Me and math don’t really get along all that well. I think this started in middle school when my teacher began using a website called DeltaMath. On DeltaMath it didn’t matter how close you were to the answer, if you weren’t right on the money you didn’t get credit. In retrospect I understand why it worked that way, but at the time it was the bane of my existence. So with all that in mind, the Idea of going to the National Museum Of Math didn’t really peak my interest, but after finding out how close it was to Baruch my love of convenience outweighed my hatred of math, and I was on my way. When I walked in I was pleasantly surprised to find that this museum wasn’t glorifying the kind of math that I had come to despise, instead it was highlighting all the cool things that can be accomplished with math. There were puzzles, mazes, and a whole bunch of other stuff I didn’t initially expect to find in a museum of math. Something that stood out to me was this activity where you had to use a program to design a shape, and the shapes that people liked would be 3D printed and put on display. Sadly, my skill didn’t really match my enthusiasm when it came to that activity and while I planned on making an intricate and cool shape I ended up making a virtual snowball. Another cool thing they had was a programmable cannon, pointed at a basketball hoop. It was the job of the visitor to set the velocity and angle of the cannon, then load up a basketball and hope for the best. While this was one of the more complicated attractions of the museum it became clear after a few successes in a row that it was pretty difficult to miss the hoop when using the cannon. Overall the Museum of Math was a pretty good time, and as sappy as this sounds I think that it showed me the cool side of math when up until that point I only chose to see the boring side.
– Michael Jones
