Math Is the Practice of Asking Better Questions ▲ joymath.me

Math Is the Practice of Asking Better Questions: A Call to Let Go of Answer-Chasing and Embrace Math as the Deep Practice of Wonder

Wait, Are My Questions Not Good Enough?

Asking better questions doesn’t mean having the “right” ones. It means being willing to stay with the question long enough for it to change you. Better doesn’t mean smarter. It means deeper, more honest, more alive. A “better question” might be the one that reveals what you don’t yet understand. Or the one that names what’s been quietly tugging at you all along. Sometimes, the better question is the one that shows you what a previous one was missing.

We don’t ask better questions because we know more. We ask them because we’re listening more closely.

The Problem with Answer-Chasing

When faced with a math problem in school, the job of the student is usually: “Find the answer and show your work.” Showing work is a kind of proof; a way for the teacher to trace student thinking and spot where it changed tracks.

In practice, math is too often reduced to speed, correctness, and getting to the answer before time runs out. I can’t tell you how many times someone, upon learning I’m a math educator, immediately asks me to solve a giant computation problem in my head.

When I’m under time pressure, I panic and shut down. I want a pencil. I want a conversation. I don’t want to perform a party trick.

I know I’m not alone.

Math education shouldn’t be a Sorting Hat dividing people into “good at math” and “not good at math,” yet, many of us have learned to associate it with pressure, anxiety, and the sense of always being behind, while someone else always seems two steps ahead.

Why do we believe math needs to move fast when it lives in a timeless universe?

Sure, sometimes we need quick answers. But more often, we need deep, thoughtful ones. We need both. Our obsession with answers, quick, neat, and final, has stripped math of its richness and excluded many creative and neurodiverse thinkers. It treats math as a machine: input a problem, output a solution.

But math, beyond its constants, is about variables. It’s about nuance, context, and change. We live in a world full of variables with everything we know constantly shifting. Math, too, is alive, flexible, and full of possibility.

The problem isn’t that people “can’t do math.” The problem is that they’ve only seen one version of it, the one obsessed with answers.

We’ve spent too long trying to define math by its solutions. But math holds multitudes. It’s a noun, a verb, an adjective. It’s something to do, something to see, something to become. For some, it’s a system. For others, a mystery. A struggle, a tool, a language, a playground, a puzzle, a mirror.

Maybe you’ve always thought of math as numbers and calculations, worksheets, speed drills, boxed-in procedures? Maybe you’ve also suspected there’s something more? Something beyond the formulas.

Something distinctly human.

If you’ve ever felt like math wasn’t for you, or that everyone else “got it” except you, that feeling is so common it has a name: imposter syndrome. It shows up all the time in math spaces. We tend to treat struggle as a sign we don’t belong, but in truth, moments of confusion and discomfort are the very heart of learning.

Disequilibrium is the threshold of growth.

Some worry that humanizing math will dilute its rigor. But math is not fragile. There is space for pure mathematics and applied mathematics, for artistic, historical, and contextual mathematics. When we reduce math to one narrow lane, we don’t protect it, we diminish it.

Math is, and has always been, the deep practice of asking better questions.

Origins and the Global Story of Math

Take a trip through human history, and you’ll find that counting and numerical systems emerged out of a need to share and trade resources accurately and fairly. Number systems vary across cultures, some based in 10s, others in 20s, 60s, or even 5s. These systems weren’t created just for abstraction, but for storytelling, justice, and survival.

Consider the ancient Maya, whose mathematical system was one of the most advanced of its time. They used a base-20 system and were among the first to develop the concept of zero as a placeholder, a brilliant insight that enabled complex astronomical calculations and precise calendar systems. Their math wasn’t theoretical; it was deeply tied to agriculture, ritual, and community life.

And our shared mathematical history is not just about numbers. It’s about shape and space, too. Geometry was born from our need to measure, build, and navigate the world. From vast irrigation systems and giant structures to intricate Islamic tile patterns and careful cathedral spires. From Russian “Onion Domes” to carefully gridded cities, math lives in our architecture, our art, our maps.

We live on a sphere, so what even is a straight line? How do airlines determine flight paths? Light travels in straight lines. Sound travels in waves. Planets spin as they orbit stars, tracing ellipses or near-perfect circles through space. Meanwhile, the light we perceive from those stars may reach us long after the stars themselves have died. Mystery has always surrounded us, and humans have always had the drive to ask, wonder, and try to make sense of it all. Where we notice chaotic movement and choose to look deeper, a secret relationship is uncovered, embedded in pattern or structure.

Better questions help us see it.

From Structures to Systems Thinking

In pure and abstract mathematics, we find precision and elegance. A point is a dot in space, too small for the human eye to see. A line is a series of points extending in both directions forever. A bridge or cathedral on paper might appear flawless, its lines crisp, its equations balanced. Perfection. This way of describing is essential for exploring mathematical theories and conceptual clarity.

But if you are actually building that bridge, context matters. That perfect bridge must be modified to fit the human need.

How many vehicles will cross it each day? What about pedestrians, cyclists, livestock? Does it span a river or a freeway? Is it located in a region with earthquakes or permafrost? These questions change everything, from the depth of your foundation to your materials and design constraints.

