I'm Russell, and this is Voiceover work and an audiobook sampler.

Where do you listen?

We hope you're hanging tough today, because today, April 24, 2023, is Newt Kids on the Block Day.

So kick it off to day with a good breakfast celebrating National Pigs in a Blanket day, and chase it down with some Savignon Blanc, because that's today as well.

In today's episode, author Albert Rutherford asks us would you like to be a proficient mathematician without using numbers?

Did you always hate math because you couldn't understand complex formulas?

Don't let a few equations or a bad teacher deter you from building a mathematical mind.

Today's preview is from Albert Rutherford's book build a Mathematical Mind.

Even if you think you can't have one.

Ask any adult how they feel about math.

And aside from a few math enthusiasts, you get a lot of lukewarm responses.

People may say, I hated math or I was never good at math.

I was much better at reading or art or music or writing or sports or It was just so boring.

In high school, my friend and I passed notes the whole time.

We have all sorts of reasons for disliking math.

Maybe we were taught in a drill and kill method that bored us to tears.

Maybe we tried to fit in with a certain crowd in high school by convincing ourselves that we didn't like math.

Think of Lindsay Lohan's character in Mean Girls.

Maybe we even liked math until we got to that infamous train problem in algebra class.

Most of us probably think we aren't very good at math and may have started to believe we weren't math people sometime in grade school.

But what is a math person?

What if I told you that you could be a math person, too?

In fact, anyone could be a math person.

This chapter will convince you that you can and should learn to think like a mathematician.

The rest of the book will show you how many of us have an idea in our heads of what a math person is.

Maybe it was a kid in class who raised his or her hand the fastest, or the one who always went up to the board to solve proofs in geometry.

Maybe it was the middle school mathlete, or the student who took college level courses in high school.

Sure, one or two of these people may have solved previously unsolved problems, amazing and stunning the world's math community.

The rest of them most likely didn't revolutionize the field of mathematics, but just enjoyed math during their school years and maybe beyond.

So why did they enjoy math?

What habits of mind brought them success in mathematics?

These people knew how to think like a mathematician.

Maybe they were born with the predilection toward logical thought.

Maybe they were trained by talented teachers.

Or maybe they just enjoyed mathematics.

Enough.

When they were young, they trained their own brains.

The point is, they learned how to think like a mathematician, and so can you.

Despite what you may have thought in high school, mathematicians have a lot in common with artists, musicians, and other creative thinkers.

Mathematics is a creative field that involves visualizing, finding patterns, asking what if, and experimenting.

What you learned in school, memorizing your times tables, or following steps to solve an algebra problem has little to do with the creative thinking mathematicians do.

Many mathematics educators have argued for reforming the way math is taught in school because it has so little to do with what math actually is.

In 2009, math teacher Paul Lockhart wrote A Mathematician's Lament, a short book that's become a foundational piece for many seeking to reform mathematics education.

In his Lament, Lockhart argues mathematics is an art form akin to music or painting, but it hasn't been recognized as such.

He faults the educational system, writing, in fact, if I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child's natural curiosity and love of pattern making, I couldn't possibly do as good a job as is.

Hope you enjoyed this episode of voiceover work and audiobook sampler Where do you listen?

Be sure to join us next Monday for the chapter by chapter preview of this book, albert Rutherford's Build a Mathematical Mindset.

To close out, we have a quote from Barbara Streisand, whose birthday is today, along with Joe Keary from Stranger Things, kelly Clarkson you know her?

And Thomas Sanders.