> Is this a stunt to attract US students to mathematics research? Like how the bowling ball pendulum lab is a stunt to attract students to physics, and the Bri

> Is this a stunt to attract US students to mathematics research? Like how the bowling ball pendulum lab is a stunt to attract students to physics, and the Briggs-Rauscher reaction a stunt to attract students to chemistry? Sure, why not. Define "stunt" broadly enough and it can include anything which piques the interest. > Why does it seem that everyone bends over backwards in the US instead of confronting the math education problem head on? Why does it seem you have no joy? > don't approximate it with video games, just teach it head on This is head-on teaching how to approximate the values of four different mathematical constants. You don't even get to the Minecraft way to approximate Apéry's constant until you've read that it's a special case of the Riemann zeta , and seen two ways to define it (as an infinite sum and as an infinite product), in order to explain why the Minecraft method works.