How math is an efficient language

Posts on the "Why math?" series

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There are three ways of dealing with and talking about the same problem. For example:

Write it in English language

-          I have 3 objects, for example: Banana, car, and phone.
-          You’re given 2 other objects, for example: Apple and truck.
-          How many objects do you have? Three and two together form five objects.
-          So now you have a Banana, car, phone, apple, and truck.

Simple, right? Exactly. So why should we write something that straight forward in so many words?

You could also…

Draw it and visualize it




Which works. But what if you have… 53 apples + 27 apples? Clearly, too much to draw!

Well, both of these (in English language then in drawing) is written in math language much shorter as:

20A + 50A = 70A


Here comes one of the many points of “math language”. It is much like the English language we just used, but much more efficient, which we will all need for all sorts of things.

A step further in algebra

In math language, we could just shorten Objects to just “O”. We’re not concerned with what they are (whether they’re a fruit or a vehicle), but just that they’re objects.
So: 3o + 2o = 5o

In algebra, we say that the “O” (for Objects in this case) is called a “term”

In our five objects, we have two fruits (banana, apple), two vehicles (car, truck) and one electronic (phone)
1 Fruit + 1 Fruit = 2 fruits.
1 Apple + 1 Banana Cannot be shortened as they’re different types of fruits.

For all of algebra, this is all that is going on. There is no “rule” for (as teachers say) “only like terms can be added!!!” or no “rule” that 3+2=5, they’re both just logical, right? It just makes sense.
The rest of math is like this.