Interesting story, I bet that was a gut-punch, haha. Hadn't seen the needle problem, cute and immediately clear (when it's pointed out—it wouldn't have been imm

Interesting story, I bet that was a gut-punch, haha. Hadn't seen the needle problem, cute and immediately clear (when it's pointed out—it wouldn't have been immediately clear if you'd asked me to solve it myself, of course) why the probability would have a relation to pi, thanks for introducing me to it. Agree that teachers can make a big difference, and my ideas for system-level reform are absolutely half-baked and may actually be awful. The closest thing I've got to a claim I'm fairly sure is true on this topic, is that trying to get kids to see the beauty of math before school has prejudiced them against it is unlikely to achieve much, because I don't think schools' deficiencies are the key reason for students failing to see that beauty in the first place :-/ > Really we're just saying that it's hard to get people to do things they don't naturally care about. QED, LOL.