Free College Math Classes at Whatcom Community College

Math is an essential skill in the modern world, whether or not you're sitting in a college classroom taking a calculus test. Whatever level or types of math we need for our jobs and daily lives, math is a powerful tool and the best way to gain skill is to practice using it. The bad news is that a typical math class costs money, but online you can get the same college level instruction and practice for free.

Whatcom Community College has an extensive Online Math Center with free college classes, reviews, interactive practice programs, and educational resources for younger students.

What? Math? Its Boring!

The mathematics we know today is based on observation of the manifestations of energy and matter in the world around us. As scientists observed nature, they made careful note of the exact measurements that they could calculate.

Over time, mathematicians began to notice patterns in nature and numbers or ratios that were commonly repeated in the shapes of the trees and animals. Geometry became a source of many seemingly universal truths, and human's first look at the infinite complexity of existence. The thing we consider a circle is essentially a function of a universal constant, Pi, a number so complicated, irrational that the suggestion of its very existence created a controversy.

And these numbers and patterns were brought to life in the human world as architectural towers, engineering feats, and early machines. Thousands of years later, astronomers would apply these numbers to the stars and planets, and they would discover the numbers and patterns of gravity and motion that could create factories, engines, and electricity.

The story of math does not end, and every chapter is more powerful than the one before it. I'm not sure how it could be considered dull if one remembers exactly what those numbers represent.