I am enjoying filling in for my good friend and former colleague Pete Howard as he takes a little break from writing his weekly column. I want to thank Pedro and the OBSERVER for giving me the space to share my thoughts and musings in writing.

Pete sometimes consults with me on his columns, asking if people might miss the intended humor or find his writing offensive. The truth is, no matter what a journalist writes about, in the contentious nature of our times, a columnist always runs the risk of offending someone. Even a scribe writing about something as black and white as mathematics. And so it is that a few people took exception and shared emotional responses to my inaugural guest column.

But that’s the beauty of mathematics. Aside from the frustration caused from not being able to solve an equation or perhaps the elation felt after battling through to the solution of a difficult problem, there is really no emotion in mathematics. You may hate the study of mathematics. It may hurt the mathematician’s feelings because you despise a course of study that they love so dearly. But emotions do not change mathematical truths. One plus one will always equal two. It is impossible to divide by zero. You really can’t give more than 100% of your best effort. Prices can increase more than100% but they can’t really decrease more than100%.

Yet math and science deniers have been around for thousands of years and can be found in the holiest and most powerful of places on earth. Ground breaking Italian physicist from the 16th century, Galileo once wrote, “Mathematics is the language through which God wrote the universe.” Yet his own church placed him under arrest for proving that the earth is not the center of the universe and that our little blue ball actually revolves around the sun and not the other way around.

The Greek scientist and inventor Archimedes, considered one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, was killed in the third century by a Roman soldier during the siege of Syracuse. Legend has it that the legionnaire became angry when Archimedes scolded and insulted the soldier for interrupting his work. Archimedes was killed while doing math!

Aristotle used math to argue for a spherical earth. He went into exile to escape execution for his beliefs. He was accused of not honoring the traditional Gods of Athens.

I thank the late Dr. Fred Byham for instilling much of this historical knowledge in students who were lucky enough to take his History of Math classes. Fred was a math teacher’s math teacher. And although it may take a math teacher to understand that statement, Fred was also a patient, kind and understanding teacher. He was a wonderful person. Anyone can understand that.

Today we still have math and science deniers. We have “flat earthers”. We have climate change skeptics. You can argue about the causes and the outcomes but the recorded temperatures don’t lie. Our planet is warming. Economists say that inflation is decreasing and prices are down when the numbers don’t bear that out. State and federal governments from both political parties deny fraud, graft and waste when fact based evidence clearly shows otherwise. President Trump talks about prescription drug prices decreasing by 1600%. Facebook, You-Tube and Instagram are filled with ridiculous incorrect mathematical statements that would be comical if they were not so sad. Our national debt is something like $36 trillion and growing. Disturbingly few people can fathom a number that large, the interest on that debt and the time it will take to pay it down.

There are uninformed groups who have objected to the use of the Hindu-Arabic base ten number system used in our country. Their objections seem to be based solely on the name of origin of our number system. News flash. Mathematics is not an American invention. But maybe to show our country’s greatness we should change the name of our system of mathematics to the American Base 10 Number System? Or how about Trump Base Ten?

President Trump has stated that certain immigrant populations are better at math than natural born Americans. Personally, I don’t believe that statement. In spite of an often inferior math curriculum, the best and brightest U.S. students from all races and all ethnic origins match up favorably against students from every other nation on the planet.The difference is that in our country we try to educate all students. In so many other countries of comparison, only their top students receive a comprehensive education.

Certain individuals will try to use math and science to explain away the existence of God. But I agree with Galileo. There is too much order in mathematics and in the universe for there not to be a creator. Math doesn’t disprove God. Whatever your opinion of our creator, good or bad, I believe that math proves God. Universal truths exist. And I don’t care who it is, a Liberal Democrat, a Conservative Republican, the Pope or the President of the United States. When a person tells you that one plus one doesn’t equal two, it’s time to hold up two fingers, maybe even the middle digits on both hands, and show them loudly and peacefully that it does.

Andrew Ludwig is a retired math teacher and a retired public school and Catholic school administrator. He currently works as a substitute teacher in Chautauqua County.