I started indulging in some seventh grade math lately. It helped me in two ways, firstly, I started re-learning and it rekindled my love for Geometry. I felt like the clock had turned backward as I discussed the language of a seventh grader. Secondly, and more importantly, my buddy started sharing interesting anecdotes from his classroom, something we wouldn’t have had a chance to catch-up otherwise!

We started off with the concepts of congruence of triangles, but I had to stop midway. I had to step back and refresh my memory about the properties of triangles, and then further back, the properties of parallel lines, the supplementary and complimentary angles. As I explained these concepts in great detail, I knew (secretly) that I had ignored the terminology as a kid. I would just rush to find the x!

Today, we did a little quiz from the topic, and he came back to me with all but one unanswered question. He had to find the value of x, and it didn’t quite look like a triangle!

As a toddler, my buddy had a great time investigating and finding the missing pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The missing piece was the x, in this case. After a few years, the worn-out jigsaw puzzle was disposed to make some room. Brainvita replaced it. The goal was to find the perfect combination of moves to clear the board. The x just seemed to come back in a different form. And then came the Rubik’s cube. The 3×3, 4×4, and then the 5×5. The unrelenting x seemed to come back again!

I didn’t think of it as a kid, but today I wonder, the constant search for x means something? beyond mathematics? What are we trying to solve for?

With Triangles, thankfully, there was a way to solve for x. The supplementary angles summed up to be 180⁰, the complimentary angles were 90⁰, while the sum of the three angles in a triangle was always 180⁰. What a relief! Such perfection from the creator! As the properties were immutable, we knew we could always arrive at the value of x. The trick was to break the shape down into triangles. To convert the seemingly unknown shape into a set of Triangles to uncover the x!

We exclaimed together as we derived the value of x!

It seems like finding x was always the game. With driving a 4-wheeler, for example, we seem to employ such a tactic. What seems like a complicated maneuver initially, is broken down into manageable parts – steering control, shifting gears, the reverse gear, etc. Once the brain cells are wired up to handle one, we go about practicing the next. We solve one x after another. We seem to do this all the time!

How is the x in math any different from the x outside of math? Could we break the many unknown contexts down to manageable parts? How else could I have arrived at the value of x today?

Time to ruminate!