Math comes full circle

A math teacher and a unique programme are changing children’s perception about the dreaded subject

- MILAN SIME MARTINIC

-I do not understand fractions.

How old are you?

-Nine. And, six months ago?

-Eight-and-a-half.

And just like that, the nine-year-old understood fractions.

 TIFIN CALCAGNI IS filling the downtime in the middle of a meeting drawing circles and connecting dots. She is in another world, a world of numbers, working on a problem that kept her awake the night before. But her world transcends the numbers and patterns in front of her and opens into a larger enrichment of the human experience.

She is a brilliant mathematical mind but is convinced that mathematics is within everyone’s reach, and she is out to make mathematics something that people enjoy. She is a teacher by training but hear her talk mathematics and it is almost as hearing poetry for the first time, well, the mathematical version of it.

“Math is a beautiful thing, and it gives us a framework for understanding and appreciating beauty in other realms,” says Calcagni. “It sounds ambitious, but my hope is that it will make kids’ lives more pleasurable and fulfilling, whatever they end up doing.”