Alice Major Reading

I do not believe that bringing up the idea of Head Variants and number relations is a good idea in a secondary school setting, mainly because students will not have an interest in this topic. It's not to say the the subject of numbers and their relations to various topics is not interesting, it's just that students may not find any pleasure or excitement in learning about these things. Especially when it comes to the higher level grades in mathematics, students will be so preoccupied with practicing for exams to get into university that I believe they will thoroughly despise any extra curriculum or content based on math history.

I personally find it interesting, but even I have to admit that I may be biased towards the wonders of numbers and their relationship to the world. I really started becoming interested in numbers after University started, and I believe that with age comes a more deeper appreciation and understanding for mathematics. Just like how some foods taste bitter when you're young but slowly become more pleasant as you age, I believe that to be the same case for mathematics.

Numbers do not have personalities for me; however, growing up in both a Christian and Chinese culture, there are certain numbers that I tend to associate with certain subjects. In Christianity, 3 and 7 are very influential numbers, with a multitude of events taking shape in 3 or 7 days. For the Chinese side, there are numbers that I was taught to avoid at a very young age - 4 and 13, since they represented death and bad luck. This was so extreme that most, if not all, elevators in Taiwan did not contain these numbers, which made finding floors in hotel lobbies quite difficult at times!

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