Making Math Cool

If you were to play a word association game with a school-aged child, you’d be pretty unlikely to get a response of ‘cool’ when you asked them what word first came into their mind when you said ‘math’. Despite what some people may tell you, math is far from dull. On the contrary, there are plenty of fun and strange historical facts about math out there that will fascinate children of all ages. 

To prove this, we’ve compiled a list of 5 cool, historical facts about math that we encourage you to share with the children in your life: 

1. The word “hundred” come from the old Norse term, “hundrath”, which actually means 120 and not 100
2. Most mathematical symbols weren’t invented until the 16th century. Before that, equations were written in words 
3. Over 2,000 years ago, Eratosthenes estimated the Earth’s circumference using math, without ever leaving Egypt, and he was accurate to within 2%
4. Markings on animal bones indicate that humans have been doing math since around 30,000 BC 
5. Zero is not represented in Roman numerals

After sharing these historical facts about math with your children, we are positive that your young person will no longer think that the subject is ‘uncool’. That said, if you’re looking for an additional tool to help your child engage with math, you should swing by our center and find out how we make math cool.