Even our base-ten number system is a human-made structure. The value of a digit depends entirely on its position. When a digit increases past nine, it shifts the neighboring digits in a predictable pattern. To use math in the real world, we have to interact with structures in motion. We must begin to think in systems, recognizing how a single change can ripple through the whole.

This is where algebra and systems thinking contribute to asking better questions:

Algebra is the math of relationships, cause and effect. It’s a vital domain because we’re not only part of systems, we can also affect them, both intentionally and unintentionally. Knowing this, we can ask intentional questions to guide the outcomes we seek.

Modeling allows us to observe movement, growth, behavior, and consequences. Building mathematical models helps us identify the questions we should be asking, but haven’t yet realized we need to.

Mathematics becomes a way to navigate complexity. Finding just-right questions becomes crucial.

To solve real-world problems, we must begin with curiosity or a longing to know. We ask:

How do I begin to make sense of this?
What if x happens, what will result?
How can I influence a pattern to change an outcome?

The Role of Noticing and Wondering

Have you ever watched a child playing in a sandbox? They’re little engineers, building, breaking, rebuilding. They notice how the sand behaves and use that to their advantage. They dig, test, and explore. The sandbox becomes a site of discovery.

What if math could be more like a sandbox?

A space where we play, test ideas, fail, learn, and try again. A place where asking questions is natural and celebrated. Most of us don’t usually wonder aloud, but we carry questions constantly. Learning to name those questions and to sharpen them is a skill. And it begins with noticing.

The real beginning of math isn’t the answer. It’s the question. We notice a pattern. We wonder why. Sometimes the why keeps tugging on us until we long to know. So we ask.

Why does wet sand hold its shape while dry sand doesn’t?
Does saltwater behave differently than freshwater?
What tools work best to carve? What structures collapse? What holds?

A big part of questioning is learning to notice. We are surrounded by information we’ve trained ourselves to tune out. But math invites us to pause and look again. To ask:

How does this work?
What does it interact with?
What is it affected by?

The more we notice, the richer our questions become. And the better our questions are, the closer we move toward understanding, not just of numbers, but of ourselves, and our world.

In doing so, math helps us become more fully human.

Reframing Mathematics: What If Math Is Less About Answers and More About Better Questions?

If we taught math not as a set of procedures, but as the practice of noticing and asking better questions, a few remarkable shifts might unfold.

Math would begin to feel more alive, less like a script to follow, more like a conversation to join. Students wouldn’t be waiting for directions (do they wait in the sandbox?). They’d be exploring. They’d notice patterns, tensions, surprises. They’d feel empowered to wonder aloud:

Why is that happening?
What if I changed this?
Is this always true?

Why? Because their curiosity would be ignited, and they would burn to know the answers, pouring all their efforts into discovery. Children are the fuel for original, imaginative thinking. If we want bold solutions to complex problems, we need to fan the flames, not dampen the fire of their mathematical creativity.

Mistakes would lose their stigma, because every wrong turn would hold clues. The classroom would sound different, quieter sometimes, because of deep thinking; louder sometimes, because someone just saw something and had to share it.

Math would become a lens for making sense of the world, not a hoop to jump through. A tool for understanding others, for tracing consequences, for naming injustices, for building beauty. It would reveal itself as deeply human.

Over time, students might come to see themselves not as people who “get math” or don’t, but as people who notice, wonder, and think deeply. People who ask better questions, and trust themselves to follow where those questions lead.

Imagine a future not built on “getting it right,” but on anticipating continuous adjustment. A future where we refine our questions and responses in real time, not to tame the wild or resist the current, but to move with the changing systems, like learning to read the river and dance through it, instead of trying to control it.

A Call to Presence

So, reader, who is also a noticer and a wonderer, what are your questions?

What patterns do you see today? What might you ask next? What if math wasn’t a race, but a practice of attention, care, and curiosity? What is math to you, and what else could it be, if you let yourself focus on noticing?

Before rushing to solve, what if we paused to ask:

What’s really going on here?
What’s underneath this?
Is it true? Is it always true? In what context might it not be true?
Does everyone see it the same way? Let’s ask!

By asking deep, thoughtful questions, we begin to define what is always true (constant) and what is sometimes true (variable). We flesh out the skeletal problem before we solve it, adding body, context, meaning and creativity. We make it human first. We humanize the abstract. This is where it begins, because asking better questions is what thinkers do.

It’s what you do.

If we raised a generation who saw math not as answers to chase, but as questions worth pursuing, what kind of world might they build? It takes courage to keep asking better questions, and to en-courage our children to follow their curiosity.

To encourage literally means to put heart into

As parents, as caregivers, as guides, you are the encouragers. You put heart into your children every time you honor their questions. You don’t need all the answers. You just need to believe in the asking.

Let the Questions Begin! Let Them Never End

Too often, we’re introduced to mathematics as a set of formulas; clean, complete, memorized, but behind every formula is a person who was wondering: How do I model motion? Describe sound? Trace the stars or send a song across the sea?

Math begins there, not with answers, but with longing. With curiosity. With the need to ask better questions. It began with a desire to measure a harvest, follow a shadow, listen for rhythm, make sense of silence.

As we deepen our noticing,
a longing for truth arises—
the kind of truth that waits patiently,
longing also for you.

…waiting
for the conversation to begin.

Math begins with longing,
and lives in the questions
we are brave enough to keep asking.