A GOOD MOVE TO MASTER MATHS

In the spirit of the current world championship bout between Norwegian grandmaster Magnus Carlsen and Indian grandmaster Viswanathan Anand, we should seriously consider the role of chess in how young students learn mathematics.

The two activities have plenty in common. In either, one’s success relies strongly on the ability to be creative under some set of rules.

Beginners in both maths and chess seem to play only for the rules, for they don’t really understand much else yet. In maths, this means swinging the algebraic sword blindly in the hope of making progress. In chess, making any legal move is enough for a beginner, so long as their piece can’t be immediately taken.

Playing either game this way seems fine at first, for if the teacher has the right experience then the newbie will be punished or rewarded accordingly, and will shape their ideas and strategy for the next time around.

However, while chess has maintained huge popularity worldwide, the allure of doing maths seems lower than ever.

And if we think about the reasons for which we bellow the importance of maths – critical thinking, decision making, mental agility – it seems surprising that chess isn’t routinely taught in maths classrooms across the country.

Learning chess could actually have a two-fold effect. Not only could we impart the aforementioned skills through something, which more people seem to enjoy, but also we might able to transition students to maths through chess.

Students of chess use symbolic notation to record their moves, arithmetic to add up their points and creativity to win position and pieces. And plenty of new ideas in maths could be first taught under the framework of chess.

TEXT 9

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