(February 21, 2008) — With the intention of pointing out how useless math is, I started writing my opinion article with a witty and rebellious expression, “When, if ever, will I need to know the length of a sawhorse’s legs.” By the time I got to my fourth paragraph, however, I experienced a revelation—no matter how we try, there is no way to avoid math, a sad fact for many students. Take, for example, the 2006 robotics team, which on its own designed a robot that was able to successfully shoot seven-inch balls into a three-foot hole that was ten feet off the ground, a problem just a tad bit harder than finding the hypotenuse of a right triangle. Guessing and checking was not enough in inventing the camera that could locate the hole and direct the shooter to position itself in the proper angle. The students used Newtonian physics, trigonometry and vectors—everything applicable to figure out how to shoot the ball through without human intervention. And the same goes for many technological careers, anywhere from electronics to petroleum technology. True, not all careers clearly evince mathematical fundamentals—I may be mistaken, but I don’t think my English teachers measure the averages of my essays’ paragraphs. But math is everywhere, whether you take the time to notice it or not. Yes, those “real-life” math-textbook word problems aren’t so lively or as a matter of fact so “real,” but sitting for five minutes trying to find out why the width turned out to be negative has its uses outside of the notebook. It gives one logic, not just basic arithmetic skills. It opens one’s eyes to the world (no, I don’t meaning seeing pluses and radicals walking around) because it strengthens the brain and the ways in which it attacks a single problem in the simplest way possible. Still, there are those who could care less. Perhaps their argument is that they don’t want to be chemical scientists or genetic engineers. There is absolutely no way math could help them in writing novels or selling houses. “Contrariwise,”as Tweedledee says in one of Lewis Carroll’s adventurous stories about Alice (no not the Disney Alice in Wonderland ), math may be found in…no math is the only way in which Through the Looking-Glass by Carroll could be as humorous as it is. There aren’t any theorems that little and naïve Alice is reciting, but poems that have no sense push the reader into entertaining bewilderment. There isn’t any reason behind the fact that when one puts a book to a mirror, the book turns to complete nonsense. In fact, there is hardly any logic anywhere in the book. And why? Math. Math gave Carroll the skills to turn everything upside down and send it backwards. Math gave him the knowledge to write with humor, with irony, with absolutely no sense, for even behind that there is logic.