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A Mathematician’s Lament (2002) [pdf]

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Re: A Mathematician’s Lament (2002) [pdf]

#21

Post by nsphere »

codyb wrote: post #18
sampo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Are the ideas of math that inaccessible to the general population when compared to a work of Art?" I'd guess at least some fine arts (composing classical or modernist orchestral music, modern abstract painting and sculpting) would also be pretty inaccessible to general population.

Yes, but when a classical composer converses with you and says something along the lines of "There actually is, with all the creativity, a sort of formula I follow to produce my best pieces. You see I do this first, revise it three times, etc, etc." and no one will sit and shutter and have the PTSD style flashback the original comment talked about because they do not know and they do not have preconceived, strongly h…

Exactly! With the exception that most of the artist's I've conversed with don't like the word "formula", but liberally us the word "process". Also anyone is Science seems to favor "methods". They all are talking about the same activity of concentrating on an action their passionate about. Language can be a funny thing.

Re: A Mathematician’s Lament (2002) [pdf]

#22

Post by gxs »

softbuilder wrote: post #2

"but later in college when they finally get to hear all this stuff, they’ll really appreciate all the work they did in high school.” So painfully spot-on. My mathematical education was horrible. Meanwhile I had been writing code since I was a little kid. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized how much math I had been learning while programming. And worse, that I had been completely miseducated about what math…

Interestingly, the converse is also true.

I was always into computers and tech but never really programming.

I was a math major in college, however, and after graduating I started programming. The transition was almost seamless, I picked up programming really quickly, it was surprising to me how much the "ways of thinking" are alike.

Re: A Mathematician’s Lament (2002) [pdf]

#24

Post by saraid216 »

gxs wrote: post #22
softbuilder wrote: post #2

"but later in college when they finally get to hear all this stuff, they’ll really appreciate all the work they did in high school.” So painfully spot-on. My mathematical education was horrible. Meanwhile I had been writing code since I was a little kid. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized how much math I had been learning while programming. And worse, that I had been completely miseducated about what math…

Interestingly, the converse is also true. I was always into computers and tech but never really programming. I was a math major in college, however, and after graduating I started programming. The transition was almost seamless, I picked up programming really quickly, it was surprising to me how much the "ways of thinking" are alike.

One of the key mistakes of educational strategy is dividing up knowledge into a bunch of subjects like "Language", "Math", and so on. You can find linkages in just about everything; this siloing really only serves to make people think they're particularly good at one thing and not another, when really it's a preference for one perspective over another.

Re: A Mathematician’s Lament (2002) [pdf]

#25

Post by saraid216 »

dnautics wrote: post #20

As an erstwhile math major (I couldn't hack the honors basic algebra class - the difference between a euclidean domain and a principal ideal domain got too confusing; but I rocked proofs in analysis) I have to say that the author is confusing Mathematics (which is an art) and Arithmetic (which is a skill). Part of what make the opening farce absurd is that musical skills and painting are not terribly necessary as a m…

> whereas understanding sums and compounding processes ARE [terribly necessary as a matter of life and death, or even to a certain degree, quality of life or death].

That's not actually true.

Re: A Mathematician’s Lament (2002) [pdf]

#26

Post by saraid216 »

mathattack wrote: post #13

I hated math until I got to calculus. I never knew why, but I might as well quite this mathematician... They took an exciting topic that interested me as a youth and killed it with rote repetition. The question I struggle with is... How do you really get by without math as a mandatory topic? How can you teach science? How can you teach someone to balance a checkbook? The current system is awful, but do we push the su…

This is one of my current problems in curriculum design. I agree fully with Lockhart, and I strongly feel that requiring math is a mistake. But at the same time, you do need significant math skills in order to appreciate science with any meaningful depth, and I feel that science is a requirement.

The proper next step, it seems to me, is to figure out what bits of science we really want to teach and then figure out how to explain math through that.

> How can you teach someone to balance a checkbook?

Outside of America, no one uses checkbooks anymore. There's no reason to use exact change for tipping, either: just estimate a percentage and then round up. Or splitting the bill: the servers virtually always have a calculator at their disposal.

Re: A Mathematician’s Lament (2002) [pdf]

#27

Post by nsphere »

saraid216 wrote: post #24
gxs wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, the converse is also true. I was always into computers and tech but never really programming. I was a math major in college, however, and after graduating I started programming. The transition was almost seamless, I picked up programming really quickly, it was surprising to me how much the "ways of thinking" are alike.

One of the key mistakes of educational strategy is dividing up knowledge into a bunch of subjects like "Language", "Math", and so on. You can find linkages in just about everything; this siloing really only serves to make people think they're particularly good at one thing and not another, when really it's a preference for one perspective over another.

I completely agree! By other's perspectives my hardest semester was when I took PDEs, Geometry Space-time (Minkowski), Algorithms, P-chem (Quantum Mechanics), and Analysis. However there was so much over lap with all the materials and topics. A few weeks after midterms all the course work just fit together like a 100 piece puzzle.

Re: A Mathematician’s Lament (2002) [pdf]

#28

Post by prestonbriggs »

bridgeyman wrote: post #4

I read this a couple weeks ago and decided to try and find a math book that incorporates some history in it. I found Journey through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics with some great reviews. I am working on an iPad app that pairs up people to mentor each other through books like this. It has video chat and a shared whiteboard, so it is ideally suited for discussing math. If anyone is interested in reading th…

You might enjoy Lockhart's book, Measurement. http://www.amazon.com/Measurement-Paul-Lockhart/dp/067405755...

Re: A Mathematician’s Lament (2002) [pdf]

#29

Post by jfarmer »

adultSwim wrote: post #3

I thought I had been taking math my whole life until I finally took a math class.

Hah, yes! I hated math in high school but wound up graduating with a BS in mathematics from the University of Chicago. It wasn't until I took my first math course at Chicago using Michael Spivak's Calculus that I thought, "Wait, if this is math, what was I studying all through high school?"

Re: A Mathematician’s Lament (2002) [pdf]

#30

Post by math_junkie_20 »

jackmaney wrote: post #8
nsphere wrote: post #5

"There is such breathtaking depth and heartbreaking beauty in this ancient art form. How ironic that people dismiss mathematics as the antithesis of creativity. They are missing out on an art form older than any book, more profound than any poem, and more abstract than any abstract. And it is school that has done this! What a sad endless cycle of innocent teachers inflicting damage upon innocent students. We could al…

"Are the ideas of math that inaccessible to the general population when compared to a work of Art?" Yes, if only because many (if not most) don't want access. Been there, done that, got the medications to prove it.

"got the medications to prove it."

Please, elaborate?

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