Post Lockdown and the Three Rs

To all who are still suffering through some version of lockdown or re-lockdown or premature reopening or just severe anxiety, there will be relief, comfort, solace, and even great joy. I promise. Sometimes now, I’m euphoric. 

Italy, one of the hardest hit countries in the early stages of the pandemic, reacted, locked down and has emerged with cautious optimism. The success of our lockdown is multi-faceted. In addition to strong leadership, this society, I like to say, is the most civilized I have ever experienced, and came through lockdown through solidarity, compassion, pragmatism and seriousness. We really were all in this together. 

That which helped me, and many others, through this was reading, for both entertainment and enlightenment; writing - keeping a journal every day of even the most trivial thoughts was like having someone to talk to, it just happened to be myself, but it was comforting - and then, this is where we come to ‘rithmetic. 

When we were younger, we often wondered why we had to study math. I can now cite several applications of the math I took. Many of us used it in all that lockdown cooking and baking, modifying recipes for available ingredients - I have now pretty much nailed eggless, butterless, oatmeal cookies - or proportionately reducing recipes for fewer people. Some of us here have an additional challenge, calculating metric vs. American or British measuring quantities or oven temperatures.  In my professional life as a clothing patternmaker, I drew on geometry and used Pi to calculate  the circumference of the waist or hip measure for a silk chiffon circle skirt. We all use it to understand the impact of mortgage or credit card interest rates. There are many other reasons to have paid attention in class.

In terms of its impact during the pandemic, the importance of recognizing distancing requirements, and most of all, as we are reminded daily the virus isn’t gone, it’s always lurking until there is a vaccine, so one of the most important things to have learned in algebra is the concept of exponential.