So this is my first post and any real “nerd” will know why I named my post “Hello World”. Many years ago, I dabbled in a little bit of computer programming and the first program you ever write, as kind of a rite of passage, is to make the screen say “Hello World”. Needless to say, it wasn’t always easy, but nothing worthwhile in life ever is. At times, I really did want to pull my hair out though, with things like syntax errors. Firstly, I had to work out what a syntax error was… Basically, in layman’s terms, it’s like making a grammar or punctuation error in an essay. Secondly, I needed to find this syntax error (or errors), most of the time it was a missing semi-colon, in my thirty or forty lines of code. Did I mention that the technology didn’t even give you a hint as to where you might begin to look for it.

So why have I been telling you about all of this? Much like programming, Mathematics is also a language, although many people do not see it that way. They think, just because it has numbers and the odd x ,y or z it is “just Math”. Think about Arabic or Chinese, do they use the conventional alphabet that we use in the English language? No. Does it make them less of a language? Also, no. And it is the very same with Mathematics. As soon as one changes their mindset and starts to see Mathematics more like the language it is, filled with number sentences and its own set of grammar and punctuation, it becomes a great deal easier and it starts making a lot more sense. Well, it did to me anyway.

Take for instance {x:x∈R}, in the English language it would take far more time to express the same sentiment. Case and point: The set of x such that x is an element of the real numbers. Was {x:x∈R} not so much easier? There are hundreds of other examples of such number sentences that would take far more time to express in the English language, than it does with a concise number sentence. But, do you want to know the true beauty of Mathematics as a language? It doesn’t matter where in the world you go, it always looks the same and it always makes sense be it here in South Africa, or over in America or even China. It is constant.

May you find the true beauty in Mathematics today.