I read somewhere that people catch a fly ball in the same way as that bird in the article caught its prey -- by feedback control, not by calculating the traject

I read somewhere that people catch a fly ball in the same way as that bird in the article caught its prey -- by feedback control, not by calculating the trajectory even subconsciously. (Citation needed, yeah.) Math education could be so much better, when you compare school to self-directed learning with knowledgeable peers. I went to a good high school by U.S. standards, and tested into the advanced freshman math class at Caltech, and still had to ask if the roots of a polynomial with real coefficients came in complex-conjugate pairs -- I wasn't sure. (Maybe nowadays with math circles and the web, the frosh are a lot better prepared?) I think there's also a problem with the culture of math writing undervaluing things like examples and motivating background. http://worrydream.com/KillMath/ http://worrydream.com/KillMath/ talks about going beyond the limits of paper for media for doing math.