Of the many discussions in the LRHS Newspaper class one of our most passionate and heated debates this semester was on the color of math.
It is a common occurrence for students to associate different colors with different school subjects. For example, most people can agree that science is green.
In class the argument was if math is red or if math is blue, the dominating side of the argument was that math should be red.
LRHS students agree according to an Instagram poll. Of the people surveyed 55% of students think math is associated with the color red and 38% of students think math is associated with blue.
The theory is that when students were younger they learned to associate school subjects with a certain color, usually the color of the folder they used for that class. Over time it becomes a habit to pick the same color of the same subjects.
Madeline Carpenter, sophomore, is one of those students who grew up using the same color folders and notebooks for the same subjects. She is also taking AP Psychology this semester and was able to link this phenomenon to her studies of Semantic encoding — the process of converting sensory input into meaningful, long-term memories by associating new information with existing knowledge.
Carpenter, said, “All throughout my childhood, I have taken blue and associated it with math and so it gets converted into long-term memory making me think math is blue.
Another premise from BYJU’S Future School is that math is a difficult subject for most people, so they associate the subject with red — a color that symbolizes anger. People who think math is best represented by blue are most likely the students who enjoy math.
The idea that all subjects have colors is a completely subjective choice, and each person has their reason for their answer, so I ask you what is math?
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