Success can be defined as an achieved goal. Is there a relationship of getting good grades in your mathematics and achieving your goal? I got an opportunity to solve a mathematics question regarding triangles. The question is to find out the area of the shaded portion in the figure shown here:

There are two ways of solving this mathematics. One is to find out the area of the unshaded portion. Draw two lines across the rectangle like this :

find the areas of the colored portions: yellow; green; brown; pink and teal. Subtract the total area from the area of the rectangle. Right?

Wrong! It is not the correct way to find the solution. In the end you will find that you are going away from a solution. It gets complicated and tough. The solution becomes easier if you have focused only on the triangles. Find the areas of the three triangles and add them up. The grey area is the target to go after.

Achievement

Mathematics helps you to achieve any drawn goal as both are a matter of focusing. The following phrases best describe this :

• Where is the right target?
• What is the objective?
• Move towards the set out goal.
• Don’t bit around the bush.
• Come to the point.

Your aim is to acquire some cash. When second hand cars are in great demand, having an emotional attachment to your car is an example of not getting to your goal. You’re not seeing the ‘grey portion’.

Mathematics helps you to go for that solution and not a solution. In the above example, you will get an answer if you choose to solve the problem by the first method (provided all the information is given). But it is a difficult task ahead. There is confusion.

Instead if you stay focused on the triangles the solution is reached almost at an instant. Mathematics teaches you to open a solution which is simple.

What Do You See?

There is nothng wrong what you see. It is your perception. But what you need to see at that moment is important. If your goal is to get a driving licence within the next six months, you don’t have to postpone driving classes due to insufficient savings. Destination is reached once you see what you need to see. Colonel Sanders saw that his simple fried chicken parts recipe can become the taste of the Americans. He only saw what he needed to see. This focus helped him to focus and he became the biggest entrepreneur of his Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets.

If you want to get into something, see only what you need to see. Expectations comes to nothing if you do not see what you need to see.

We Are All Born Mathematicians

Neuropsychologist Brian Butterworth proposes that we are born with a core sense of cardinal number. He proved his findings by showing babies two things and then another two things- changing what the things are and varying lots of the visual features of those two things. Though showing the same thing over and over again- they gradually lose interest and start to look away for longer and longer periods. Then a set with treeness is shown to the babies, and they became interested again, and then more sets are shown with threeness and they lose interest, an then a set with twoness are shown to them and they gain interest again. Babies have mathematical expectations he said.

Newborn babies, commonly thought to be incapable of anything but eating sleeping and crying, are actually blossoming mathematician. We came to this world hard-wired with basic number abilities, and very probably everything we learn later in life about mathematics builds on this fundamental core. With zeal and hard work we can become good mathematician.

The relationship of mathematics and achievement is a direct one. Mathematics guides you to see the effortless solution. You will achieve anything if you see that solution not a solution- a solution which is simple. Being successful in life and able to solve mathematical questions are strongly related.