[Edu-sig] Re: Edu-sig digest, Vol 1 #216 - 1 msg

[Dorothea Salo]

> 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