Some time ago I stumble upon across this beautiful message by video game designer Hideo Kojima. He talks about our ability to invent tools, he makes a great deal mentioning that our imagination and desire to create would persevere beyond survival providing us hope as a humanity. I certainly share his view.
But how do we invent such tools? And how do we materialize our imagination, specially at scale? This is indeed an invitation to Mathematics, the language in which we, as humans, can model and communicate our reality. "Play has been our ally since the dawn of civilization" says Mr. Kojima, which reminds me one chapter from a book mentioned by Sir Tony Hoare, The book I am talking about here is titled "Mathematics for the million", the chapter being "Mathematics, the Mirror of Civilization". How's that possible? How can a single field of study embody or represent the kind of society one belongs to?
Leslie Lamport, in a conversation hosted by Microsoft Research, shares key benefits individuals get from this science, being "Abstract, critical thinking that one develops by learning Math" one of such benefits. So, not only we will be able to invent, design and create better tools and better stories to share but we will also be in a better position when making decisions encompassing the future of our entire communities.
In case you have been learning Mathematics, that's just great. But in the event you are someone whom have stopped doing it at some point of time, or for some reason or another you are someone who has never enjoyed discovering this knowledge, I do have some recommendations.
First and foremost, you can do it. Start with the very basics at Khan Academy, make sure to solidify the topics related to Arithmetic, then you can get into the Gelfand book series, back in the day Udacity used to have an amazing Algebra course among its content, "Visualizing Algebra", if you can tackle those same topics before the Gelfand Algebra book, it will be very helpful.
This is my personal invitation to you, I really hope you can embark yourself in this journey, or continue the one you already have started. And as Mr. Kojima states: Your new evolution awaits. Attain the higher level of intelligence Mr. Gelfand mentions in his book series as the benefit from learning Mathematics. And create a better world in the process.