Why Math Maze?
Before we started to build this website, many friends suggested our group not to do this topic because it will not interest the viewers. However, five of us fully concurred with each other because we were wholly convinced by the necessity to build this website in the current world. Because people may find math monotonous, we will make it interesting. Because few people are interested in math, we will make people who visit our site like math. Because the problem exists in our society and we want solve it. Our main purpose of creating this site is not to teach the visitors math, but to make them willing to learn math.
Many students in the world may have the same question: Why do we have to study math? It seems to be useless in everyday life and sometimes it just does not make sense to us. Some of us may feel bored during math lessons and some even get disgusted whenever we are asked to learn a new formula. Many of us might feel the impulse to shout: I hate math!
We conducted a survey in Victoria Junior College, Singapore and 524 students took part in the survey. Here is the question from our survey:
Choose the answer that represents your attitude towards math.
- I want to take mathematics in University.
- I am interested in math.
- I am okay with math.
- I think math is boring.
- I want to drop math if I can.
It shows that a current problem exists in our society, worldwide. Students are not interested in math and they have the mind-set that math is useless for their future career. They stud math only to do well in examinations. It creates some encumbrance for the teaching of math in school. Most importantly, it hinders the development of math in the world. I think that this is a concern of the international math society.
Math, as the fundamental of all the science subjects, is crucial for the advancement of science and technology. Furthermore, it also plays a significant role in other fields like music, architecture and even on humans! Thus, we can see that math is vital in every respect of life.
One of the main objectives we create this site is to arouse students' interest in math. We chose to introduce mathematicians and history of math because most students rarely have any close acquaintance with the math world beyond the textbooks. They may have come across those names somewhere but I guess only few of them will be bothered to do further research. The inspiring stories of those great mathematicians may change their impression of math and even give them some form of motivation in life. The history of math is likely to provide the viewers a holistic understanding of math and therefore stimulate them to explore the math world. For example, it is really interesting to know that the numbers in ancient Egypt are actually symbols like cattle, lotus plant and frog (Egyptian Numerals).