Rocks for Sheep

I remember sitting in class, state university, I am a 2nd year into my mathematics degree, and the teacher tells us a story. The professor is a gray haired, shiny-eyed tall woman, she loves baggy sweaters and Marlboro cigarettes. I add the detail on the cigarettes because her voice is raspy, and heavy. She says, “Do you know the story of mathematics? The history of a subject, so integral to our survival as a species, and many of you think it’s a subject of memorization.” She slaps the podium, hard, her glasses slip from her nose by the force, to which she pushes them up higher toward her brow, as she moves slowly out toward her audience. She continues, “It is not about memorization, that is for babies and… business students.” We laugh at the insult hurled at the other department. “Math is the art or science in finding patterns. It’s religious, and spiritual, as you may come to realize, but before you get too far in the clouds there is an important idea you must know. Math is the history of rocks and sheep.”

“I and others have speculated that ancient man first came to think about numbers as agriculture took hold and, specifically, with herding animals. A shepherd would have tens to hundreds of sheep. As the shepherd let the sheep out to graze he would equate each to a stone, and as the sheep left to graze a stone would be placed in a specific location. Then, as the sheep returned to the fenced pen, the stones would be counted along with the entering sheep. If there were more stones left, then the shepherd knew he would know how many and set off in search. That is math. In its most basic and practical sense. It is this simplicity that has lead us to Newton, Gauss, and others. Think of Euclid explaining the infinite length of a line drawn on the ground with chalk and a ruler, wonderful. It must of been mind blowing. Think of the lengthy hand written calculations Newton must have written by candle light!” She then proceeds on with teaching us the axioms of mathematics. It is this speech, almost word for word, and the feeling of having heard it at that time in my life I will never question the beauty of mathematics; it is elegant, and at times down-right terrifying, but most of all its undeniable. If the logic or numbers aren’t correct, then the entire truth is a lie, and perhaps it’s this “math” that has given me comfort in this tumultuous climate we citizens currently find ourselves. Maybe this is a plea for our leaders to return to relative civility and to apply logic and reason in place of emotion.

I have built a web app: https://endlessmath.org to give all children with connectivity an infinite resource for practicing arithmetic… counting rocks for sheep. Please share if you can, and contribute if you will. Thank you.