Whatever happened to kicking back and appreciating the masters, getting a sense of what high quality mathematics is like without actually trying to be a master yourself? That's how we do it most music and art and literature. For some reason, math is supposed to be different. Why?

Damned if I know. Makes no sense to me either. There's a ton of math literacy that should be taught this way and isn't. Statistics is my particular bugaboo; it truly irritates me how many people have no idea what a standard deviation is, or what goes into calculation of a margin of error. Now, I would have a terrible time *calculating* a margin of error, at least without a book at hand to refresh my memory, but I damn well know what it is, why it matters, and that it relates to factors like sample size and sample randomness. In these days of InstaPolls, this kind of basic "duh"-level understanding is *important*.

"Math appreciation" means being able to follow what others have done _without_ making the claim that you could or should be able to do the same. We need to take away the notion that the only math worth reading, playing with, exploring, is math you have the capacity or ability to reinvent yourself, from scratch, ab initio.

Brilliantly stated, sir. Bravo. Dorothea -- Dorothea Salo Impressions Book and Journal Services, Inc. phone: (608) 244-6218 fax: (608) 244-7050 http://www.impressions.com