• Question: Hello it’s my first time doing this and I am very excited!What age were you when you started to love math?

    Asked by murr1scan to SamG, Ryan, qasimhussain, Mohan S, katiebarnes, conallkavanagh, ciarahurley, Charlotte, attakritleckcivilize, amysmith on 23 Sep 2025. This question was also asked by days1scan.
    • Photo: Mohan Sridharan

      Mohan Sridharan answered on 23 Sep 2025:

      It is hard for me to refer to a specific age because my earliest memories of learning mathematics (say in primary school or may be even earlier at home!) are also associated with a deep sense of happiness. I have always liked the working with numbers and symbols, and I have appreciated how mathematics helps us formulate and solve problems effectively. It is no surprise that I have ended up as an academic teaching and doing research in a computing discipline at a University!

    • Photo: Katie Barnes

      Katie Barnes answered on 23 Sep 2025:

      I actually have a very different experience to Mohan! in primary school I used to hate maths. I think it was because I wasn’t very good a my times tables. But once I got older and started realising there was more to maths than just adding and multiplying I really started to enjoy it. And because I practiced a lot I got better and better at it and now I get to do it everyday as part of my research in engineering. You also start to realise that maths is everywhere, whether that’s baking a cake or when I am knitting a difficult pattern. Thats my favourite sort of maths 🙂

    • Photo: Sam Gilbert

      Sam Gilbert answered on 24 Sep 2025:

      I really loved Mathematics in Primary school but this changed for me in secondary school when a fear set in around Maths. However, at Uni I regained the the ability to enjoy playing with different methods of doing things and the fear subsided. My children still think it is funny to quick fire maths questions at me as I can revert to panic mode but as long as I have the logic behind why I need to use maths, it helps.

      My advice is find your own way, I was transfixed on there being only one way to do calculations but this is not the case. Find a way that works for you and you will enjoy math.

      Math is in everything as Katie said even in enjoyable things like baking or knitting, as well as practical things like managing bills and shopping. I use it daily in my role, so much I don’t even realise it now.

    • Photo: Conall Kavanagh

      Conall Kavanagh answered on 28 Sep 2025:

      I didn’t start to enjoy maths until I was studying it at A-level in the context of physics, where I began to see its use in understanding the world around us. There is a lot of beauty in maths, which I found wasn’t conveyed to me at school. I discovered this mainly by way of watching physics lectures online and YouTube channels such as 3blue1brown and Numberphile. Fractals are an example of maths which has useful applications as well as looking really cool! Taking physics modules at University gave me a deeper understanding of how maths can be used to make predictions about fascinating things in nature, such as the existence of antiparticles.

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