Matrices for shop-keepers

In Nigerian folklore,
someone called out to a young child, "Emeka what is four plus four?"
The child, frowning, said "eh, I don't know."

The same person asked, "Emeka, what is four naira plus four naira?"
The kid proudly announced, "ahahn, that na eight naira now!"

I think Seun told me this joke.
Let's learn matrix multiplication. Can you solve this?

If you're like Emeka, think of the above matrix multiplication as:

If you can write in matrix form all your:
eggs from two shops, milk from two shops, and sugar from two shops in three columns,
then you can do the following matrix multiplication:

Show me, in pictures

The New York Times featured a weekly blog on the Elements of Math.
It was a gentle invitation to mathematics, in prose.

While I like prose, love math, and enjoyed the math blog,
most humans would find it much easier to "read" this blog, in pictures.

What is my point? If we focused on making teaching materials that are truly user-friendly, a whole new industry would grow, employing armies of artists, actors, filmmakers, editors, historians, sculptors, writers, ...

Why Do Math

Sponsored by SIAM, this website highlights some cool applications of the work of present-day real-life mathematicians.

Watch this space

Math blogging begins around May 2011.