> People who hate math aren't going to be inspired by a collection of axioms and equations. So true. My favorite quotation on this subject (admittedly, there

> People who hate math aren't going to be inspired by a collection of axioms and equations. So true. My favorite quotation on this subject (admittedly, there aren't that many): "Many a graduate student has come to grief when they discover, after a decade of being told they were "good at math," that in fact they have no real mathematical talent and are just very good at following directions. Math is not about following directions, it's about making new directions...It would be bad enough if the culture were merely ignorant of mathematics, but what is far worse is that people actually think they do know what math is about - and are apparently under the gross misconception that mathematics is somehow useful to society!...In any case, do you really think kids even want something that is relevant to their daily lives? You think something practical like compound interest is going to get them excited? People enjoy fantasy, and that is just what mathematics can provide - a relief from daily life, an anodyne to the practical workaday world." - Paul Lockhart Also relevenat, by the same author: "You don't start with definitions, you start with problems. Nobody ever had an idea of a number being "irrational" until Pythagoras attempted to measure the diagnonal of a square and discovered that it could not be represented as a fraction. Definitions make sense when a point is reached in your argument which makes the distinction necessary. To make definitions without motivation is more likely to cause confusion."