My math professor loves to give us word problems. Applications of mathematical concepts to real-life, every day scenarios. And that's great! Learning how to apply math that you learn to the real world is important - it's why math was created in the first place.

Trouble is, he likes boats that go up and down stream. And every time I see one now, I flinch. More...

While waiting for the exam to start, the class is currently reviewing the subject on the board. Not to even mention how odd (in a good way) it is to be in a class where everyone seems to want to succeed, I'm realizing how easy it is for me to get confused between approaching a quadratic function and a quadratic equation. Funny thing; after the exam, most of my classmates seemed pretty happy with how they did. Except we all forgot that when solving a radical equation, we have to put our answers back into the original equation to check they both work. And, I officially suck at drawing parabolas. Mine ended up looking as thick as the u-bend beneath the sink. :( So, fingers crossed for a decent grade at least.

Anyway! The differences between a quadratic function:

and a quadratic equation:

They look the same, right? I mean, one just says instead of , right? Hold those horses! More...

The quadratic formula. High school children learn it all over the globe. I did. I learned it by rote, and I passed my Maths GCSE quite handily by having memorized the formula. Did I have any idea what it meant? Absolutely not. So, when it came time to learn it again, of course I'd completely forgotten about it. All the mathematics teachers I had before my current one taught the formula as something to be uniformly applied and learned. Like the national anthem. I could sing the words to 'Mae Hen Wlad fy Nhadau' as many times as I liked, but it would be years before I actually understood what it meant.

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