I am always saddened and depressed when I realize how much people, in particular my students, resist thinking about math; how much they detest, avoid, and refuse to recognize that measures and the relationships between different kinds of measures can illustrate and often explain how various phenomena work; and that the abstractions of these measures are very beautiful and satisfying in their own right. I struggle to consider how to make the teaching of these ideas highlight the relevance of mathematics to their lives as educated women and men, make it more fun to think about mathematics or at the very least easier to assimilate it. But you know... After twenty-seven years of teaching about math, I am beginning to yearn for the limited community of folks who dont have to be convinced of its enticing beauty, who are happy to be immersed in the subject for its own sake. I think that the world of Thales of Miletus -- in which arithmetic was seen as a sacred realm only properly accessed by priests -- may still be the world of today.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 15:10:17 +0000