Mathematics is universal and ubiquitous. But as with most foreign languages, we tend not to speak it very well

OPINION:IMAGINE HOW SIMPLE life would be if we all spoke only one language. It would be like the convenience of not having to change money in the eurozone, but in a linguistic sense. No more struggling when abroad trying to convey meaning to a taxi driver who you know has no clue where you want to go.

No more asking for fish and getting game hen in a French restaurant (don’t laugh, that really happened). No more lugging around phrase books.

Unfortunately the evolution of language was not so co-operative. Researchers now believe that languages arose and moved away from one another just as human communities did. Small groups would split off and depart from the larger group, taking with them a foreshortened genetic mix but also developing a unique language as time passed.

This genetic division happened lots of times, hence the diversity of humanity on the planet. And this diversity is matched in a linguistic sense given that there are more than 6,000 distinct languages out there.

Many of them are spoken by only a tiny number of people, living above the Arctic Circle or in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, say. Linguists have even been able to declare the death of a living language at the passing of the last person speaking it. One would assume though that a language going extinct must involve the loss of the last two people, given that takes two to have a conversation.

All of this linguistic awkwardness would have been gone by now had one Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof been more successful. He is credited with publishing the first book in 1887 on the development of a single, unifying international language, Esperanto. His ambition was to create a single world language that would be easy to learn and would create a shared linguistic identity fostering peace and promoting international understanding.

It was also meant to be free of all the political baggage attached to the existing mainstream languages. We fuss (or some fuss) about the primacy of a given language: French is supposed to be the language of diplomacy; English is the language of commerce; Spanish is the most diffuse language; Chinese is the language of the future.

There is another unifying language however, even though it is ignored most of the time. It is universal and ubiquitous. People around the world know its simple alphabet, its syntax and its limited grammar, but as with most foreign languages we tend not to speak it very well. Full fluency is a skill possessed only by a few.

It is so universal that space agencies are confident we will be able to use it to communicate with aliens from distant planets should we ever manage to meet any. That language, of course, is mathematics.

We all manage to speak it to a degree, though it tends to be more of a written rather than a spoken language. Yet mathematics is central to our lives and it is vital as a nation for us to be highly conversant with it. Its application across all disciplines – finance, science, economics, engineering, insurance, aerospace, computing and more – is central to the future development of our economy.

The Chinese know this. They have begun to dominate when it comes to league tables of mathematical proficiency. Unfortunately Ireland lags behind badly and continues to slide. The OECD/Pisa study of 15-year-olds from 39 countries, released last autumn, makes for unhappy reading if you are concerned about academic achievements.

Our students have slumped in the standings, ranking 16th for mathematical proficiency in 2006, but tumbling to 26th by 2009, the second fastest fall of any of the 39 countries cited in the document. This now puts our students below average for mathematics.

We went from fifth in reading in 2000 to 17th in 2009 and only managed to hold the line in science at 18th up to 2009.

We often hear that we have one of the best education systems in the world, but statistics say otherwise. Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn has declared that the current education system is no longer fit for purpose. “We have been codding ourselves in Ireland in saying to ourselves that we have one of the best education systems in the world. The reality now is we don’t,” he said some weeks ago.

Failure to achieve a better fluency in maths will work against us in the long term. Not everyone needs to be an Einstein or a Hamilton, but we do need a substantial number of students who can readily hold a conversation in this most universal of languages.

It is also worth noting that maths imparts an extra benefit on those proficient at it – a sensitivity to beauty. Mathematicians try to reduce complexities into simple equations, condensing and reducing until they have rendered a clean and straightforward numerical answer.

It is at this point that they begin talking about this extra dimension, the beauty of the equation. This is a common response and many mathematicians believe that if the result exhibits this beauty then it is a hallmark of its accuracy and its correctness.

Don’t take my word for it. George Boole (1815-1864), who we claim as our own but who was born in Lincolnshire, developed Boolean logic, the logic that controls today’s computers. He was the first professor of maths at the then Queen’s College Cork and talked about the need to find beauty in maths, as seen in this quote.

“No matter how correct a mathematical theorem may appear to be, one ought never to be satisfied that there was not something imperfect about it until it also gives the impression of being beautiful.”