Music has been a part of Swetha Tandri's life for as long as she could remember. In fact, it is in her DNA. She has perfect pitch, an ability that exists in 1 out of every 10,000 people, in which she can recognize different tonal frequencies without an instrument. Swetha even sang before talking, to the surprise of her parents. She has been involved in carnatic music since she was 4 and sang in the choir from 6th grade, being recognized at the state level! She has always loved math as well because of how simple and logical it was and she even won some regional level math contests.
But as Swetha got further and further along in school, she initially struggled in math. She noticed a critical disparity between the what and the why in how math was taught. The answer was apparently all that was valued, not the valuable journey in between. But the memorization aspect that worked well during elementary school was not the most effective this time around. In fact, the 2012 PISA(Program for International Student Assessment) exam takers could be broken up into 3 distinct categories: the memorizers, the students who tried to approach new concepts with past knowledge, and the self-monitors who improve based on past mistakes. Memorizers performed the worst across the board, and the United States has a very high proportion of them. In fact, 60% of 4th graders and 66% of 8th graders did not meet the NAEP standard in 2019 and 60% of ACT test-takers fell below the math proficiency line.
Problem-solving in the average American math class is a very formulaic approach that relies on steps and memorization, a process that is very uninviting, ineffective, and can turn people away. But with combining math with the humanities, learning becomes much more captivating. Math and music are also similar that they both involve patterns, and we naturally crave patterns. If students can connect math to lyrics, understanding will be easier and more fun. For a more personal reason, she has never fit in completely as a STEM person or as an artistic person, so this project allows her to passionately work towards global educational reform while combining her interests. Swetha's main goal with Melodies for Math is to facilitate understanding of math through song to prepare students for STEM-related careers and turn more memorizers into solvers. She also wants to break down barriers between the rigid perception of math and what it really is, a language. The language of our universe. Swetha wants to help more people understand that math is not as bad as it seems, and even get them to appreciate it.
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