Math Morals (Part 1): Problem Solving

In the upcoming series of articles related to mathematical philosophy, what I wish and hope to share with the world are some unusual extracts from the world of mathematics. But I am not concerned with numbers at all. Instead, as wierd as it may sound, I would like to infer some morality and philosophy hidden in mathematics. So, to get our feet wet, I will not get to the mathematics directly. Rather, in this article, I would discuss the bigger picture of mathematics: problem solving. And leave the actual concepts of mathematics for later.

Mathematics is all about problem solving. Real life applications are converted to numbers and then the numbers are crunched to come up with other numbers which are then plugged back into real life. But here, we're not going to solve any problems. Instead, we're going to derive some lessons that we can learn for problem solving in real life that we can infer from problem solving in mathematics.

To start off, we have the concept of common sense used in mathematics. 2+2=4. We only need to have the basic counting sense to know that. Likewise, to solve any problem in real life, the first thing is using common sense. For example, common sense suggests that talking to a deaf person requires no voice. Rather, you will have to use other strategies etc. This was a basic level example. Now let us look at some more complicated extractions from the concept of problem solving in mathematics.

In mathematics, looking at the same thing from different angles can reveal new aspects of the same problem or help solve problems easily. We learn this from mathematics in addition. For example 8-2 can be viewed as the addition of 8 and negative 2 or 8+(-2). Or we know that there are many ways to reach the same sum in mathematics. For example, 5+5=10, 4+6=10, 3+7=10 etc. Likewise, in our lives, we can have a single problem that can be solved in many different ways. For example, lifting an heavy object might be viewed as a problem. The solution may be to hire several men to lift the object. Another way to view it is to use a lever to lift it. Another way is to cut the heavy object into smaller pieces and then remove the pieces. Hopefully by now, you're seeing how I'm philosophically relating mathematics to real life. Wierd, right?

Other simple examples include drawing conclusions from what we already know in order to evaluate something unknown. For example, we know that the sum of the internal angles of any triangle equal to 180 degrees. So if we know two angles, we can easily deduce the third unknown angle from this fact. Likewise, in our lives, we can deduce many unknown things based on the many known things. I think we all can think of many examples, but just on the lighter note, we all very well know how we deduce the murderer in the game of Cluedo!!

These and (hopefully) many more examples to come will show us how mathematics is not only natural because of the way it explains the design of the universe, but also in how it relates to our philosophical and abstract concepts, such as bravery, unity, discrimination etc.

Some of you might be thinking that this is a wierd concept. But I believe things will get even more interesting and intriguing when the idea of connecting mathematics to philosophy and real life goes to specific examples in mathematics. So this was just a introduction to how we can use mathematics to view the world. The ideas and concepts in mathematics can allow us to draw several philosophical conclusions in the real world. In later posts(hopefully), let us explore specific concepts in mathematics, like addition, rounding, fractions etc. and relate them to the real world. Hopefully then, the picture will get more clear.