I remember being asked open ended questions like this for the first time in an undergraduate “math modeling” class. In my case the question was: how many golf balls will fit in this room?
A year or so ago I stumbled across Reuben Hersh’s “Under-represented Then Over-represented: A Memoir of Jews in American Mathematics” in the pages of a recent Best Writing on Mathematics volume.
Thank you for writing such amazing software! I am now a little embarassed about the tone I used in this blog post. At the time I was writing it I was feeling a little exasperated, and also probably […]
A professional mathematician has, through exposure to many trials, become something like a desert creature, capable of supplying “meaning” metabolically by an internal gland rather than imbibing it from without. […]
I was wandering in my neighborhood bookstore this morning, when I came across a new edition of The Greek Myths, by Robert Graves. Attracted by the cover, and my love of the Claudius series, I decided to bring it […]
It seems interesting to me that 4th grade seems to be exactly where many of our students become lost. Looking through this list of topics, I am reminded of many problem spots I have encountered in our “college […]
Why study mathematics? This is a catechism of mathematics education. The correct answer has something to do with the prevalence of mathematics, its applicability, its beauty, and its power.
Last week when I was trying to sort out a combinatorial question related to my research, I accidentally ended up redoing some fun geometry of the type covered (?) in an undergraduate discrete math, or intro to […]
The feelings that I associate with Quaternions (which I will persist in capitalizing, as an homage to their 19th century origins) are not really professional. I see them as a Victorian curiosity; the kind of thing […]