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What a strange article. As someone with a background in the humanities I'm certainly a fan of more creativity and communication, however it wasn't until near th

What a strange article. As someone with a background in the humanities I'm certainly a fan of more creativity and communication, however it wasn't until near the end of college (thanks to a math major roommate) that I finally started to understand the true beauty of mathematics. Still catching up on what I find to be essential math skills I continually feel that US student are completely robbed of a decent math education in k-12 (and for the most part college students as well). The problem with math, at least in the US, is it tends to be taught by people who really don't understand it themselves, so it becomes an ugly, mechanized process. I remember asking one of my early hs math teachers if it was possible for something infinite to be larger than something else infinite. She just sort of smiled and shrugged her shoulders. Almost a decade later I learned about the cardinality of infinite sets and was finally able to answer my question. The sad thing is that if my hs math teach has said 'well let me show you something...' it would have taken me far less than a decade to not only get my answer but also become fascinated with mathematics. Finally, the more I've learned and studied the more I've come to see that just about anything interesting you want to do is almost always improved by a solid mathematical understanding of the world. And not just a superficial understanding, but a deep meaningful sense of the mathematical principles that can describe the world around us.

sp332 15y ago
I read it differently. I think the author is saying that mathematicians need to be able to communicate what is interesting and important about mathematics, otherwise no one will bother to pursue it.
- mkr-hn 15y ago
  Bingo. This thread has helped me identify weaknesses in my own communication skills. :)
- alexqgb 15y ago
  What I find interesting about Euclid is that he makes no additional effort to communicate what is interesting an important about mathematics. His proofs have an inherent beauty that is self-evident. Indeed, this self-evident quality is a big part of what makes them so beautiful. Each one is like a perfectly constructed plot. I was introduced to this my Freshman year in college. I remember thinking "this is absolutely amazing - why didn't anybody tell me about this before?" That sense was shared by every one my classmates, who - universally - felt robbed by their 9-12 education. To this day I remain angry about the utter mediocrity of math education that strips the work of any sense of historical context, the sequence by which one branch emerged from another, the causes of these developments, and the sense of aesthetic delight that comes from discovering what amounts to new and increasingly powerful uses of human reasoning. At the same time, I felt deeply fortunate that I got the education I did, realizing how far from the norm it is. I also realize that if you DO have to explain why something is important, it's probably because your audience has lost the story's thread. They've stopped seeing the subject from the inside out, and are just going through the motions to pass the test, get the grade, and move on a.s.a.p. The highly fragmented nature of contemporary curriculum design not only increases the chances of this happening, it virtually guarantees disengagement. The OP is right to observe that people who truly learn do so in spite of the system, not because of it.

sp332 15y ago

I read it differently. I think the author is saying that mathematicians need to be able to communicate what is interesting and important about mathematics, otherwise no one will bother to pursue it.

mkr-hn 15y ago
Bingo. This thread has helped me identify weaknesses in my own communication skills. :)
alexqgb 15y ago
What I find interesting about Euclid is that he makes no additional effort to communicate what is interesting an important about mathematics. His proofs have an inherent beauty that is self-evident. Indeed, this self-evident quality is a big part of what makes them so beautiful. Each one is like a perfectly constructed plot. I was introduced to this my Freshman year in college. I remember thinking "this is absolutely amazing - why didn't anybody tell me about this before?" That sense was shared by every one my classmates, who - universally - felt robbed by their 9-12 education. To this day I remain angry about the utter mediocrity of math education that strips the work of any sense of historical context, the sequence by which one branch emerged from another, the causes of these developments, and the sense of aesthetic delight that comes from discovering what amounts to new and increasingly powerful uses of human reasoning. At the same time, I felt deeply fortunate that I got the education I did, realizing how far from the norm it is. I also realize that if you DO have to explain why something is important, it's probably because your audience has lost the story's thread. They've stopped seeing the subject from the inside out, and are just going through the motions to pass the test, get the grade, and move on a.s.a.p. The highly fragmented nature of contemporary curriculum design not only increases the chances of this happening, it virtually guarantees disengagement. The OP is right to observe that people who truly learn do so in spite of the system, not because of it.