, and then I disappearing to take care of my sample.  When I got back to our little cubicle, Cathy was standing there with two of her attendant friends.  They had a new sheet of paper on the table, this one covered in triangles, and they had some questions about geometry.  Unfortunately, we didn’t really make it past The Pythagorean Theorem before they became worried about getting caught, but it was still really cool to see their eyes light up as gears of comprehension slammed down in their minds.  

It was really a neat experience.  I wouldn’t have guessed I’d have too much in common with Cathy and her friends, but as soon as “math” came up, we were suddenly all on the same page.  Talking about the arithmetic problems with her also reminded how me totally arbitrary math can seem when you don’t understand it.  It’s like watching a game where you don’t know any of the rules: you can pick up on certain patterns or themes that seem to be repeating themselves, but as soon as anything changes, you’re totally lost and scratching your head, reevaluating the rules you had formed in your head.  Finally, once I had explained the rules to her as best I could, she started tearing through the problems, becoming increasingly confident as she got more and more of them correct.  I think that most people would be a lot better at and a lot less afraid of math if they just had someone just sit down with them and explain things to them in a way they understood.  Most people never have the opportunity to have one-on-one math help like that, but it would sure clear up a lot of misunderstanding and apprehension.  Good luck, Cathy!