College Admissions Essay: Expressing Creativity through Mathematics :: College Admissions Essays

Expressing Creativity through Mathematics   After his visit to a Shell Research Laboratory, my high school teacher in mathematics told us in class that he was so happy with his education, beca theatrical role maths had helped him to understand the explanations and demonstrations that had been given by the Shell researchers. He said, If you master math accordingly you can understand everything. That was certainly an exaggeration, but it nevertheless sounded bid a golden message. Since I definitely wanted to have a better understanding of what was going on around me, mathematics seemed the translucent way to go. Also, if it was non lots beyond high school math, then it was pretty easy in addition. What could one wish more? So I enrolled in every advanced math class offered in our high school. Pretty soon I discovered that mathematics was much more than a set of principles that helped one to solve intellectual riddles. It was not a finished system that one could aim to maste r after some limited m, but it was really a way of thinking, a means of expressing creativity endless, an old established science, but still unexampled and with undiscovered green meadows, nearby and far away.   I also well-educated that mathematics was more than merely an intellectual activity it was a obligatory tool for getting a grip on all sorts of problems in science and engineering. Without mathematics there is no progress. However, mathematics could also interpret its nasty face during periods in which problems that seemed so simple at beginning sight refused to be solved for a long time. Every math student will recognize these periods of frustration and helplessness.   My first opportunity to use math outside the academic world was in my part time job with United parcel Service.  It was an eye-opener for me in that mathematical techniques, in conclave with computers, could be used for solving very complicated real-life problems, such as predicting and con trolling the continuos flow of 300 million packages per day. I was deeply affect by the numerical masterpieces of Jim Gilkinson and Dick Marga, the project managers. They led the way in showing how one could overcome some serious limitations of computers for solving bilinear systems of equations.