Thank you. You got me thinking about Math vs art as recreation. Now I don't know about operationalizing it but people do a lot of Math as recreation. I remember my dad got us a book or riddles as a kid, and many of them were math problems. The infamous fly traveling between two trains was one of them. It also had a riddle of shopkeeper gets a counterfeit 100$ bill for an item worth 70$ and change worth 30$. How much did he lose from the counterfeit bill.

I also remember a friend in 3rd grade presented me with an Eulerian path problem of drawing a house: https://images.app.goo.gl/T8AWR3XBM9gqKDdZ6 I didn't know what it was and got lucky in solving it when I did it but when I had to think it through in college it definitely helped to have solved a case of it in 3rd grade.

We love doing battles of wit and logic but don't like how Math is operationalized.