Math needs a story 

For a lot of people math formulae are abstract and unconnected. They don't fit into a context, they aren't part of a familiar landscape, there isn't a story about them. 

Example: If you plug x's and y's into a quadratic equation, you'll map a parabola.  So you learn what a quadratic equation is, and you learn what a parabola is, and you see a million ways to relate them. But you're left with questions. What is it for?  What problem does this solve? Where are we ever likely to use it again, why is the quadratic formula important and not the Triadic or quintrassic formulas? Why is this interesting? Who found it and what were they looking for? 



While doing some research for the 5th graders I teach sometimes, I discovered that algebra was invented  by Arab traders (Phoenicians?). They invented x because they needed to divide their olive oil into 5 containers and sell the first three for 20 drachmae and the other 2 for 25  and figure out the net profit after subtracting for shipping and handling.  The technique they came up with is called " the bridge" (al jabr in Arabic) so that what you do on one side you have to do on the other side. By pushing things over the bridge they can get x alone on one side and what's on he other is the answer. 

Clever and useful and it has a face, a trader in a Phoenician market. 

Some stories
Rational numbers are not reasonable numbers, they're ratios.  The EGYPTIANS wrote all their numbers as fractions. They thought numbers  could all be expressed neatly as ratios.  Pythagoras started a religion based on this and his followers wore pentangles around their necks. The guy who found out that pi wasn't rational was a heretic and they threw him overboard and drowned him when he brought it up one too many times. 

The Greeks couldn't do multiplication and division with their awkward numerals, so they did most of their advanced math with geometry. Instead of numbers, they did all their calculation with  shapes and angles and ratios.  They got way far. 

Babylonians had a numbering system based on groupings of 60, and also 12 and it had to do with divisors. 12 has 1234 as divisors and 60 has 123456.  They were the ones who decided our minute would be 60 seconds, hour would be 60 minutes and daylight would be 12 hours. They also decided the circle would be cut up into 60*60 pieces.  12 months in the calendar.  Did they have six fingers on each hand?  This is abou 2500 bc, about 2000 years before Ancient Greece. They were as far from them as we are from Ancient Rome. That's a long long time To be counting cycles of 60 without change. 

Fibonacci and the golden section phi. It's fuckin miraculous 

Logarithms: what are they a shortcut for?  Who uses them and why again? 

Soh cah toa  so what? 

Boolean algebra. Other kinds of algebras like vectors. The concept that you can add/subtract/multiply/divide other things besides numbers

Topology and knots

Calculus and plotting change. How do infinitesimals work? 

Statistics and probability

I'm suggesting a... Book?  A series of tv commercials like  schoolhouse rock?  A web series like vi whatshername that doodles that stuff?