27/03/2010 – Phillip Holt's World

For some time now I have been reading books written by Malcolm Gladwell, Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers and What the Dog Saw.

Malcolm Gladwell has been a writer on the Washington Post and The New Yorker. In 2005 he was named as one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People, and since the year 2000, has produced the four books mentioned above, and really good reading they are too. It is said he is an author, journalist, cultural commentator and intellectual adventurer, researching his facts and arguments, presenting them in an easy to read and well laid out fashion.

On my courses, training sessions and talks, I am often asked what books I would recommend, Gladwell’s work I consider some of the best to see how NLP, PhotoReading, Memory Skills are used in life without using the labels, and more.

In his work, it will be seen how little things, small changes can make big differences, how the power of intuition the power of thinking without thinking brings great results, what makes a person more successful than others are they just genius’s, and how we need to “chunk down” to look at the deep structure to look at culture and our history to understand why things happen.

Reading his books you will learn what made the Beatles great, why was Bill Gates so successful. I have often been asked how to become a good trainer, and I say in my opinion it takes four to six years to become great. I ask, how can a person who has just learned a subject in January become a Master Trainer in March, in Gladwell’s book you will understand why they cannot be. You will learn why we have apprenticeships, learning over long periods. You will understand why I use translators with long experience in their profession.

Reading Gladwell’s books will help you understand how our history, our family background, our culture will have a great influence in our outcome in life. You will understand why being born in the early months of the year, January, February, can be the difference in being great or not, and in some education systems, why being born in September, October may make you smarter than a person born in July.

You will understand what makes a product, an idea, a behaviour suddenly the “in thing”.

Fascinating reading I would recommend to you.

There are times when my brain wants to explode, wanting to shout out “that’s the wrong word“, when my body justs goes into spasms when a wrong word is spoken.

One word that I am continually hearing in the last few days is “MATH“, and it is getting me mad.

The word “Math” is a shortened version of the word “mathematics“.

In the web site Wikipedia there is an explanation of the word “mathematics” as being :-

“…the study of quantity, structure, space, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns, formulate new conjectures,
and establish truth by rigorous deduction from appropriately chosen axioms and definitions.“

which leaves me confused, as “maths” left me confused at school.

But that is not what I am writing about. My confusion about how mathematics (notice the “s”) work has been solved, has gone away, because over time, although I am not a mathematician, I now understand how numbers work, how to apply a mathematical formula (one) to work out a problem, how statistics are relevant to me, to calculate how much change I should have after paying a restaurant bill, or to calculate the value of the British Pound to the Turkish Lira, the Euro, or the Malaysian Ringit, and I learned this ability by applying “Maths” to real situations to problems I encountered as I work and travel through life.

What I am writing about is the use of the abbreviation of “mathematics“.

“Mathematics” has an “S” on the end of the word, which in the English language infers that it is plural, more than one.

If you had “an orange” in your hand you would have one orange in your hand, if you had “oranges” in your hand you would have more than one orange in your hand.

So when the word “Mathematics” is abbreviated, why drop the “S“, making the abbreviation “Math“? It should be “Maths“.

If a student is going to class, are they studying one calculation or many calculations? Are they studying “Mathematic” or “Mathematics“?

Yes I am British, and I speak British English, we say “Maths“, and it is the Americans that say “Math” which is American English.

I am on a mission, that when ever I travel abroad and give training, I have to teach my translators real English, British English, the pronunciation, the correct sounds.

Sorry my American readers, but the different pronunciations and usages of words to me is like having a slice of dried bread or a piece of chocolate cake.