People Don't Love Math

So I just saw a Pizza Hut commercial that may well guarantee that I boycott them forever and ever amen.

I already don't care much for Pizza Hut pizza, being excessively greasy and not very good, in general.  The fact that I have a pretty wicked case of stomach flu right now doesn't help the matter.

Here's the premise of the commercial: People standing in a Pizza Hut are looking over coupons and trying to make sense of them... because coupons are so hard to comprehend.  Pizza Hut then declares that they are not going to have specials but instead are just going to sell you medium pizzas for the "low" price of $10.

Cut to cute-ish girl: "No more confusing math."

Cut to possibly cute guy: "Because people love pizza, they don't love math."

Message received: People who eat at Pizza Hut are too stupid to figure out coupons.  People in general are too stupid to figure out coupons.  Besides: "If we eliminate coupons we can charge people whatever we want, telling them that this is an awesome deal, I mean look, we don't even do coupons anymore.  That's how low our prices are!"  Even if the price goes up to $20 for a small.  People don't love math so they won't figure out they're getting reamed.

Also, math is a fundamental tool that has a very bad reputation in this country.  As my wife (a certified mathematics teacher) has pointed out on more than one occasion, people who would be embarrassed to admit that they cannot read, are not the least bit hesitant to shout from the rooftops that they don't get math.  Math is too hard.  They can't do it.

The fact of the matter is, for the most part, these people have not given math a reasonable chance.  They heard from their friends or their parents or older siblings that math was hard.  They brought their homework home and asked if mom or dad could help them, but mom or dad said, "Sorry son, math never made any sense to me."

Fine, calculus is pretty involved.  Trigonometry, too.  But most kids getting to those levels don't need mom and dad's help quite so much anymore.  The stigma of mathematics begins at the early levels.  Order of Operations, cross-multiplying, etc.  None of it is actually difficult, it's just a matter of learning some basic rules.  All multiplication and division before addition and subtraction.  Stuff inside parentheses before the stuff outside... basic rules, like "I before E except after C, or when sounding like A as in Neighbor and Weigh. Or when the word is simply weird."  And math rules make more sense than writing rules.

Yeah, people don't love math.  But instead of encouraging such sentiments, maybe Pizza Hut should be contributing more to educational reform.

Stupid Pizza Hut.

Struggling With Algebra

Cordelia, the wonderfully bright child that she is, loves books and apparently is interested in math, too. Here she is taking the initiative of getting her hands on the teacher's edition Algebra book and searching for the perfect equation.

Just moments later, she suddenly and surprisingly showed off her latest immitation of mommy and daddy. The camera was there to catch it as it unfolded! (It's really quiet so you may need to either turn up the volume or just know that she's clearing her throat)