8358/21277
I am listening to Matt Parker's Love Triangle ahead of having him on Book Club as a guest in a couple of weeks. Sadly it is not a tell all expose of the twisted love lives of
Festival of the Spoken Nerd (though come on, no one can convince me that that lot weren't all banging each other), but an - in some ways less racy- maths book about loving triangles.
Matt is a fantastic communicator and champion of making maths - which some people might see as very boring and of no use in real life - interesting. You still won't convince me that it has any real-life applications though.
He keeps it understandable for the lay person, but also explores some quite complex maths ideas. Or at least to me. Much of it is beyond me, at least in audio form where ideas are coming at you thick and fast. Which is a weird thing to realise because I was a bit of a maths whizz at school. Or at least the best person at maths in my year. I did two A level Maths, the regular one in a year (I got a B) and then Further Pure Maths in the second year (I got an A - though it was really only half an A level more as the first paper was the Pure Maths paper of the regular A level - I think).
I didn't really understand calculus until about a month before the final Maths exam (after I had already got a Maths A level) and I had started to struggle a little bit with the subject. But I would have known most of the more complicated basics as an 18 year old and now know absolutely fuck all. Every single bit of information beyond adding up and multiplying has gone out of my brain. I doubt very much that I'd be able to get anywhere if you gave me a GCSE paper in Maths now. Which is probably why I constantly dream about sitting my A level Maths and not being able to do it.
I am sad that all that effort was for nothing and that my brain shovelled every last scrap of knowledge into the memory bin, probably within weeks of me finishing the exams.
My only consolation for this loss of learning is that maths has no applications in the real world, whatever Matt Parker tries to tell you.
I thought about how different my life would have been if I had persisted in studying maths beyond A level. I did have an aptitude for it, so it made sense, but really I think the reasons that I was considering doing it at University were because a) that's what my dad had done and b) because I was the best at it in the year. Neither of those are good metrics for making a life-changing decision.
I came second in nearly everything to Steve Cheeke, but I usually edged him in Maths and History. But he was very good at everything, so being second to him shouldn't have meant I didn't take that subject on and being better at him at something shouldn't be the reason for choosing to study it.
As I've recounted recently I had an epiphany part way through the first term of A Levels that I didn't want to do Maths at University and that History was a better fit for me. And I took the unbelievably bold decision to change from doing Physics to English Lit to facilitate that decision. To be fair, I wasn't enjoying Physics which maybe helped. Looking back though I can't believe that I not only came to that realisation, but took a huge risk and made the switch.
If I'd gone on to study Maths at University then I guess I might remember what the fuck cos and tan and sin mean (which I don't now, even though Matt has just explained it all in the audiobook), but my life would have been very different.
I don't think I would have got into Oxford as a Maths student for starters. If I had been too nervous or embarrassed to make that late A level switch then who knows where my life would be now?
Have you seen the film Sliding Doors? It's not very good.
Of course every decision in our lives affects everything that will happen to us. What if I hadn't taken a year off before Uni? I am not sure I'd have started writing with Stewart if he was a year behind me (he still treats Al Murray like he's in the year below, so how would have treated me if I was his senior).
What gets me about that A level switch was that it was so bold and risky. Of course it's pretty messed up that we are asked to make life changing decisions at the age of 16 and I am glad I recognised that I'd made a mistake with mine quickly enough to rectify it.
The timeline I've ended up in has been pretty good for me. Most of what happens to us is just random luck, bumping into the right person at the right time. In hindsight it feels like it was meant to be, but somewhere in another Universe I am a ageing Maths teacher who can maybe make his pupils laugh a bit more than some of the other fuddy duddies and I play with my grandkids at the weekend.
Somewhere in another Universe I am a hugely successful comedy superstar who overdosed on cocaines during an orgy with supermodels in 2002.
Lucky dead alternate me.
