Math tends to have a bad reputation in the eyes of students. Many find it boring, confusing, frustrating and/or useless (before they realize how much they actually will need it when they become adults). Apparently, over 100 million students across the globe even fail a math class every single year. But according to a 2018 Pew Research Center survey, over half of Americans say they actually did enjoy learning about math and science in school. 

If you were one of those students, from the US or anywhere else around the globe, who couldn’t help but be fascinated by geometry, algebra, trigonometry and more, we hope you’ll enjoy this humorous list. Note Library shares a variety of memes that find the comedy in equations and come up with brilliant puns about mathematics. I have to admit that I certainly do not understand all of the jokes on this list, as it’s been many years since I’ve stepped foot in a math class, but I’m sure you pandas are much smarter than I. So enjoy!

Once we reach adulthood, it becomes increasingly clear why it was so necessary for us to learn math as children. It’s everywhere! Calculating tax in your head while approaching the checkout line in a grocery store or calculating how much to tip the server for your dinner out. Budgeting how much to spend on groceries this month and keeping track of how much milk to use every day to ensure it lasts the entire week. No matter where we look, we can’t avoid math!

When it comes to some of the most important reasons why we need to have an understanding of math, Prodigy explains on their site that it actually promotes healthy brain function. Frequently solving math problems and improving our math skills is actually like giving our brains a workout, which keeps them healthy and functioning in tip top shape.   

Math is also important for us to learn because it improves our problem-solving skills. As silly as word problems seemed when we were children (Who would possibly need to be transporting 17 watermelons home?), they actually were preparing us for our adult lives. Through working out all of those tedious problems in school, we learned how to extract important information and turn it into a solution. “When students understand algorithms and problems more deeply, they can decode the facts and more easily solve the issue,” the Prodigy team writes. “Real-life solutions are found with math and logic.”

Math supports logical reasoning and analytical thinking, two things we all need. When we have a great understanding of mathematical concepts, we can use them for more than just manipulating numbers. They can also help us “see the pathways to a solution,” Prodigy explains. “Equations and word problems need to be examined before determining the best methods for solving them. And in many cases, there’s more than one way to get to the right answer.” You may not love math, but logical reasoning and math go hand in hand and will help you in all aspects of your life. 

As we all know, math is incredibly important when it comes to balancing budgets and improving our personal financial literacy. Anything from doing your weekly grocery shopping to getting a loan to purchase your first car requires quite a bit of mathematical problem solving. As cool as it may have been during your school days to slack off during math class or ignore your teacher when they introduced new concepts, being a financially literate adult who knows they can always pay rent and afford to eat each month is way more impressive.   

As with anything in life, humor allows us to have more fun, including math! Ilana Horn, creator of the Teaching/Math/Culture blog, wrote a piece in 2019 detailing how humor can be helpful in the classroom, and she noted that it can ease the tension that often finds its way into classrooms. Math class can be stressful, especially for students who don’t take to the subject easily or who are worried about their grades. Incorporating jokes, humor and memes can help humanize teachers and remind students that learning actually can be fun. 

“When we invite humor into math class, we also change the emotional tenor of what we are doing,” Horn writes on her blog. “Humor positively affects learning by releasing tension. When we laugh, we are often more at ease. Humor has even been shown to improve students’ performance on tests. Maybe laughing sessions can improve study sessions. Humor can build rapport, either with individual students or with a classroom community. I know a teacher who strategically looks for something to laugh at with each of his classes, so that they can have a shared inside joke.”

Humor in math class also encourages students to bring their personalities and identities into the classroom. “Who we are is fundamental to how we make sense of the world,” Horn explains. “When we have to leave part of ourselves at the door, we abandon crucial sensemaking resources.” And teaching students that math has nothing to do with being a person reinforces the idea that math is pointless and that students won’t ever use it in their real lives. Making the classroom more fun, with memes such as these, encourages students to be more involved and have a personal connection to mathematics.

We hope you’re getting a kick out of these silly memes about math, pandas. Whether you slept through all of your arithmetic classes as a child or you went on to become a full fledged mathematician, these pics are for you. Keep upvoting the ones that you find particularly clever, and then if you’re interested in checking out another Bored Panda list featuring mathematical memes, look no further than right here!