Davies’ Dailies - Mister Math Skills

The answer is quite simple: now!

Yes indeed, “now” is the answer. Whether you’re readying for a test, balancing your checkbook or trying to figure out your mortgage rate, there’s no such thing as “tomorrow”, since “now” is always the right time to start learning that simple math trick that will make your life more enjoyable or lead you to a deeper understanding of your (sometimes not so) favorite subject matter.

But since “now” is the answer, now has also come the time for me to get serious about turning this Davies’ Dailies blog into “The World’s #1 Math Skills Development Website”. True, each and every Internet Marketing guru has an offer nowadays on the subject of “blogging for fun and profit” which might help me make my dream come true. Although I’m already carefully listening to the advice of such mentors as Mike Litman, Tellman Knudson, Mike Filsaime and Mike Antoni, I have also immensely benefited from Mark Joyner’s Simpleology courses since last summer.

I thought it was then only fair to let you know that…

I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.

Thank you Flimsy Sanity for introducing me to Dolly Freed’s 1978 Possum living: How to live well without a job and with almost no money!

Although I’m new to Flimsy’s blog and must confess I haven’t read Dolly’s book, I happen to be one of those 70’s schoolboys who still does remember the pain of having to abandon arithmetic (and math skills grooming!) for “… new math, where you learn all about “sets” and graduate not knowing how to balance a checkbook”. That alone might make it worth putting this book on your “must read” list. But believe me, if you have a few spare moments left, just go and read Flimsy’s novelized life story at Bee Dancer of Nokota, with more on her background at Schizophrenia Sourcebook.

Amazing how such gifted people may go unnoticed sometimes…

We still have a few minutes left, which leaves me ample time to share one of Charles Davies’ views on math skills development with you:

“The mere practical man regards with favor only the results of science, deeming the reasonings through which these results are arrived at, quite superfluous. Such should remember that the mind requires instruments as well as the hands, and that it should be equally trained in their combinations and uses. Such is, indeed, now the complication of human affairs, that to do one thing well, it is necessary to know the properties and relations of many things. Every thing, whether existing in the abstract or in the material world; whether an element of knowledge or a rule of art, has its connections and its law: to understand these connections and that law, is to know the thing. When the principle is clearly apprehended, the practice is easy.”

Charles Davies, in The Logic and Utility of Mathematics
pp. 16-17, A.S Barnes & Burr Ed., New York, 1860

This website will be dedicated to providing news and information on the way people use maths on a daily basis in a fun and sometimes useful manner, and cover the topics of essential math skills, arithmetic tips, unexpected math uses and helpful math tools. The audience will consist of any and all human being who has demonstrated even a remotely vague interest in grooming his math skills. While I will be adding posts every day about what I call “gems of math wisdom”, I do expect others to join me on this journey. I am doing this not only because I want to bring math literacy to the rest of us, but also because I want to organize the world’s math information and make it easily accessible.