Why Humor Matters.

For some, math is a peregrine falcon, spreading its wings and leading us to vistas of wild geometries and telescoping series and probability problems without socks. For others, math is a subway pigeon with explosive diarrhea that leads us nowhere and follows us everywhere we go.

Math anxiety can creep up any time. But a lot of it happens at school, when being fast and accurate is rewarded. Math tests with a time component are important (Barton 2018), but the pressure to be fast and accurate is stressful.

You can find math anxiety in first and second graders and even kids as young as 5. (Ramirez 2013) This can snowball, creating a lifelong creepy-crawling feeling that you are not a math person and maybe not even smart.

College-aged participants in one lab study were asked to solve elementary problems like 46+18. Many showed signs of distress including nervous laughter and trembling palms. A few asked if this was going to reflect on their intelligence. One even burst into tears. (Ashcraft 2002).

In 2023, half of New York City students in grades 3 to 8 were not proficient in math. In 2022, scores on the National Assessment for Educational Progress showed their biggest drop in math for grades 4 and 8 since 1990.

It’s not even close to the whole problem. But I think some of this stems from people having an air of anxiety and dislike around math.

Mathematics is a beautiful subject, with ideas and connections that can inspire all students. But too often it is taught as a performance subject, the role of which, for many, is to separate students into those with the math gene and those without. 

— Mindset Mathematics

So we are going to retool this whole thing. Because I am one of those people with pigeon droppings on my head and I’ve discovered math is for everybody. It is mind-boggling and beautiful and you don’t have to do a single ounce of calculation to enjoy thinking and talking about it.

FIND THE FUNNY

Humor helps us remember. Humor also helps us learn. (This is why Duolingo writes funny sentences on purposes.) Laughing actually helps us solve creative problems. (Isen 1987) Best of all, laughing and smiling feel good. So why not melt away math anxiety by associating math with that feeling?

The goal of SHEESH is to make it funny. It’s not possible to find the square root* of a cow. But by wiping out the biggest contributors to math anxiety, you can really think about a square root. You can make this simple low-floor high-ceiling prompt as deep as you’d like.

And maybe, just maybe, you can find the square root of a cow.

*Psst: It’s also totally okay to not know what a square root is. The topics are wide-ranging and everything is defined on the back!