by Kareem Carr
One of our earlier posts on the blog concerned how to deal with the all too common refrain, “I hate math.” A recent article posted on NPR discusses WHY people hate math. The culprit? According to the article, it’s the way it’s taught. The highlight of the article was the comparison between the teaching of mathematics and the teaching of music. It does make you think.
By Adam Topaz
It’s almost that time of year again — New Year’s. That means people all around the world will be making some sort of resolution which they will promptly break on January 3rd, 2011. Unlike mostly everyone else, some of us mathematicians might have different resolutions than the usual “lose weight,” “exercise more,” “rescue 32 kittens,” or any of the 1000 other canonical examples. Here are some of mine:
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I hope everyone’s semester was productive and that your winter break is relaxing and fun. If you are like me then you probably spend a good amount of time perusing the internet in your free time. Personally I spend a lot of time at www.reddit.com/r/math or MathOverFlow. This last week I learned of a fun blog that brought together food, art, music, doodling, balloons, videos, stories, and mathematics. It is vihart.com. Check it out during the break. Does anyone have any other sites they would recommend for recreational mathematics?
A side note: As a GK12 fellow, I spend one day a week in a middle school classroom. The videos on this site are not uploaded via YouTube, hence can be viewed on a public school computer. I showed the math doodling videos to a group of 7th and 8th graders; they were quietly entertained, and produce many interesting doodles, for over one hour.
There’s been something on my mind lately.
As a former corporate worker, I am delighted with the health care benefits offered to graduate students. If you don’t think so, ask anyone who has worked for corporate America and you will be told every companies benefits are different. Some are better than others, and I know when I was in banking, I had really good health benefits. Since then though, they have been hit or miss until grad school.
Why do I mention this?
In my early 20’s I didn’t realize what I had until it was gone. (Wait! There’s a song about that)
Check ups, flu shots, physical therapy for injuries. They may never be as affordable. Continue reading
by Kareem Carr
I recently found a rather interesting quote from a letter from Gösta Mittag-Leffler, the editor of Acta Mathematica, to George Cantor:
“I am convinced that the publication of your new work, before you have been able to explain new positive results, will greatly damage your reputation among mathematicians. I know very well that basically this is all the same to you. But if once your theory is discredited in this way it will be a long time before it will again command the attention of the mathematical world. It may well be that you and your theory will never be given the justice you deserve in our lifetime. Then the theory will be rediscovered in a hundred years or so by someone else, and then it will subsequently be found that you already had it all. Then, at least, you will be given justice. But in this way (ie by publishing the article) you will exercise no significant influence, which you naturally desire as does everyone who carries out scientific research.”
