Hating Mathematics

📅 June 16, 2026

I grew up hating mathematics. No amount of threats or pleas could make those figures, equations, calculations, or formulae stick.

In secondary school, I had this one teacher who taught Further Mathematics. Mr. Jayeola, he called himseld. He was a slight man with airs. He took his work seriously and regarded any failure to understand it as an indictment of his teaching. And so, he flogged us mercilessly whenever we failed.

To escape this, a few of us found a system. We made friends with classmates who actually knew what they were doing and copied their homework whenever assignments were given. Mr. Jayeola had too much work to inspect every calculation, we thought. He would only check whether the answer was correct. So, we skipped the workings altogether. Sometimes we’d write complete nonsense across the page, just to make it look like we had tried, before writing down the correct answer at the bottom.

That worked. Until the day he noticed that the number of people he was punishing had suddenly dropped.

From then on, he changed the rules. You must show your workings, he said. It was no longer enough to arrive at the right answer. If the road that led there made no sense, he would fail you anyway.

I found myself thinking about him while arguing with a friend online.

He had called Trump a racist and offered as evidence the fact that he often referred to Black reporters as low IQ.

I thought that was weak evidence. Trump has called all sorts of people he dislikes low IQ. Picking a select group from a many is dishonest.

Someone else joined the conversation.

So, Trump isn't racist? he asked.

I said that was not my argument at all. A conclusion could be right and still be badly argued. That an answer was correct did not magically validate the quality of the workings that produced it.

You know, I think public arguments would be better if more people were forced to show their workings.

______

I have had my fair share of spats online. Some I have appreciated. Most have almost made me stupider. In an age where outrage develops its own wheels and rides on its own momentum, emotion often takes hold and reason is cast aside. To the observer, the people caught in this frenzy appear foolish. I do not believe that. One thing I’ve noticed about people, they might not be as smart as they think they are, but they’re mostly smarter than you think they are. They know exactly what they’re doing. They know that once a conclusion has been accepted, any challenge to the evidence can – and will – be made to look like a challenge to the conclusion itself. So, they deliberately choose not to separate the two.

If you question the likelihood or quality of the evidence, you’ll be automatically accused of denying whatever happened. If you point out a flaw in the argument, you’ll be treated like you’re rejecting the answer. It is such a strange thing! I also think it’s a manipulative thing aimed at shutting down dissent.

“But if we know a thing is right, why focus on the little things that have nothing to do with it?”

How do you know “a thing” is right when the evidence leading to it is flawed? And if evidence becomes acceptable because we approve of the answer, can you still confidently say we are reasoning our way to conclusions? No. At best, we will be performative with the beliefs we already hold, and even worse, if we can ‘prove’ ‘true’ things for bad reasons, we could also prove false things for bad reasons too, which makes us a worse species than we imagined.

I used to dislike MR. Jayeola for making us show our workings, but that guy knew this all this while.

PS: People will still come here and say, why is he defending Trump? If I answer you, make I bend.