Three friends were traveling together and stopped at an inn towards evening. There they drank a pint of beer each and ate two small ones each. Finally they called a guy with a note. It costs 25 lei (this is a story from another time, stop the ironic comments). Each of them put in a 10 lei coin (I told you it was from the past, didn’t I?). The boy gave them 5 coins, one lei each. They stopped each one and left him two lei each.

They went and fell asleep. It was an inn, I told you. But at night one of them jumped out of bed and shouted:

– Where the hell is the lion!?

At first, numb from sleep, his friends took him with them: a sip of water, a kind word, a firm pat on the back of the head, as between friends. But the husband kept her alone and good:

– Where the hell is the lion!?

Making it clear that he was not sleepwalking and that he was serious, they forced him to explain:

– Well, be careful! We gave 10 lei each, right?

– So.

– And I took back one lei each.

– Look well!

– So I gave 9 lei. 9 multiplied by 3 gives 27.

– That’s all I do.

– And give 2 lei to the guy, 29 years old.

– That’s true.

– But we had 30! Where the hell is the lion!?

Now no one could sleep. You, dear readers, who went to school, of course, caught that there is a trick here, because the money given and taken are collected together in the account, as apples are collected, not pears, that is, contrary to the myth, it works that you collect them like fruit – but you collect whole apples with the thorns of the same apples.

But not everyone is so clear. For example, for the electorate – let’s go to the elections, let’s talk about it – who let themselves be swayed by politicians who collect kilometers of built highways with kilometers of those they dreamed of. Or debt investments, announcing that huge sums are coming out. On the other hand, people with some mathematical training can fall into the trap of mechanically applying any formula or method, such as the simple rule of three.

Here’s a cute puzzle: If a painter whitewashes a room in one day, how long would it take thousands of painters to whitewash it? Moreover, insufficient knowledge of mathematics, even elementary arithmetic, can lead to planetary phenomena. Thus, at the end of December 31, 1999, the majority of humanity, including high-ranking officials, celebrated the transition to the third millennium a year early.

Okay, you need to know math, if only “so as not to mess with money,” says the band “Cold Sarmalele”. Where, mother, is the beauty? See. What do you think about “the set of those points c on the complex plane for which, applying the complex polynomial z 2 + c repeatedly (starting at z = 0), the result remains inside a disk of finite radius”? No, right? Pure Chinese.

But look them up to see the Mandelbrot set described by this definition. Can you tell she’s not beautiful? This is no longer (just) mathematics, it is a frank art! The reason why mathematics seems dry, boring, difficult and annoying from the first years of school and – inertial – throughout our lives, is because it is not presented in the above way.

Mathematics should be taught more precisely and more fully, emphasizing from the very beginning:

– its usefulness

– beauty and effectiveness

– humor

Yes, yes, you read that right, humor. How does an elephant behave on the road? Trop-trop-trop. But if the road goes uphill? Trop-trop-trop-cos alpha. This is how trigonometric functions should be entered. As for the benefits, I don’t think there’s anyone these days – at least kids, teens and tweens – who don’t realize there’s a ton of math in their 150g phone. But they are not always clear about something else: not so much what the formula of the Pythagorean theorem is, but why

should have been the Pythagorean theorem.

Why would I say this: a group of workers erects a pole. There is a basement, but it is still exposed to wind aggression, not to mention, God forbid, earthquakes. Therefore, it should be fixed. Ideally, this is three parts, but let’s deal with one for now. The pillar is four meters high, we know this because we measured it lying on the ground before we lifted it up; and the pier ring is three meters away. How do we know how much cable to buy so that it reaches and does not remain, because it is expensive, brother, everything has become more expensive, this is inflation, the Robor index jumped by 6% a long time ago – remember when the world fainted that it exceeded 2%?

We would need a formula, something that, based on the height of the pole and the distance to the fulcrum, would tell us what the diagonal of the cable would be. Miracle! IS! Well, since about three thousand years ago. And it contains 370 different demos. So far. Are you trying to find someone else?

This is how I would explain the Pythagorean theorem. And any other section of mathematics. Do not force poor children to learn formulas and definitions by heart without first understanding why and how they are needed.

PS: 370 demo!? You realize! What would it be like to create something that can be displayed in 370 different ways? Wait, I know – but this is the downside: there are more than four hundred ways to prove that Russia’s entry into Ukraine is criminal.