The Director/Chief Executive, National Mathematical Centre, Prof. Promise Mebine, has called for more support towards aiding the teaching and learning of mathematics to promote national development.

Mr Mebine said this during an interview in commemoration of the International Day of Mathematics on Thursday in Abuja.

The day is celebrated annually on March 14 to highlight the importance of mathematics and its essential role in everyone’s life worldwide.

The theme for this year’s celebration is “Playing with Mathematics.’’

According to him, research in mathematics inspires new ways of thinking and commonly leads to the development of new mathematical theories, models, and tools that help solve some of the world’s challenging problems.

He explained, “Be it in the physical, biological, and life sciences. This ultimately has a significant impact on the world’s health, security, economy, and technological inventions. Mathematics has proven to be a powerful tool for understanding the world around us.

“It helps us to understand patterns, quantify relationships, predict the future, predict profit, and study exponential growth and decay (the rate at which things grow and die) within the context of population growth.’’

According to him, every sane person does and uses mathematics, though many do not realise that for instance, when you want to cross a road and there is an on-coming vehicle, what do you do?

“You consider the following: estimate the distance between you and the vehicle, the speed of the on-coming vehicle, the time it will take the vehicle to reach your crossing line and the time it will take you to cross. All these must be calculated and analysed, though mentally before crossing the road.

“Also a good cook, who wants to prepare food must take into consideration the number of people to be fed, the quantity to be cooked, the size of the pot to use, quantities of ingredients, and water to make the food tasty.

“These are some of the things people do in their everyday lives without knowing they are doing Mathematics, though in an informal way,” he said.”

He said that mathematics helped one to be precise in his/her decision-making and therefore, came up with better results.

Mr Mebine said though many do not see the usefulness of mathematics/mathematical theories beyond pure academic exercise.

He added, “The question is can we have a better world without Mathematics? Saying yes to this question is the same as saying there can be a better world without technological development. Imagine our world today without all the recent technological developments, it would be a boring/difficult place to live in, especially for people of this present generation.’’

He said that there would not be a better world without technological development, also there would not be technological development without sciences.

“And there cannot be science without mathematics because it is the language of science and the mother of all subjects. The importance of mathematics cannot be over-emphasised. Therefore, there is a need to make IDM worth looking forward to in Nigeria every year.

He commended the members of staff of the Mathematics programme for their efforts towards the success of the celebration, saying “the celebration would be a joyous one for us as we play with Mathematics.’’

(NAN)