by Jean Joseph
In my daily morning walks, I’ve managed to read R. L. Moore’s biography (R. L.Moore: Mathematician and Teacher by John Parker (MAA)), where I learn about his famous method of instruction: he would give some axioms to his students and assigned them theorems to prove. The students are not allowed to communicate to each other, nor are they allowed to consult any book; they must sweat on the problem until they get something that they can call a solution that they are expected to present in class, where the penalty of not getting the right answer is to listen to another student who has gotten it right. It seems he used this method mostly with his graduate students (I don’t think I’ve read that he used it with his undergraduates although he was known to have a special flair to recruit undergraduates who would become great mathematicians); nevertheless, I think this method could be implemented in undergraduate math classes because it emphasizes problem solving and hard work that, I think, many undergraduates need.